More On Learning Chinese

This in about Culture, and tagged , , , was written by on August 12, 2011 . 21 Comments

So today I finished my intensive Chinese class, which I celebrated by drinking lots of 啤酒 (and silently toasting the heroic oppositionistas struggling against UK bourgeois state tyranny). Here is my third set of observations. 1. Most other languages now look really easy, especially Spanish which I’ve long planned to learn but never really found myself […]

Updates On Learning Chinese

This in about Culture, and tagged , , , was written by on July 22, 2011 . 32 Comments

It’s been a few weeks since my last post on learning Chinese, so here is new info for anyone interested. 1. In case you missed a late update to the original post: “Because of the simplicity of the grammar, Chinese often feels like slang to speakers used to more formalized languages; i.e. slang such as ebonics. […]

Learning Chinese

This in about Culture, and tagged , , , was written by on July 4, 2011 . 64 Comments

Seeing as I’m known as a “Sino-triumphalist” anyway why not go the full nine yards and learn the language? That is what I’m doing (c. 300-500 汉字 to date) and here are my thoughts so far. 1. Tones. In stark contrast to every major European language, Chinese pronunciation is based on tones. Four of them: […]

Walled Off By Complexity: Did China Stagnate Because Of Its Writing System?

This in about History, and tagged , , , , was written by on May 7, 2011 . 62 Comments

One of the biggest questions in global history is why it was Western Europe that industrialized first, and ended up colonizing most of the rest of the world. As late as 1450, the possibility of such an outcome would have been ridiculed. By almost any metric, China was well in the lead through the medieval period […]