LEARNING CHINESE (2)

When I was in Hong Kong recently, I had the opportunity both to see written Chinese in everyday life, and to watch/hear my son, who is doing his best to learn it. It's tough.

My son is learning Mandarin, which has become the dominant dialect out of the many in what is a vast country (a bit like how Castilian became the dominant dialect in Spain). However, because of Hong Kong's separate history under British rule, the local Cantonese dialect has not disappeared, but is dominant locally (again, a bit like Catalan in the Barcelona region). Mandarin and Cantonese characters are not 100% the same, but are pretty close, it is just that they are pronounced completely differently. The chararacter for big, for example, which is one of the few I got to recognise, is pronounced "tai" in Cantonese, but "da" in Mandarin. On the metro, all of the upcoming station announcements are announced in English, Mandarin and Cantonese, and you can hear the differences between the two Chinese versions. Cantonese has many more tones, for instance.

But it's the characters that are so difficult. In the course of nine days, I got to recognise with certainty only about five; those for person, big, middle, mountain and man. That's not many for a tourist actively interested in the language, not even enough to write a simple sentence. I suppose if you lived there, then you would see them more often, and they would slowly sink into your brain, like a sponge. My son has a pack of cards, with characters written on one side and the word and its usages on the other. So when he is idling, he can test himself.

A further complication was the decision by the Chinese authorities under Mao to simplify Chinese characters in order to try and reduce illiteracy. Simplified characters are used in China, Singapore and Malaysia; but (not least because of politics) the traditional characters are still used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

One of the most interesting aspects of our stay was watching local Hong Kongers sms. Everbody has mobile phones, and they use them all the time. Prompt and touch technology allows you to start a character and get a prompt; easy characters first, followed by harder ones and then the most complicated. To be honest, it's easy to see why Asiatics are so obsessed with electronic gadgets, it's a lot easier than physically writing.

If I was 20, then I would definitely think about learning Chinese seriously. But I am 52, and I would be senile before I could master writing a memo. If I ever get to go to China on business, I'll just have to take my son along as an interpreter.

Walter Blotscher