Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Off-topic: Learn English to Know China
I read this on weibo.com, the Chinese equivalent of Facebook: "We used to learn English to know the world. We now learn English to know China" (当初我们学英语是为了了解世界，如今我们学英语是为了了解中国). (The earliest occurrence of this quote as of now is on Twitter authored by huqiwen.) The apparent oxymoron in the second sentence is one of the best remarks on the national censorship. Although any web site deemed sufficiently government-unfriendly is blocked, those in English are generally in much better shape than those in Chinese. If this were not so, learning English to know China would be just as ineffective as reading Chinese materials.
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3 comments:
it it implied in this article that english is the base for chinese??
Not sure what you mean by "english is the base for chinese". What's implied in here is that some articles or reports written in English may be closer to truth than those in Chinese due to censorship.
I guess Chinese needs more English than their local language.
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