From the article: "Mandarin is set to be taught alongside local languages besides other foreign ones including French and Arabic."
They could just as easily have titled the article:
"Kenya will start teaching French to elementary school students from 2020."
But of course that would have triggered fewer people leading to fewer readers (probably wouldn't have made it to HN either).
I'm quite wary about "Chinese neocolonialism" myself, but as a Kenyan Citizen who's seen the massive QOL improvement in the country over the last few years, I really don't see the issue with teaching the worlds most widely spoken language in schools.
I started learning Mandarin a few months ago. My kid goes to a Saturday school so I figured I might as as well join when they made an adults class.
Thus far it's been reasonable. I do have some advantages, having parents who speak Cantonese. In fact a lot of the words seem similar. The grammar might be different, but we're not flying through the course since it's once a week.
I'd say thus far it's like when I went to learn German, being a native speaker of Danish. With just a very few lessons, knowing the neighbouring language opens up the new language very fast. I could pick up a German newspaper and read it within a few weeks, it having been gibberish to me previously. Even quite complex political stuff was understandable suddenly.
With Mandarin my expectations are lower. The characters are still hard to remember, and tbh I haven't spent the time trying to memorize them. What's cool is I've learned how to use a pinyin keyboard, which allows me to convert the sounds written in Latin script to Chinese characters. Much like one might write emojis. But I'm able to write stuff to Chinese friends and they can read it.
The great thing is translation services are pretty good now. You can just paste the pinyin into google translate, and something sensible seems to come out. Part of this is of course I have closer priors being a Cantonese speaker.
And finally I'm now on WeChat, which turns out to be one of the biggest apps in the world. Interesting to see how design is done in other parts of the world. The teacher has us write answers to questions in WeChat, and she has us pronounce stuff so she can critique it.
I started much this same way. I started at a local college taking just Mandarin I. I bought a bunch of books. I spent 2 months in China too. This was really worth it.
I do practice for an hour each day writing in Chinese. I also keep my day planner in Chinese and make notes in Chinese. I mean physically writing characters out.
WeChat is great.
Pleco is a great dictionary. I have it open all day long.
Google Translate is good. WeChat Translate and Google Translate differ on translations quite a bit. Bonus that translate.google.com is available while inside China.
Take a look at the "Chineasy" books. I found them great for gaining history of characters and therefore an understanding of why the characters are the way they are. Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5FNvW19GbA
Chinese American here that has foundation in Cantonese as well that took Mandarin during my younger years. If you know Cantonese, I highly recommend practicing the phonetics instead of words for a bit (like during a car ride or something). When I first learned Mandarin, we were drilled BoPoMoFo since it is a phonetic based system even when they taught primarily PinYin. It helps a lot with word enunciation in the future.
I took an online class at Wharton Business School and the teacher said that Africa would be an economic power in twenty years. Teaching Mandarin in school is probably a good idea.
When my wife and I were in Kenya we went to two elementary schools and the kids in class seemed very happy to be there. Even at a young age someone probably informed them that education is the ticket to a better life.
Naturally, people will gravitate to where they believe opportunity lies. It's a great opportunity now in order to foster commerce and trade with China which has focused on East Africa.
Yet, this is only part of the requirements. Connections and insidership are also important. Just like learning Japanese in the 70s and 80s didn't mean you automatically qualified for a job, if you had connections and were an insider, knowing Japanese helped quite a bit. It'll likely be the same here.
Oddly a lot of positivity in this thread. Anecdotally, the kenyans I know are really not pleased with the Chinese invasion of their culture and food stocks. There is fear of food fraud (fillers and ingredients sold as other things) for example from chinese imports.
> There is fear of food fraud (fillers and ingredients sold as other things) for example from chinese imports.
Apparently this fear exists within China as well, especially for baby formula. This stems from the 2008 milk scandal. That incident had 300k victims, hospitalized 54k babies, and killed 6. Four years prior 12 babies died from watered down milk [0].
In 2007, pet food produced in China killed ~3600 pets around the world after being contaminated. On further investigation, the FDA later determined that 2.5mm to 3mm Americans had consumed chickens who had been fed tainted vegetables imported from China [1].
In 2003, the State Food and Drug Administration was created to improve safety of the food supply. However, it seems that individual farmers may not be incentivized to make safety improvements, as produce from multiple farms is typically combined prior to being sold to distributors [2]. There have been several publicized incidents since 2003, often involving counterfeit or contaminated foods [3].
I'd argue it's entirely rational to have concerns about the safety of these goods, especially since Chinese companies (as recently as 2014) have demonstrated they are willing to export unsafe and expired goods internationally.
Kenyans are poisoning other Kenyans by cooking things in PCB-laden oil. You know, a chemical that causes places to be labeled Superfund sites in the US.
You lose nothing by learning other people's language or way of thinking. Knowledge as they say is power... even if those giving it to you don't have your best interests at heart.
Summary: emperical evidence shows that students who were taught Pinyin (romanized, phonetic Chinese writing) were far better off than students who learned with Hanzi characters (the pictograms you're familiar with). Despite this, Chinese written language reform is unlikely to happen due to political pressures from the elites, whose family's positions are secured by the higher barrier to entry to becoming an intellectual. It takes more work to learn Chinese than almost any other language because they want it to.
For this reason, even setting aside the other moral quandries presented by China, I'm against teaching Mandarin in schools. Though, as an optional class for high-school-level children, it makes more sense.
Edit: probably worth clarifying that I study Hanzi characters and I am fluent in Japanese.
That is only true when the other language is one that someone else you want to talk to speaks AND the other person doesn't speak your language. Unfortunately there are thousands of different languages in the world, it doesn't matter what language you speak somebody exists who doesn't speak it and then you cannot communicate. Alternatively, if the other party has already invested in learning your language there is less benefit to learning theirs. (less is not zero)
Is any language a good choice? The world changes all the time, over my lifetime English has been the best choice for the majority of people - in part because the majority of language learners have chosen English making it self-reinforcing (which isn't to discount the other reasons to learn English). However history is not always a predictor of the future. Even if history is the best overall your particular future might make Kazakh the best language to learn. (I picked Kazakh because you have probably never even heard of it before)
Don't forget that time spent learning a language could be used for something else. Language is useful to know, but it isn't the only thing and you cannot possibly learn all the useful things there are to know. You have to choose and your choices will both open and close doors to your future. Good luck choosing.
Classroom time should be spent on the most important things. Learning for the sake of learning is meaningless. There is no value in knowing how many dots are on the ceiling. The classroom time could been spent learning something more meaningful. For example, cursive writing should not be taught.
I would suggest only praising skills that help a child economically or make life fulfilling. I do not consider learning different ways to say a word as fulfilling as history, art, or philosophy.
Teaching German kids Turkish feels like it has a political motive more than anything else. I can see Kenyans gaining opportunities of improving their lives by learning Chinese. What do Germans have to earn from learning Turkish? Are you sure the backlash was racism and not just a lot of "what a terrible waste of time and public money"?
I don't know about the specifics of that case, but but if I was forced to learn a language solely because there are many people who speak that language in the country, I would be upset. I want to learn the languages that are more useful to me, not to other people.
This is a double edged sword. China is increasing it's influence in Africa through it's debt and road .. ahem, I mean, belt and road.. initiative and is arguably the most influential great power in Africa.
It's doubtful, even in the long term that Mandarin will challenge English and French with respect to influence in Africa, but language is one of the strongest signifiers of cultural influence, and it's obvious that China is looking to tighten its influence on Africa.
That being said, the ability to speak Mandarin can only be viewed as a benefit. English is the de facto international language but there is an obvious advantage to fluency in a language spoken by the 2nd largest economy and 1.5 billion people.
As a supporter of multilingual education in general I'm all for this in principle.
That said, language learning really needs a media ecosystem to sustain it outside the classroom. (Most Americans take token Spanish or French but would be hard pressed to go beyond 'hola' or 'bonjour' in real life.)
Beijing projects its power through economic and political means. But that's not enough. Unlike e.g. Japan (anime, video games) or South Korea (K-drama, K-pop), China still doesn't have pop-cultural "soft power" to help fuel said ecosystem -- I'd argue this is the main problem China needs to overcome for the language to really take off in non-Chinese communities.
I suppose it will be their fourth language for many, as they will still want them learn Swahili and/or English. But I know almost nothing about Kenya, so I may be wrong.
Also, it's virtually impossible to gain fluency in a script after a very young age (around 5 if I recall correctly) and verbal language isn't much better, with native fluency very rare after the age of 13-17 or so.
It will be interesting to watch China try and exert soft power. Like everything they do, it's going to be a top-down affair. Hard to imagine the Standing Committee coming up with anything as influential as rock-n-roll or blue jeans.
Japan proved that East Asian culture is perfectly capable of capturing the global imagination. But that didn't happen until the culture had decades to develop in a prosperous and free society.
I imagine that for the most part we'll just see a lot more of this. Throwing money at nations that have a hard time saying no, and simply trying to buy cultural influence. I don't imagine it will be a huge success.
There's one way that China has done phenomenal with soft power already in a very bottom up fashion: tourism. At least throughout Asia, Chinese tourists are absolutely everywhere. This is a relatively new phenomena and I imagine it's a product of their middle class exploding (in a good way). You can also find countless Chinese migrating to other nations but still very much retaining their own culture.
As a result of these things the Chinese language is an increasingly valuable skill throughout the continent. And you even see a variety of things like signs and other things that are also written in a local language, English, and Chinese as well.
It's extremely difficult to predict where China is headed, but in my opinion they are blazing their own trail in a way that, for now at least, seems to be working phenomenally well. And there's one critical nuance here. China has a population of 1.4 billion that is mostly united. If their economic growth and general influence continues along anything even vaguely resembling its current trajectory, they will be the most powerful and influential nation in the world in the very foreseeable future.
It might be difficult, as chinese is incredibly difficult to learn. It seems just like a way to appease the Chinese government. I wonder what how they teach english.
[+] [-] dkiarie|7 years ago|reply
They could just as easily have titled the article:
"Kenya will start teaching French to elementary school students from 2020."
But of course that would have triggered fewer people leading to fewer readers (probably wouldn't have made it to HN either).
I'm quite wary about "Chinese neocolonialism" myself, but as a Kenyan Citizen who's seen the massive QOL improvement in the country over the last few years, I really don't see the issue with teaching the worlds most widely spoken language in schools.
[+] [-] qiqing|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thereare5lights|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lordnacho|7 years ago|reply
Thus far it's been reasonable. I do have some advantages, having parents who speak Cantonese. In fact a lot of the words seem similar. The grammar might be different, but we're not flying through the course since it's once a week.
I'd say thus far it's like when I went to learn German, being a native speaker of Danish. With just a very few lessons, knowing the neighbouring language opens up the new language very fast. I could pick up a German newspaper and read it within a few weeks, it having been gibberish to me previously. Even quite complex political stuff was understandable suddenly.
With Mandarin my expectations are lower. The characters are still hard to remember, and tbh I haven't spent the time trying to memorize them. What's cool is I've learned how to use a pinyin keyboard, which allows me to convert the sounds written in Latin script to Chinese characters. Much like one might write emojis. But I'm able to write stuff to Chinese friends and they can read it.
The great thing is translation services are pretty good now. You can just paste the pinyin into google translate, and something sensible seems to come out. Part of this is of course I have closer priors being a Cantonese speaker.
And finally I'm now on WeChat, which turns out to be one of the biggest apps in the world. Interesting to see how design is done in other parts of the world. The teacher has us write answers to questions in WeChat, and she has us pronounce stuff so she can critique it.
[+] [-] jason_slack|7 years ago|reply
I do practice for an hour each day writing in Chinese. I also keep my day planner in Chinese and make notes in Chinese. I mean physically writing characters out.
WeChat is great.
Pleco is a great dictionary. I have it open all day long.
Google Translate is good. WeChat Translate and Google Translate differ on translations quite a bit. Bonus that translate.google.com is available while inside China.
Take a look at the "Chineasy" books. I found them great for gaining history of characters and therefore an understanding of why the characters are the way they are. Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5FNvW19GbA
There is a good TED Talk - 3,500 characters vs 26 letters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LvhjgW9zh0
I actually was going to start a Discourse forum for learning Chinese. I have it ready to do basically just need to get a domain name.
Edit: Added YT link.
[+] [-] syntaxing|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zhobbs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|7 years ago|reply
When my wife and I were in Kenya we went to two elementary schools and the kids in class seemed very happy to be there. Even at a young age someone probably informed them that education is the ticket to a better life.
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tr33house|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|7 years ago|reply
Yet, this is only part of the requirements. Connections and insidership are also important. Just like learning Japanese in the 70s and 80s didn't mean you automatically qualified for a job, if you had connections and were an insider, knowing Japanese helped quite a bit. It'll likely be the same here.
[+] [-] fudged71|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickles|7 years ago|reply
Apparently this fear exists within China as well, especially for baby formula. This stems from the 2008 milk scandal. That incident had 300k victims, hospitalized 54k babies, and killed 6. Four years prior 12 babies died from watered down milk [0].
In 2007, pet food produced in China killed ~3600 pets around the world after being contaminated. On further investigation, the FDA later determined that 2.5mm to 3mm Americans had consumed chickens who had been fed tainted vegetables imported from China [1].
In 2003, the State Food and Drug Administration was created to improve safety of the food supply. However, it seems that individual farmers may not be incentivized to make safety improvements, as produce from multiple farms is typically combined prior to being sold to distributors [2]. There have been several publicized incidents since 2003, often involving counterfeit or contaminated foods [3].
I'd argue it's entirely rational to have concerns about the safety of these goods, especially since Chinese companies (as recently as 2014) have demonstrated they are willing to export unsafe and expired goods internationally.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_safety
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_safety_incidents_in_China
[+] [-] coryrc|7 years ago|reply
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/12/thieves-f...
[+] [-] devoply|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pastor_elm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] porpoisely|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sir_Cmpwn|7 years ago|reply
http://pinyin.info/readings/defrancis/chinese_writing_reform...
Summary: emperical evidence shows that students who were taught Pinyin (romanized, phonetic Chinese writing) were far better off than students who learned with Hanzi characters (the pictograms you're familiar with). Despite this, Chinese written language reform is unlikely to happen due to political pressures from the elites, whose family's positions are secured by the higher barrier to entry to becoming an intellectual. It takes more work to learn Chinese than almost any other language because they want it to.
For this reason, even setting aside the other moral quandries presented by China, I'm against teaching Mandarin in schools. Though, as an optional class for high-school-level children, it makes more sense.
Edit: probably worth clarifying that I study Hanzi characters and I am fluent in Japanese.
[+] [-] sonnyblarney|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluGill|7 years ago|reply
Is any language a good choice? The world changes all the time, over my lifetime English has been the best choice for the majority of people - in part because the majority of language learners have chosen English making it self-reinforcing (which isn't to discount the other reasons to learn English). However history is not always a predictor of the future. Even if history is the best overall your particular future might make Kazakh the best language to learn. (I picked Kazakh because you have probably never even heard of it before)
Don't forget that time spent learning a language could be used for something else. Language is useful to know, but it isn't the only thing and you cannot possibly learn all the useful things there are to know. You have to choose and your choices will both open and close doors to your future. Good luck choosing.
[+] [-] peteey|7 years ago|reply
Classroom time should be spent on the most important things. Learning for the sake of learning is meaningless. There is no value in knowing how many dots are on the ceiling. The classroom time could been spent learning something more meaningful. For example, cursive writing should not be taught.
I would suggest only praising skills that help a child economically or make life fulfilling. I do not consider learning different ways to say a word as fulfilling as history, art, or philosophy.
[+] [-] Bombthecat|7 years ago|reply
In germany we tried to start teaching Turkish at school. Boy was that a shit show of racism...
[+] [-] tql|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandov|7 years ago|reply
I don't know about the specifics of that case, but but if I was forced to learn a language solely because there are many people who speak that language in the country, I would be upset. I want to learn the languages that are more useful to me, not to other people.
[+] [-] 40acres|7 years ago|reply
It's doubtful, even in the long term that Mandarin will challenge English and French with respect to influence in Africa, but language is one of the strongest signifiers of cultural influence, and it's obvious that China is looking to tighten its influence on Africa.
That being said, the ability to speak Mandarin can only be viewed as a benefit. English is the de facto international language but there is an obvious advantage to fluency in a language spoken by the 2nd largest economy and 1.5 billion people.
[+] [-] odiroot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lisper|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onetimemanytime|7 years ago|reply
Chinese names might be the next move :). Sorry but I don't think this is a coincidence.
[+] [-] United857|7 years ago|reply
That said, language learning really needs a media ecosystem to sustain it outside the classroom. (Most Americans take token Spanish or French but would be hard pressed to go beyond 'hola' or 'bonjour' in real life.)
Beijing projects its power through economic and political means. But that's not enough. Unlike e.g. Japan (anime, video games) or South Korea (K-drama, K-pop), China still doesn't have pop-cultural "soft power" to help fuel said ecosystem -- I'd argue this is the main problem China needs to overcome for the language to really take off in non-Chinese communities.
[+] [-] jasonjei|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PavlikPaja|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vinay427|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] standardUser|7 years ago|reply
Japan proved that East Asian culture is perfectly capable of capturing the global imagination. But that didn't happen until the culture had decades to develop in a prosperous and free society.
I imagine that for the most part we'll just see a lot more of this. Throwing money at nations that have a hard time saying no, and simply trying to buy cultural influence. I don't imagine it will be a huge success.
[+] [-] rjf72|7 years ago|reply
As a result of these things the Chinese language is an increasingly valuable skill throughout the continent. And you even see a variety of things like signs and other things that are also written in a local language, English, and Chinese as well.
It's extremely difficult to predict where China is headed, but in my opinion they are blazing their own trail in a way that, for now at least, seems to be working phenomenally well. And there's one critical nuance here. China has a population of 1.4 billion that is mostly united. If their economic growth and general influence continues along anything even vaguely resembling its current trajectory, they will be the most powerful and influential nation in the world in the very foreseeable future.
[+] [-] vivism|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kilotaras|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyxuan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nightraven97|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomMarius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jason_slack|7 years ago|reply