China cracks down on . . . using English?

[General Zod]

Yeah, this is going to end well.

China has banned websites, publishers and newspapers from using “unnecessary” English words, prompting a wave of online sarcasm and criticism.

The General Administration of Press and Publication, which supervises all media in the country, said on Monday that foreign languages, in particular “English, English words and acronyms,” have diluted Chinese in recent years.

“Such abuse of language … destroys the harmonious and healthy cultural environment and causes an unhealthy social impact,” the government media watchdog said.

As a result of practices that damage the “purity of the Chinese language,” the regulator prohibited the “arbitrary” use of English words or acronyms from foreign languages mixed with Chinese. It also forbade the use of “ambiguous” words that are neither Chinese nor foreign.

When words in a foreign language have to be used, the government decreed that a note or annotation in Chinese must be added. And the names of foreign people, places and science terms also have to be translated into Chinese.

If the order was to be strictly exercised many English acronyms Chinese people often use, such as DNA, GDP, CEO and WTO, would have to disappear or be replaced by Chinese equivalents.

Sarcasm
While decrees like this one alarm few – such government notices are rarely followed – they do elicit bouts of pungent sarcasm.

In April, TV channels were told to ban English acronyms like NBA, which translated into Chinese in as long as 10 characters: “Mei Guo Nan Zi Zhi Ye Lan Qiu Lian Sai.”

One commentator responded to the ban in April with: “Ban English acronyms? Fine, don’t call yourself CCTV anymore.” CCTV, a.k.a. China Central TV, is China’s biggest official TV service and displays its logo with four English-language letters on-screen.

The most recent notice elicited similarly acerbic responses.

“I suggest we get rid of Arabic numbers too, they’re also foreign,” one person said in the comment section on news giant Netease.com.

Another said: “Dear Administration, can you tell me how to say ‘iPad,’ ‘iPhone’ in Chinese?”

Some commentators seemed to take the issue a bit more seriously: “Tell me, in modern science, which word comes from Chinese? They are nice enough to let you use their words, and now you want to protect your ‘language purity’?”

Authorities’ obsession with power is at the root of the decision to ban English, one commentator says.

“(The government) is so proud now as China’s economy is booming,” Zhu Xueqin, a history professor at Shanghai University, told BBC News in an interview. “They think foreigners ought to learn from us, we do not need to learn from them anymore.”

It isn’t only the use of English that is imperiled, Zhu said. A large number of frequently used Chinese words in science and sociology come from Japanese, such as constitution, cadre, and socialism.

“If we are not allowed to use such words we simply won’t be able to speak anymore,” he said.

NBC’s Beijing Bureau requested an interview with the General Administration of Press and Publication but received no answer.

I really have to wonder which administrative genius thought this was a good idea . . . it'll be interesting to see if they rescind this policy anytime soon.

[Phantasee]

Quebec has a similar policy. They use it to promote francophone culture and the French language. I don't see it as a big issue, France has its Academy that tells you to use ordinateur instead of monitor, but people say it anyway. Encouraging media to use pure Chinese will promote the language within the country but people will still use whatever words they want for their own communication.

[General Zod]

Quebec has a similar policy. They use it to promote francophone culture and the French language. I don't see it as a big issue, France has its Academy that tells you to use ordinateur instead of monitor, but people say it anyway. Encouraging media to use pure Chinese will promote the language within the country but people will still use whatever words they want for their own communication.

It mostly just seems bizarre to implement it out of the blue. There doesn't seem to be anything that triggered this other than some bureaucrat thinking "People are using English too much."

[Morilore]

Look sir, stupid nationalists. Can I get some liberty cabbage?

The article notes that "While decrees like this one alarm few – such government notices are rarely followed – they do elicit bouts of pungent sarcasm." I wonder, how does the government enforce this, or do they even try? Or is this just like a PSA type of thing?

[General Zod]

Look sir, stupid nationalists. Can I get some liberty cabbage?

What the fuck are you babbling about?

I wonder, how does the government enforce this, or do they even try? Or is this just like a PSA type of thing?

Which is why I said it seems bizarre and out of the blue without more context.

[Tanasinn]

Liberty cabbage - also known as sauerkraut. The term came about during - IIRC - WWI when everyone got all butthurt over Germany. See also "freedom fries."

The point being that such nationalism is pathetic and only goes to show how the people engaging in it are desperately insecure or incredibly asspained.

[Sea Skimmer]

Liberty cabbage - also known as sauerkraut. The term came about during - IIRC - WWI when everyone got all butthurt over Germany. See also "freedom fries."

The point being that such nationalism is pathetic and only goes to show how the people engaging in it are desperately insecure or incredibly asspained.

They had a whole lot of terms like that in WW1. Liberty Pups was introduced for example after people went around beating Dachshunds to death. You can thank the Committee on Public Information for that. This is just another avenue of China trying to control its population by controlling culture. China also semi actively suppresses certain Chinese dialects as I recall, they want everyone to use Mandarin so its easier for the army of web censors to operate.

[Molyneux]

Liberty cabbage - also known as sauerkraut. The term came about during - IIRC - WWI when everyone got all butthurt over Germany. See also "freedom fries."

The point being that such nationalism is pathetic and only goes to show how the people engaging in it are desperately insecure or incredibly asspained.

They had a whole lot of terms like that in WW1. Liberty Pups was introduced for example after people went around beating Dachshunds to death. You can thank the Committee on Public Information for that. This is just another avenue of China trying to control its population by controlling culture. China also semi actively suppresses certain Chinese dialects as I recall, they want everyone to use Mandarin so its easier for the army of web censors to operate.

Wait...really? People murdered pet dogs because the breed had a German-sounding name?

[Phantasee]

Well, you have people saying shit like US government forms should be in God's Own Language, English, and there shouldn't be anything available in Spanish. The difference is that IIRC China actually has an official language.

[Ilya Muromets]

They had a whole lot of terms like that in WW1. Liberty Pups was introduced for example after people went around beating Dachshunds to death. You can thank the Committee on Public Information for that. This is just another avenue of China trying to control its population by controlling culture. China also semi actively suppresses certain Chinese dialects as I recall, they want everyone to use Mandarin so its easier for the army of web censors to operate.

Wait...really? People murdered pet dogs because the breed had a German-sounding name?

Well, hey, if you can have a bunch of idiots miss the point so much that they start killing stingrays because one just happened to stab a favorite celebrity nature conservationist in the heart, that kind of idiocy is really not a surprise.

[mr friendly guy]

I don't think Chinese (Mandarin) is a language easy to make acronyms for, so terms like NBA will naturally sound long. This can be irritating. If Star Trek characters say deoxyribose nucleic acid all the time instead of DNA, I would spew. That being said, its most probably better if the technical terms are spoken by scientists in Mandarin (since they would use such words frequently), and the lay person just uses the english acronym. I mean how many lay people in Australia or US, know off the top of their head what DNA stands for anyway?

On another point (from Skimmer's post), I am aware that the government has promoted Mandarin as a lingua fraca, which makes more sense since a lot of communication across distances is now verbal instead of just written dispatches (the written language is pretty much the same aside from issues of grammar and a few characters which just represent slang in the local dialect, otherwise people speaking different dialects should be able to communicate by written chinese, if not spoken language).

this article from Xinhua is from a few years ago but the views from a government official makes more sense. Simply have Mandarin the lingua fraca and if someone can be bilingual, good for them.

Recent Article from CNN shows that the local Shanghai government is trying to preserve its language. So even if one government official interprets the promote Mandarin as a licence to try and destroy the dialects, it seems another will do the opposite. The wonders of a giant beaurecracy.

As for the article, I remember seeing something like this a few months ago. I predict nothing will come of this except maybe people more aware of the Chinese equivalent of DNA, NBA etc. I mean, its not like English has borrowed words from other languages, so Chinese can do the same. Yes I am aware of the difficulty is representing those words in a written language which is not phonetic, but ideograms instead, but thats what you have linguists for.

[Sea Skimmer]

Wait...really? People murdered pet dogs because the breed had a German-sounding name?

If by murdered you mean stoned them to death in the streets during public rallies, then yes. Keep in mind that countless thousands of American Germans permanently changed their names during the war to sound more American. Streets were renamed, public and private buildings renamed, food renamed, ships renamed, German books were taken out of the libraries, German music was not played, German language was not taught in schools, almost anything you can think off. That includes lynching of some German Americans, and tar and feathering of others.

While the government deliberately played up public agitation after the outbreak of war, this had basically been building since the sinking of the Lusitanian. America had a vocal minority convinced Germany was plotting to attack the US ever since the 1860s and especially after 1898, and they went wild with everyone behind them. The near utter disarmament of the US military aside from the battleships of the fleet didn’t exactly help public confidence. While the US public didn’t want a war on average, it really wasn’t that hard to whip up a massive anti German sentiment. The German government certainly gave no reason to think of it as being anything except horrible.

[Danny Bhoy]

I don't think Chinese (Mandarin) is a language easy to make acronyms for, so terms like NBA will naturally sound long. This can be irritating. If Star Trek characters say deoxyribose nucleic acid all the time instead of DNA, I would spew. That being said, its most probably better if the technical terms are spoken by scientists in Mandarin (since they would use such words frequently), and the lay person just uses the english acronym. I mean how many lay people in Australia or US, know off the top of their head what DNA stands for anyway?

Mandarin does allow for some degree of contractions/abbreviations. A simple example would be the translation of "Real Madrid" (the Spanish football club). In its complete form in Mandarin it would be 皇家马德里 which is the literal (more or less) translation from the Spanish. However, it's far more commonly "abbreviated" or "contracted" as 皇马 which literally means "royal horse" in original Spanish. But certain foreign names/titles like "United Nations" 联合国 are kept in their standard form presumably because it's short enuff.

[mr friendly guy]

Mandarin does allow for some degree of contractions/abbreviations. A simple example would be the translation of "Real Madrid" (the Spanish football club). In its complete form in Mandarin it would be 皇家马德里 which is the literal (more or less) translation from the Spanish. However, it's far more commonly "abbreviated" or "contracted" as 皇马 which literally means "royal horse" in original Spanish. But certain foreign names/titles like "United Nations" 联合国 are kept in their standard form presumably because it's short enuff.

So how would one try to abbreviate DNA for example? Just try and sound out the word from the English? Just like how the word ballet (芭蕾) when spoken in Mandarin sounds similar to how ballet is pronounced in English. So DNA would be abbreviated to 德恩啊?

PS my Mandarin is only so so, so don't expect me to read more advanced characters.

[TrailerParkJawa]

If they are so interested in protecting the "purity" of Chinese then perhaps they should do away with Simplifed Chinese and go back to the old characters. Somehow I don't think they will.

I wonder if they will tell Beijing to take down all the signs that have english names of the streets, subways, busses, etc. The amount of English even in Chinese advertising is surprising but hardly a threat.

This is just govt bullshit at its best. I think the best rebuttal was to tell CCTV to change its name. Haha.

[Danny Bhoy]

Mandarin does allow for some degree of contractions/abbreviations. A simple example would be the translation of "Real Madrid" (the Spanish football club). In its complete form in Mandarin it would be 皇家马德里 which is the literal (more or less) translation from the Spanish. However, it's far more commonly "abbreviated" or "contracted" as 皇马 which literally means "royal horse" in original Spanish. But certain foreign names/titles like "United Nations" 联合国 are kept in their standard form presumably because it's short enuff.

So how would one try to abbreviate DNA for example? Just try and sound out the word from the English? Just like how the word ballet (芭蕾) when spoken in Mandarin sounds similar to how ballet is pronounced in English. So DNA would be abbreviated to 德恩啊?

PS my Mandarin is only so so, so don't expect me to read more advanced characters.

Beats me. From what I gather from more colleagues whose Mandarin is far more advanced than mine, scientific terms like "DNA" are traditionally written as "DNA" in English/Roman alphabets. I have no idea what DNA is in Mandarin but I'm guessing a minimum of 6 characters assuming 2 characters per "English" word of deoxyribose nucleic acid.

I suspect this is the age old case of party bureaucrats passing orders trying to regulate every damn thing. Left alone, these clowns would pass laws superceding the laws of physics...

A correction to my above post: to non-Mando readers, 马德里 is a phonetic transliteration of Madrid; the combined "word" doesn't actually mean anything in Mandarin. Least not that I think it does.

[Metahive]

I don't think Chinese (Mandarin) is a language easy to make acronyms for, so terms like NBA will naturally sound long.

It's actually quite common to abbreviate overly long words by omitting characters, so for example 文化大革命, the Great Proletarian Culture Revolutiuon becomes just 文革, or 全国人民代表大会, the National People's Congress becomes just 人大. One could in a way say due to the nature of its writing, Chinese is a language exclusively composed of acronyms. As for your example, DNA in Chinese is 脱氧核糖核酸, but there I think the Chinese have settled on abbreviating this by just writing "DNA" as well.

[Pelranius]

Considering the jokes that are the censorship of military information (they apparently only bother to delete things like pictures of 5th generation fighter mockups and prototypes) and the one child policy, this "English quota" should keep the 30,000 web censors busy until someone in Beijing figures out how futile and stupid the whole thing is.

[Akkleptos]

Of course, this is just stupid, coming from a culture that doesn't share the Latin-and-Greek roots that have become next-to-universal?

I mean, really? How are medical doctors supposed to name things, in China? "Apendicitis" is more or less the same in any Western language, same as are other medical terms such as "hæmoglobin". I mean, people's lives are potentially at stake here. And I say potentially because I'm sure anyone who really cares, in all of these scientific fields, will stick to whatever works, instead of looking for some odd-fish Chinese (Mandarin) "equivalents".

Well, you have people saying shit like US government forms should be in God's Own Language, English, and there shouldn't be anything available in Spanish. The difference is that IIRC China actually has an official language.

Funny... In Spanish, when faced with a foreign language, people typically go "Ok, so... What does this mean, in Christian? Quite possibly a legacy from the old days of the Spanish Empire upon which the sun always shone, back in the days of Charles V of Spain/I of Germany.

Liberty Pups was introduced for example after people went around beating Dachshunds to death.

I guess very few dared try that on Rottweilers, Dobermanns and Weimeraners.

[Lusankya]

I mean, really? How are medical doctors supposed to name things, in China? "Apendicitis" is more or less the same in any Western language, same as are other medical terms such as "hæmoglobin". I mean, people's lives are potentially at stake here. And I say potentially because I'm sure anyone who really cares, in all of these scientific fields, will stick to whatever works, instead of looking for some odd-fish Chinese (Mandarin) "equivalents".

Usually medical doctors can label things in ... Chinese. Chinese has words for "haemoglobin" and "appendicitis" and pretty much everything else. China actually has a very long history in the medical field. It's not as if the entirety of their medical knowledge was imported wholesale from the west, you know. Chinese terms are actually often easier to understand than the western terms anyway, because rather than being based on Latin roots, the terms are based on a language with over a billion native speakers - i.e. Chinese. "Appendicitis", for instance is 阑尾炎 (lán wěi yán): which literally means "appendix inflammation", which is actually more informative than the western term, because "appendicitis", while informing the layman that it is a disease of the appendix, doesn't actually give any indication what kind of disease it is.

Also, fuck you for deciding to describe Chinese words for things as 'odd-fish Chinese "equivalents"'. As though somehow the Chinese words for medical terms aren't real equivalents to the western terms, even though they refer to the exact same things. I'm perfectly aware that your racist hatfucker attitude has no bearing on the validity of your argument, but you are now officially on my "dickhead" list. It's bad enough when my grandpa displays that kind of attitude towards China, but at least he has the excuse of being 93 and being from a period before the internet made information about other cultures easy to find. What excuse do you have, except for being a shithead?

[mr friendly guy]

Funny thing is, the article was complaining about the Chinese words for common English acronyms being long compared to the English version, and made no mention of medical terms, unless you count DNA as one.

Another thing of note, most lay people in English won't realise that "itis" refers to inflammation of. I mean I hear the term "Robert Jordanitis" to make fun of the author, and infers that an author with "Robert Jordanitis" drags out the length of their series. However if you think about it, since "itis" means inflammation, they are just saying inflammation of the "Robert Jordan". Hence I prefer to use the term Robert Jordan syndrome to make fun of such authors.

Now back to the Chinese words for English acronym bit. If you think about it, the chinese equivalent of NBA has 10 characters for 10 syllables (as per the article), while the English for National Basketball Association has 3 words using 29 letters / characters for 11 syllables. It most probably takes just as long as say it in Chinese as we say it out fully in English (because of the similar number of syllables). The problem lies in that there isn't a Chinese short hand form for National Basketball Association, like NBA, so the English speaker if he doesn't want to take 11 syllables to say National Basketal Association, can just use the shorten form, while the Chinese speaker can't (unless they borrow the English acronym).

[mr friendly guy]

On another note, I occasionally come across a Chinese patient who can't speak English (usually just visiting relatives in Australia or a tourist) and I have to communicate in Mandarin. While I am reasonably confident I can use basic everyday conversation, I get stuck on medical jargon, so I am forced to look it up (I do know some basic things like the Chinese word for diabetes etc). There are Chinese equivalents for some antibiotic classes, which I didn't bother to learn but I am sure the average joe hasn't heard of them aside from penicillin. I mean how many lay English people have heard of cephalosporins, aminoglycosides and macrolides anyway?

Edit - just to expand, the patients didn't understand the English term for the disease, so I had to use the Chinese equivalent.

[Spoonist]

Considering the jokes that are ... and the one child policy...

The one child policy worked for its intention and was enforced rather rigidly. Care to explain why you consider it a joke?

[Lusankya]

Another thing of note, most lay people in English won't realise that "itis" refers to inflammation of. I mean I hear the term "Robert Jordanitis" to make fun of the author, and infers that an author with "Robert Jordanitis" drags out the length of their series. However if you think about it, since "itis" means inflammation, they are just saying inflammation of the "Robert Jordan". Hence I prefer to use the term Robert Jordan syndrome to make fun of such authors.

See, I had no idea about that. However, pretty much any Chinese person would be able to tell you that 炎 meant "inflammation" or "heat".

MOST Chinese terms are actually easier to learn in many ways than the equivalent terms in English. Outside of medicine (where the Chinese terms really are easier to understand than the English ones), there's really no reason for the Chinese to learn the English words for the table of elements unless they want to talk chemistry with foreigners, because the Chinese actually makes more sense. Sodium, for example, is written the same way in pinyin as it is on the table of the elements. And the character tells you that it's pronounced "Na" and is a metal of some kind. So convenient.

What the Chinese are probably trying to get rid of is things like (to use an example I saw in a book once) is to stop authors from randomly inserting words like "pub" into an otherwise 100% Chinese book. It was actually annoying when I was reading it, having the sentence go "我去了一个Pub...". It threw off the rhythm of the sentence.

[Todeswind]

It would probably be equally Jarring if English authors were to write chinese or Japanese names in Asian characters or Arabic ones in Arabic.