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BEYOND THE GREAT WALL
hinese is a language spoken by 20 per cent of the world population. This language finds majority of its speakers in China Mainland (PRC: People’s Republic of China), Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Macau, Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Mauritius, Peru, Canada and USA. Actually, the need for Indians to learn Chinese couldn’t have been greater than it is today. China has emerged as India’s largest trading partner. Bilateral trade has been growing at a healthy 3540% and ahead of targets. It is expected to reach US $ 60 Billion by the end of this year. Any Indian travelling to China is likely to experience a huge barrier in language as most Chinese do not speak English. The foundation of this “Great Wall” is based upon the utterly incomprehensible language that the Chinese speak. Unlike India where most official work is done in English and where it is not difficult to survive if one has a good working knowledge of English, China is a country where the main medium of communication is Mandarin Chinese. While one might still survive in the office with the help of interpreters (who charge a hefty fee), conducting daily life in China is almost impossible without a working knowledge of Mandarin. Unlike European languages, which along with those Indian belong to the same Indo-European language family, Chinese languages are part of a completely different set of
languages. Chinese languages belong to the Sino-Tibetan family. Like the country, Chinese languages too have a history going back thousands of years. Chinese and Indian civilizations share many similarities. Variety in languages is one of them. Contrary to popular notions in India, China does not have one single spoken language. There are between seven to thirteen regional “dialects” of Chinese. Much like India, they are mutually unintelligible to such an extent that people from one region cannot understand those from another region. The official language and the one taught in schools all over China is “Mandarin” or “Putonghua” (language of the common people). Unlike India though, all regions in China are connected through a single script with minor variations in different regions. The writing system of Chinese languages is unique and shares no similarity with the phonetic script system of Indo-European languages. While preparing to learn Chinese, many say they would start by learning the alphabets. It is only when they start learning the language that they realize there is nothing called alphabets in Chinese!!! Each word is represented by a symbol or character. Therefore, an educated Chinese person knows not 26 alphabets but at least six thousand to seven thousand characters! Spoken Chinese has evolved over the years but the Chinese script has undergone comparatively lesser changes. The earliest evidence of written Chinese dates back to Shang dynasty oracle bones from the 14th to 11th century BC. Much like the Indians who used to write on palm leaves, the Chinese engraved characters on turtle plastron and animal bones during divination procedures. Standard Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect was appointed as the standard official language by the early part of the twentieth century. Though the language barrier seems formidable today, it was overcome by our ancestors when numerous Buddhist texts in Sanskrit and Pali were translated into Chinese many centuries ago – without the help of computers or electric dictionaries! Though huge, this barrier can definitely be overcome with some help from modern technology.
anguage of the ans
SUMELIKA BHATTACHARYYA Research analyst ICEC. Sumelika will be writing a regular column which will aim to introduce China and its culture to India
July-August 2010
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