Why Mandarin is tougher than David Cameron thinks

Chinese reference books. Photograph: Alamy

David Cameron wants our schools to teach Mandarin. But China’s first language has a reputation as one of the hardest in the world. Can we really expect our kids to get their heads round it? Here are eight reasons why – for a native English speaker – learning Mandarin is one of the trickiest tasks there is.

1. You’ll find the writing baffling …

Mandarin uses characters, rather than a phonetic alphabet. You need to recognise around 3,000 characters to read a Chinese newspaper. “The problem with Chinese all has to do with the writing system,” says Dr David Moser, academic director at CET Beijing. “It’s such a massive obstacle that there are people who make their careers here who make the decision just to ignore writing and reading because it isn’t worth it.”

2. … and the tones a nightmare

Mandarin is tonal. The way a word is spoken determines what it means. So the word “ma”, for example, can mean either “horse” or “mother”, depending on which of four tones it is spoken in. “Pretty much everybody learns the tones wrong the first time,” says translator Brendan O’Kane, one of the presenters of podcast Popup Chinese. “And then, after a few years, they realise they sound ridiculous.”

3. The mistakes can be filthy

The tonal system leads to some embarrassing errors. The word for “ask”, for example, is one tone away from the word “to kiss”, and the word for pen is one tone from a word for female genitalia. So students tend to ask their teachers some inappropriate questions.

4. Your progress will be glacial

“Chinese is not actually difficult,” says O’Kane. “All you need is five years and a high level of focus. You have to be prepared for the fact that at the end of one year you’re not going to be very good, and at the end of two to three years you will be slightly better but still not good.” Or, as Moser puts it: “Chinese is a five-year lesson in humility. And after five years, you’ve learnt humility and you still haven’t learned Chinese.”

5. You won’t be able to text message

Even once you’re fluent, the language remains time-consuming. “It’s so much slower to try to write Chinese on paper or digital media,” explains Moser. “Producing a simple text message in Chinese takes two or three or 10 times as long. You have to keep looking up characters over and over and over again. It wastes weeks of your life every year.”

6. Good teachers are in short supply

Chinese as a second language is a new field, and not a well-established one. “One of the obstacles to learning Chinese is that a lot of the people teaching it are Chinese,” explains O’Kane. “And they are wonderful users of the language, but they have never had to think about it from an outsider’s perspective.”

7. In any case, most of the people don’t speak it …

Although Mandarin is China’s first language, it is really only the language of Beijing. There are dozens of dialects and sub-dialects used elsewhere – and even in Beijing. “Among the dialects,” says Moser, “there are many, many accents and regional variations, and they are not like accents among English speakers, who can usually understand each other. Mandarin and Cantonese are as different as French and Italian.”

8. … and nor do their leaders

Even towering figures in Chinese history struggled with the language. “Strictly speaking,” says Moser, “Chairman Mao never really learned the poo-tong-hua [Mandarin] language.” Mao grew up in Hunan, and spoke with a strong Hunanese accent, using a lot of regional dialect. “He had lousy Mandarin,” says O’Kane. “If you listen to recordings of him, his accent was really jacked up. It sounds funny.”

Why Mandarin is tougher than David Cameron thinks

David Cameron urges British students to ditch French and learn Mandarin

David Cameron plays table tennis – pīngpāng qiú or 乒乓球, for you language college students – during his pay a visit to to a primary school in Chengdu. Photograph: AP

David Cameron, who has notoriously poor schoolboy French, is urging today’s youngsters to abandon the language of Molière and Voltaire to concentrate on the tongue of the future – Mandarin.

In a parting shot, as he left China after a 3-day check out, the prime minister explained that pupils need to appear beyond the classic French and German lessons and alternatively emphasis on China.

To reinforce his message the prime minister quoted Nelson Mandela, who said finding out a person else’s language is the very best way to their heart. Cameron stated: “I want Britain linked up to the world’s quick-expanding economies. And that consists of our young people studying the languages to seal tomorrow’s enterprise deals.

“By the time the kids born nowadays depart school, China is set to be the world’s largest economic system. So it truly is time to appear beyond the standard target on French and German and get numerous far more kids studying Mandarin.

“As Mandela once explained: ‘If you speak to a guy in a language he understands that goes to his head, if you talk to him in his own language that goes to his heart.’”

Cameron, who visited a college for six- and seven-yr-olds studying English in Chengdu, mentioned that a partnership amongst the British Council and Hanban – the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language – will double the number of Chinese language assistants in the United kingdom by 2016 and offer improved funding to reduce the cost to colleges of offering Mandarin as a language selection.

In an expansion of the United kingdom-China School Partnerships programme, funding will also be offered for 60 headteachers to make research visits to China in 2014.

The announcement was welcomed by the British Council and the British Academy, the two of which have been pushing for policies to reverse the decline in college students taking contemporary languages at school and university level.

Martin Davidson, the British Council’s chief executive who has been going to China with Cameron, explained: “The promotion of Chinese language in the Uk and the English language in China are both crucial to economic and cultural relations between the two countries. This initiative will boost collaboration and is specifically considerable offered that recent British Council study exhibits that Mandarin is a single of ten languages not broadly spoken in the Uk and nevertheless crucial to our long term development and prosperity.”

In recent research the British Council placed Mandarin in the best 5 most essential languages for Britain’s potential prosperity, protection and influence. But it located only 1% of the grownup population speaks Mandarin to a degree that makes it possible for them to conduct a basic conversation. Just 3,000 pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland entered for Chinese languages GCSEs in 2013, placing it far behind the traditional selections of French with 177,000, Spanish with 91,000 and German with 62,000 entrants, as effectively as Urdu, Polish and Arabic.

But the popularity of Chinese languages improves at A-degree, where it was the fourth most common present day language in 2013, with three,300 entrants compared with 11,000 taking A-degree French and four,200 taking German.

The estimated 500,000 ethnic Chinese residing in Britain make it the largest overseas Chinese population of any European country.

Professor Dame Helen Wallace, the British Academy’s foreign secretary, stated her organisation had been arguing for an improvement in foreign language skills, and had identified Mandarin as 1 of the extended assortment of languages to be promoted in schools.

But a lack of certified teachers could be a barrier to strengthening its acceptance, Wallace explained.

“The provide chain wants to work in each methods. Youngsters require to be persuaded to do it and you need to have the availability of capable teachers at all levels – main, secondary and university – to develop optimistic reinforcement in the availability of teachers and the curiosity of teachers.”

And she warned: “No such approach works unless you stick at it. There’s no use doing this for two or 3 years and then forgetting about it – you have to make a extended-term investment in this type of alter capability.”Laura Chan, one of the co-founders of the Marco Polo Academy, a bilingual Mandarin-English primary school opening in Barnet next September as portion of the free of charge schools programme, explained the prime minister’s announcement was very good information for the standing of Mandarin.

“It’s a wonderful aid. It will enhance people’s awareness of Mandarin as a language they can understand,” she mentioned.

“One particular purpose we desired to set up the free of charge school is that the educating of language in the Uk is not especially effective, specially for young children.”

From September 2014, studying foreign languages will be compulsory in main colleges under the new nationwide curriculum.

David Cameron urges British students to ditch French and learn Mandarin

Frances David obituary

The deputy headteacher of a large thorough school in Herefordshire, Frances David went to educate in Uganda in her retirement

“I have been waiting all my lifestyle to do this,” exclaimed my mom-in-law, Frances David, when she flew off in 1993 to teach in Uganda soon after retiring as deputy head of a large comprehensive school, John Kyrle Higher, in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. Frances, who has died aged 80, led an lively, useful and engaged lifestyle.

Born in Newport, Gwent, the daughter of Sally and Geoff Rainforth, she married into a huge farming family members in her early 20s and swiftly developed 6 kids. Nonetheless, the marriage did not final and she grew to become a single mother or father and a instructor, a occupation which, alongside her profound Christian faith, guided her daily life and ideas.

She had joined the Labour party although studying historical past at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, but crossed above to the Social Democrats when they formed in the 1980s. She was closely concerned in the negotiations that formed the Liberal Democrats in 1988 and stood as a parliamentary candidate for Newport East in 1983 and 1987 and for Monmouth in 1991. She was a tireless campaigner for CND and then later on for honest trade, debt relief and peace.

Nevertheless, it was her work in Uganda that several will keep in mind. She had a lifelong interest in Africa, and by means of church connections very first went there to teach for a yr soon after she retired. On her return, she was indefatigable in raising cash for clean water wells through the Busoga Believe in, and in sponsoring younger individuals by means of school and university. She produced positive that each and every penny donated went to someone who required it.

Holding court at her dinner table, she was often prepared to argue a level, however she would pay attention to others. Her generosity, warmth and tact manufactured her many pals. An completed gardener, she turned the foods she grew into a lot of of the meals she shared. In her last weeks, in her beloved village of Skenfrith, Monmouthshire, she loved sitting in her cottage garden with family and buddies.

She is survived by her young children, Joanna, Lucy, Patrick, Rebecca, Thomas and Rosalind, 10 grandchildren and her brother, John.

Frances David obituary

Let teenagers have their kicks. They are only doing what comes naturally | David Bainbridge

Teenagers: a little also a lot on their minds these days. Photograph: Catchlight Visual Providers /Alamy

British teenagers are an increasingly accountable and sober bunch. Teen pregnancies are at an all-time minimal, drug-fuelled dance culture is vanishing, careers are planned from a tender age, and preparations are made for a lifetime of tuition fee loan repayments and pension contributions. Most of the proof exhibits that today’s youngsters are altogether far more sensible than their irresponsible, selfish mother and father ever have been.

But exactly where did all the fun go? What about the naive, broad-eyed collision that is supposed to occur when each teenage generation encounters an unprepared globe? In other phrases, I worry that teenagers are turning out to be prematurely middle aged.

Teens are a wonderful human innovation. Despite the fact that they are frequently dismissed as a cultural invention of the postwar many years, all the proof suggests otherwise. As Shakespeare and Virgil made clear in their plots, youngsters are not outdated children or younger grownups – they are fundamentally different creatures, with a fresh and impetuous approach to the globe. Just lately, palaeoanthropology has even proven us when teenagers first evolved. Evaluation of tooth advancement in early Homo sapiens has shown that humans started to get far more than 10 many years to grow up at much the same time that their brain was generating its excellent leap to close to-modern day dimension. This may seem also a lot of a coincidence.

Indeed, brain scans of modern day youngsters back this up – they demonstrate that in the course of the 2nd decade of daily life the brain is profoundly restructured into its uniquely complicated final type. Admittedly, the brain may possibly exhibit some quirky behaviour throughout that decade, but by its end teenagers have designed formidable powers of difficulty-solving, creativity, self-analysis, focus, ambition, communication and social versatility. Twenty-year-olds are better than ten-yr-olds at every little thing.

So it was the evolution of youngsters that manufactured us human, and do all the superb items humans can do, and the same stays correct right now. Far from getting an irritating transitional phase between childhood and adulthood, teens signify a daily life-stage special to our species and definitely vital for its good results.

All that brain restructuring means teenagers feel in a totally diverse way from adults – a big difference that can be irritating at times, but a difference we need to cherish rather than stifle. And there are some specific characteristics of teenage pondering we must nurture if we are to thrive in the long term.

1 of these is creativity, one thing youngsters revel in. Even though their imagined processes could seem to be disordered to the grownup observer, they are especially adept at comparing dissimilar ideas to develop new perspectives. Without a doubt, a lot of geniuses have drawn their initial inspiration from their almost gauche adolescent thoughts. For instance, Einstein wondered what it would be like to trip on a light wave when he was sixteen and I doubt he could have had this kind of a crude however brilliant thought at 60.

Also, youngsters, as we all know, tend to take risks. Parents do not like it, and the authorities do not like it, but teenagers look driven to do it all the identical. At times, terrible things take place as a result of teenage threat-taking, but extremely frequently they will not. The human mind did not evolve in a globe of speeding cars, sexually transmitted diseases and potent psychoactive chemical compounds, and it is poorly equipped to cope with them, however threat-taking nonetheless serves an crucial perform. To be effective in existence we have to take some risks and adolescence is when we find out what can go wrong, what can go proper, and what it feels like to get a risk. Creativity and threat-taking are important for human good results and prosperity. They are not only critical in the arts, but are also the essential to good results in science, organization and the growth of a civilised society. If we do not inspire our youngsters to behave like – well – teens, then the outlook is bleak.

The 1st assault on normal teenage behaviour was a side-result of our properly-intentioned protective urges. We made the decision the dangers of intercourse, the hazards of drugs and the dangers of relationships had been so fantastic that we have to warn youngsters about them as portion of their school education. This strategy has yielded some remarkable outcomes, reducing teenage pregnancy, STDs and drug use, yet I fear it has targeted adolescent minds also much on the downside. Love, intercourse and the occasional tipple can be good and satisfying experiences, and several adults hold fond recollections of their illicit adolescent indiscretions.

Nonetheless, the biggest existing risk to healthier teenage irresponsibility is austerity. The international slowdown has hit youthful adults more difficult than any person else and teenagers can see what lies ahead. All also typically, they now worry the third decade of their lifestyle, rather than appear forward to it. Steady coursework and evaluation at school not only wrings the creativity and enthusiasm from them, but also instils a conservatism, as well – a belief that adolescence is only about preparing for adulthood.

Much more and much more, young men and women come to university and prospective employers with thick dossiers of certificates and commendations for the worthy activities with which they have filled their teenage many years. We want sparky men and women with a fascination for how the planet functions and an capacity to balance challenging work and exciting, but more and more adolescence is observed as an possibility to things a curriculum vitae. Younger people should do things since they take pleasure in them, not since they dread for their monetary long term.

I perform in a university and it saddens me how quickly the concepts of higher training and long term debt have turn out to be inextricably bound together. Youthful folks employed to laugh at the square previous grownups who took out mortgages and planned responsible financial futures, but now they also face that terrible fate. We have imposed a terrible efficiency, an inappropriate self-control, on our youthful individuals and we basically do not seem to care.

Youth is not about getting accountable – it is about currently being younger and all the enticing, overpowering, delightful issues that come with it. Existence has an emotional, sensual vividness to it when we’re young and this cannot be recaptured later on on. When that is gone it is gone forever and to cloud a youthful person’s knowledge of it is unforgivable. We are consigning our youngsters to an terrible, bland sensibleness. And that is simply not organic.

David Bainbridge is a reproductive biologist at St Catharine’s School, Cambridge, and the author of Youngsters – A Natural Background (Portobello)

Let teenagers have their kicks. They are only doing what comes naturally | David Bainbridge

Mobility charity founder David Constantine on his motivation to change lives - video

David Constantine’s mobility charity Inspiration has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of folks across the establishing globe. Here he discusses the value of offering folks self-assurance and inspiration as properly as the proper tools to turn out to be a lot more mobile and independent

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Biologist David Lodge appointed to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Science Advisory Board

David Lodge

David Lodge, Ludmilla F. and Stephen J. Galla Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame and a planet-renowned skilled on invasive species, has accepted a nomination to join the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Science Advisory Board (SAB).

Established in 1997, the SAB is the only federal advisory committee with responsibility to advise the Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere on methods for analysis, training and the application of science to operations and information providers. The guidance is an work to support NOAA carry about its mission to greater understand and predict alterations in the Earth’s setting and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet the nation’s economic, social and environmental requirements.

The SAB is composed of 15 members with balanced representation amongst preeminent scientists, engineers, educators and science policy authorities, reflecting the total breadth of NOAA locations of obligation as well as the ethic and gender diversity of the United States.

Lodge serves as director of Notre Dame’s Environmental Adjust Initiative. He has comprehensive investigation expertise on a wide assortment of invasive species, including rusty crayfish, zebra mussels, quagga mussels and Asian carp. His analysis focuses on ecological forecasting to far better inform environmental threat assessment, policy development and natural assets management.

He has testified just before the U.S. Congress on quite a few occasions about invasive species and has served as an professional witness in federal court. He served as the very first chair of the U.S. government’s national Invasive Species Advisory Committee, led analysis on freshwater biodiversity as element of the Millennium Ecosystem Evaluation sponsored by the United Nations and led an expert team delivering advice to the U.S. Environmental Protection Company on lowering invasions from the ballast water of ships.

Biologist David Lodge appointed to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Science Advisory Board

David Latchman: "our students don"t come to take it easy, but to learn"

When David Latchman was appointed master of Birkbeck, University of London in 2003, he was advised by one of the governors that every single master should have a full-time hobby. “My two immediate predecessors the two had theirs,” he says. “Tessa (Baroness) Blackstone’s had been the Property of Lords and Tim O’Shea’s had been Gresham University.” So what was his? “Research”. Some may possibly call that a small a lot more than a hobby given Latchman is a single of the country’s leading geneticists, but you get the level.

It is tough to picture a prospective candidate for the top task at any other leading greater schooling institution with a lot more than 18,000 college students being provided this tips so explicitly. Currently being a university vice-chancellor these days is like currently being the CEO of a massive company: you happen to be expected to reside and breathe the work 24/7. It’s not that hobbies aren’t permitted just that they aren’t things to be automatically encouraged. Nevertheless at Birkbeck it somehow feels proper.

If any other university in England were to close down – Oxford, Durham, whichever – there would be a loud public outcry, but the larger schooling sector would nevertheless potter along very smoothly: the students would be absorbed into other universities and existence would go on. If Birkbeck disappeared off the map, its students would have nowhere to go as it is the only institution with a long term physical presence (the Open University’s courses are, for the most element, distance finding out) for element-time students. And as its college students all have total or part-time jobs, it would seem proper that its master has a full-time hobby.

For a prolonged time, Birkbeck was seen as the 2nd-likelihood saloon. The place in which individuals who had missed out on increased schooling earlier in their lives came, both because they found they could not get a promotion at perform except if they had a degree or just simply because they had a wish to discover. “Now,” says Latchman, “we are realising there is a enormous untapped marketplace of younger college students who, both since they weren’t witnessed as ideal for university by their colleges or just desired to begin function early, want to do a degree.”

In 2008, Birkbeck began renting area from the University of East London (UEL) and commenced supplying vocational programs. Earlier this month, Birkbeck took down the temporary notices that went up at UEL and opened their own brand new campus in Stratford. “No, it was not a deliberate Olympics cash-in,” Latchman laughs. “We have been searching for a spot that was on the edge of London, that had poor levels of participation in greater eductation and had excellent transport backlinks. You can’t disregard the transport: individuals are not going to signal up for courses that run in the evening if they can’t get to them simply from work.”

Latchman isn’t shocked by the high uptake at the Stratford campus. Feasibibilty studies and the trial runs at UEL had proved there was a market. What has taken him aback has been the impact on Birkbeck’s primary campus in central London. “We are acquiring a large increase in the amount of applications to examine at Bloomsbury from folks who are residing out in direction of Stratford,” he says. “What we consider has took place is that by making our presence known in the location, we have broken down some of the barriers that have stopped some people from participating in increased education in the past. They have witnessed what we are about initial-hand and trust us.”

Predicting what programs will succeed is somewhat trickier. “There’s no easy formula,” says Latchman. “You just have to attempt factors and see what functions. I believe the years of growth via creating new courses are largely over. Back in Tessa Blackstone’s time – 1987-97 – the massive win for the school was introducing degrees in management and law. These are now two of our biggest faculties. There is not so a lot of new courses we could offer: I would really like to introduce medication but it’s just not sensible as we can’t provide the clinical knowledge.”

Birkbeck’s massive win now is 3 yr courses, says Latchman: “Curiously, whilst most universities have dropped their two 12 months degrees as there is little pupil demand for them, we have found there is a enormous, previously untapped market for 3 year part-time degrees. Our only restriction is that the government regards any 3 12 months course as a full-time course and restricts the variety of areas we can offer you. In the very first yr we had a quota of 28 the following year we had 428: we now have 700 and are asking for 1,000 up coming yr.”

The attractions of a shorter course may possibly be partly monetary: not only can students get loans for servicing and books for total time-programs, several have also chosen to deliberately down-size their job for the duration of the program. But Latchman believes the main cause it functions so properly at Birkbeck is simply because the college students are much more mature and committed. They aren’t going to university since that is what their school and parents anticipate of them or to delay obtaining a task for 3 many years they are going simply because they have some expertise of the doing work globe and a passion to understand far more.

“One particular of the causes so several academic staff want to function here is simply because the students are so passionate about what they are undertaking,” he says. “When I lectured at UCL (University University London), college students would frequently talk or text their way by way of lectures. It takes place at every single university with complete-time students. Right here the college students are much more committed. They have created sacrifices to be here and most have presently worked a complete day just before attending their evening lectures and seminars. They don’t come to university to get it easy they come to learn.”

The attraction for academic employees, he says, is the hours. The concept of teaching for 3 hrs in the evening may possibly look perverse to some, but numerous academics favor it as it leaves the rest of the day free to devote to their investigation. No worries for them about attempting to squeeze some time in the library for the duration of their lunch break. Birkbeck requires its research responsibilities just as seriously as its educating – and none much more so than Latchman. When he’s not operating the school or educating students, he can be identified in his investigation lab. At UCL.

“There are some extremely good factors why I have maintained my lab at UCL [Latchman taught there for numerous years just before moving to Birkbeck],” he points out even ahead of I have a opportunity to increase an eyebrow. “I did not want it to seem like I was favouring myself at Birkbeck by bringing over lab technicians and a secretary with me. That type of factor can be effortlessly misinterpreted as selling your own pet projects when you are master. If there’s a clear separation among my own study and any choices I have to make about other people’s, there is significantly less possibility of a conflict of curiosity.

There can not be several Birkbeck employees members who would accuse Latchman of lining his very own pockets. Definitely not individuals who have been to his office, which is certainly at the shabbier finish of vice-chancellor perks. And specifically not individuals who have had the misfortune to use his toilet. With its chipped tiles and shower only just clinging to the wall, it truly is a single that even Network Rail would feel about upgrading. “Mmm,” he says non-commitally. “My chair of governors has said it’s about time we did something about that.”

There is some thing determinedly old college about Latchman. He is nobody’s fool and is open to new tips about how best to run an academic institution, but he has some guiding ideas about the proper way to do issues from which he refuses to budge. I would picture which is what attracted Latchman and Birkbeck to one yet another. And these concepts extend to his personal reseach. His operate on the HSV virus as a gene treatment vector for treating melanoma showed such promising early benefits that his investigation crew was spun out into the firm NeuroVax, with Latchman as co-founder along with his collaborator, Rob Coffin. In excess of the many years, NeuroVax changed its name to BioVex and in 2011 the business was purchased by the US pharma giant, Amgen for $ 1bn.

So how much of this $ 1bn did Latchman pocket for himself? “It truly is humorous you must request that,” he smiles. “Significantly less than $ one,000″. Are you kidding? Is this some tax-dodge? “Sadly not. It really is just the way items are. Cancer therapies need huge clinical trials and these are massively expensive. Each a single demands a key injection of money and the investors know they have the analysis staff more than a barrel because without having the income, the project ends proper there. So every single phase of the way, the percentage of the solution that the inventor develops is diluted.

“I’ve been talking to a variety of people in government to see if a mechanism could be place in location to guarantee a researcher always held on to at least 5% of the organization, but it really is not going to assist me. The cash would have been great, but I’m not that bitter as I never did the analysis to get wealthy anyway. I did it to support produce a therapy that would make a distinction to people’s lives.”

Which is rather much Birkbeck’s own philosophy. The possibilities are that Latchman will remain at the school for at least one more decade. “It is the college’s 200th aniversary in 2023,” he says. “I also reach my retirement age that 12 months. That would seem fitting somehow.” In the meantime, Latchman will preserve on undertaking what he’s constantly accomplished. Educating, researching and administrating. And coaching his 5-12 months-old son chess. “I never let him win,” he says firmly. “When he does beat me, he needs to know that he’s done so fairly and squarely.” So are you any excellent at chess?’ I ask. He shrugs. “Not actually. But I am better than a five-year-old boy.”

Professor David Latchman is master of Birkbeck, University of London – stick to it on Twitter @BirkbeckNews

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David Latchman: "our students don"t come to take it easy, but to learn"