Kind of ironic that China now wishes to maintain some "purity" considering that they use simplified characters over the traditional characters, which are obviously more "pure". Chinese also don't have a very easy time with all the new words that are entered all the time, and now it seems that they have to go without saying "DVD" or "lol". But I guess considering how well China is doing, compared to other places, they want to flout their culture and show how much better it is doing than everywhere else.
So what do you think about this? Is it going to work out, or fail a horrible and miserable death?
-a G.U. from the Spiral King
2 comments:
I am most definitely not well-versed in the history of the Chinese language but it does not surprise me that the Chinese government would want to state that they wanted to "maintain the 'purity' of the language" after they themselves have changed it. This sort of 'hypocrisy' is something I have come to expect from all governments. But back to the issue at hand, I agree with Alex in that since China is now a World superpower, it can do what it wants. However, I don't see why China finds this of major importance? I assume "Facebook," "Youtubing" and "tweeting" are assaults on the prestige of the Chinese language. But, to each his own. (LOL . . . translate that!)
This piece of news also does not surprise me very much, especially after China was blocking content on google. Through this new law, the Chinese government seems to be indirectly trying to control content in the media about foreign nations as well. Perhaps, like Alex and Joseph said, China is trying to make itself look more like the world superpower than the U.S. does (hence “particularly” banning English words). Because English has become such an important international language, perhaps the Chinese government thinks that lessening the influence of the language will lessen the influence of the countries that speak it.
The Chinese media will find the new law terribly inconvenient if they run a story about something happening in the rest of the world because they have to provide explanations for every foreign word they use. It's possible that the media will reduce their coverage of events happening in other parts of the world because of this added burden, which would be the desired effect of the law if the government is indeed trying to reduce the influence of English-speaking political powers. However, I think it is more likely that with these added explanations of foreign words, more commonplace Chinese people will have a better understanding of foreign events or culture than before, which would have the opposite effect.
It's unfortunate to see that China does not seem very open to or accepting of the culture of rival foreign nations. I am interested to see what effects this law will ultimately have.
Post a Comment