Chinese

According to data we received from Hampshire schools in the Autumn of 2000, there are over 225 Chinese pupils in our schools. The majority of these children's families originated from Hong Kong, although a small number have come from mainland China and from Taiwan.

Languages

There are eight main varieties of Chinese, which are different enough from each other to be referred to as separate languages and, although the dialects do have many features in common, they are not mutually intelligible.

The main and official language of China is Mandarin, but most Chinese students in local schools and colleges speak Cantonese, which is the main language of Hong Kong. In addition, there are a few Mandarin and Hakka speakers.

Writing

Despite the differences between spoken Chinese languages, they share a common writing system with thousands of distinctive characters (ideographs) which have no relation to the sound of the word. Just as 3 can be read as 'three' in English, 'trois' in French and 'drei' in German, Chinese ideographs can be read in all of the Chinese languages and, to some extent, to Japanese speakers as well.

The total number of Chinese characters is not known, but is estimated as being around 60,000, although the number in regular use is about 8,000. A Chinese child learns about 2,000 characters by the time s/he is ten, but would need to know two or three times that number to be considered literate.

The earliest Chinese characters were pictographs, such as a circle with a dot in its centre to represent the sun. These developed into ideographs which could also represent abstract concepts. Nowadays two characters can be used together to form a third e.g. the pictograph for sun can be combined with the ideograph for one to make festival day. No matter how many single characters are combined to form a new one, the aggregate always has the same square appearance and is the same size as any other character.

However, most characters consist of two elements, a radical which conveys the meaning of a word and a phonetic which indicates its sound.

Characters are composed from a series of basic writing strokes which must be made in a prescribed order. The number of strokes in one character can vary from one to sixty-four , but twelve is about average. In the 1950s, the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China, initiated a plan to simplify many of the characters, so that they could be formed with fewer strokes. However, in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the traditional fonts are still used for writing.

Chinese can be written in vertical columns when it is read from right to left, or in horizontal lines when it is read left to right.

Differences between Cantonese and English which may cause difficulties for Chinese pupils.

Sound systems

The phonological system of Chinese is very different from that of English, which may cause pupils to have problems in understanding and producing spoken English. Some English phonemes do not exist in Chinese languages, others are similar but not identical. Fewer sounds are used in Cantonese than in English, so there are far more homophones.

Vowels

There are more vowel contrasts in English than in Cantonese. Long/ short vowel distinctions are especially difficult, as Cantonese only has such distinctions with the vowel a.

Typical errors :- confusion between such words as ship and sheep, eat and it or bean and bin.

Consonants

In Cantonese, 'b', 'd', 'g', 'r', 'v' and 'z' are not used. Neither is 'th' (as in thin nor as in that). Consonants at the ends of words are also a problem and are often omitted. Words ending in 'l', such as bill, are particularly difficult to pronounce.

Many Cantonese speakers will have difficulty pronouncing consonant clusters because these rarely appear in Chinese languages.

Typical errors :- addition of a slight vowel sound between the consonants e.g. pronouncing spoon as sipoon.

Syllables

Cantonese is monosyllabic and each single syllable has meaning, but syllables are combined to form polysyllabic words. In other words, coal and man could be combined to form coalman, but no equivalent to trousers or sharpener would exist in Cantonese, as the individual syllables are meaningless.

Intonation

Cantonese is a tonal language, with pitch changes used mainly to distinguish meanings of individual characters. Thus the intonation used in English to communicate the meaning of a whole sentence may sound strange to Cantonese speakers and is difficult for them to grasp. Often, worried about using the wrong intonation, they suppress any variation in tone, causing their English to sound clipped.

Implications for schools

• Teachers need to be conscious of the words they use which that can easily be confused by Cantonese speaking children so they can ensure that children have understood what has been said.
• Chinese children, like all EAL pupils, will acquire good English more effectively if they are encouraged to work collaboratively with pupils who speak good, clear English.
• It can be fruitless and discouraging to focus too much attention on individual English phonemes, particularly until a child has acquired a good level of fluency in spoken English.

Reading

As alphabetic scripts 'spread' information more widely than do compact ideograms, pupils accustomed to reading in Chinese may initially find learning to read in English a slow, laborious process, as the eye can not take in so much text at a time.

Differences in Grammar

Children learning English often make errors through applying some of the syntactical rules of their heritage language. Correct English structures need to be taught, but will be more effectively learned if this is done in meaningful contexts, e.g. through scaffolding unfamiliar all the genres in every curricular area.

Parts of Speech

In Chinese, parts of speech are not always formally distinguished and the same word can often serve several structural functions in a sentence. Thus, the parts of speech of related English words like excited and exciting are often confused.

Typical errors :-

It very excited football match. (It's a very exciting football match.)
He likes swim.
It very difficulty to persuade her.

Verbs

Cantonese verbs are almost all regular and do not change tense to express the concept of time. Whereas English changes verb forms, Chinese uses context, word order and adverbials to indicate time, and space.

Adjectives and verbs are often exactly the same word in Cantonese.

Typical errors :-

I sit here for long time. (I have been sitting here for a long time.)
I have seen the film last week.
What do you eat? (What are you eating?)
I very happy.
She waiting.

Irregular verb formation e.g. flied, eated, goed and hurted.

Question tags

Tags meaning Is that so? or Is that right? are frequently used in Cantonese and are often translated as is it?/isn't it?

For example:- He liked it, isn't it?

Articles

There are no articles in Chinese, so pupils may omit them in English, e.g. I can play violin, or confuse the definite and indefinite articles,e.g. Lucy is a fastest girl in the race

Gender

The Cantonese word is the same for he, she and it.

Number

No distinction is made between singular and plural nouns. The Chinese do not share our concept of uncountable nouns.

Typical errors :-

I've got a lot of friend.
I have seen some film about animals.
We've got some new furnitures.
Can I tell you an interesting news?

Pronouns

Cantonese speakers tend to drop pronouns where the context gives a clear meaning, e.g. She put the shoe on foot.

Cantonese personal pronoun categories are different from those used in English.

Typical errors :- The pencil is my.

Word order

Cantonese usually establishes the topic first, e.g. 'This restaurant, can eat how many people?'

Time comes before place and both come before action, e.g. Tomorrow afternoon 3 o'clock, bank outside see you' ('I'll meet you tomorrow afternoon outside the bank at 3 o'clock'.)

'This is yesterday buy car person.' ('This is the man who bought a car yesterday.')

Other examples of Cantonese sentence structures:

You are what time come London?
Please with me come.
This from Hong Kong student study here.
I don't know to go where.
He is necessary to practise.
On the table have book.
The you carry books are mine.

Implications for Schools

• Correct English structures should be taught, through scaffolding, wherever they are needed to communicate ideas, knowledge or understanding.
• Grammar should not normally be taught in isolation, as the purpose of new constructions will be far more readily grasped where the context is clear and meaningful.
• Decontextualised exercises should generally be avoided, as they are unlikely to equip students to apply new structures appropriately.
• Writing frames and collaborative activities, where the meaning and the structure of the language conveying them is discussed, as in DARTs (Directed Activities Relating to Texts) will both teach correct grammar and enable the child to understand the curriculum.
• Collaborative learning, where planned peer discussion provides exposure to good models of English, will enable pupils to use and to extend English structures in all curricular areas.

Chinese words used in English

tea
typhoon
kaolin
kumquat
kowtow
sampan