Eugene:
My first Mandarin teacher had recently arrived
from China. Her Mom a red-haired, green-eyed
American who had married a Chinese water engineer
here in the States. The couple went back to the
mainland in the early 50's to help the cause of
Revolution.
KaiDee Yeh, this young teacher of beginning
Chinese at the Chinese Culture Center in San
Francisoc, upon reporting to us that children are
being instructed in Pinyin now, was greeted by our
unanimous groans of disbelief. KaiDee immediately
dispelled our horrific response by assuring us
that "Now our children's minds will be freed for
other things."
KaiDee was NOT totally brainwashed during the
Cultural Revolution. She was denied access to
ballet training becasue whe was "too tall", so she
had first hand disappointment at the hands of the
Cultural Revolution. Still she saw the pinyin
teaching method, as opposed to all learning the
calligraphic style, to be an advance for "the
people".
The internet sites for learning Chinese excite me.
For us roman letter learners, the computer
generated characters and the transliteration and
translation capabilites are bound to advance our
learning curves.
As a student of Perception I was embarking upon a
discovery into literacy and its effect upon
perception. The Arabic and Hebrew calligraphy
seemed to me to present a world different from our
literacy world of readin letters left-to-right.
The Japanese and Chinese also seemed to me to
offer a different sensibility to how one looked at
the world. I abandoned my scholarly pursuits in
favor of the arts, so do not know what may have
happened in academia in regard to this kind of
musing about ideographic languages.
I imagine this kind of sensibility is what
sponsors a sense of chagrin as we imagine the loss
of the kind of civilization bounded almost totally
with the ideographic notation of the Chines
calligraphy.
How are your skills with writing the characters
maintaining themselves?
Thanks for your letting us know of your being
struck within by this new loss of ancient
tradition.
Gayin Linx
Eugene Eric Kim wrote:
>
> http://partners.nytimes.com/2001/02/01/technology/01LOST.html
>
> This piece describes how people in China are forgetting how to write
> Chinese characters because of word processors. It talks about how the pen
> replacing the calligraphy brush at the turn of the century raised similar
> concerns. It also explores the relationship between reading and writing.
> Altogether, I found this to be one of the more interesting articles I've
> read in a while.
>
> -Eugene
>
> --
> +=== Eugene Eric Kim ===== eekim@eekim.com ===== http://www.eekim.com/ ===+
> | "Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they |
> +===== can have an excuse to drink alcohol." --Steve Martin ===========+
>
>
> Community email addresses:
> Post message: unrev-II@onelist.com
> Subscribe: unrev-II-subscribe@onelist.com
> Unsubscribe: unrev-II-unsubscribe@onelist.com
> List owner: unrev-II-owner@onelist.com
>
> Shortcut URL to this page:
> http://www.onelist.com/community/unrev-II
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-~>
eGroups is now Yahoo! Groups
Click here for more details
http://click.egroups.com/1/11231/0/_/444287/_/981072952/
---------------------------------------------------------------------_->
Community email addresses:
Post message: unrev-II@onelist.com
Subscribe: unrev-II-subscribe@onelist.com
Unsubscribe: unrev-II-unsubscribe@onelist.com
List owner: unrev-II-owner@onelist.com
Shortcut URL to this page:
http://www.onelist.com/community/unrev-II
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 01 2001 - 16:27:07 PST