From H-Asia listerv (conversation has been going on for months now)

Traditional vs Simplified Chinese (further response) ******************* From:   "David Schak"   I've been learning Chinese for 50 years now. My spoken language is quite good.  I've given several academic papers in Mandarin and have also taught graduate and undergraduate courses. I have often been mistaken for a  Chinese on the phone, and then the other party wonders where I'm from in  China that I use words strangely. That's my first point. The initial post in this recent thread claims that students can speak grammatically correct Chinese more quickly than they  can learn to speak a European language  with the same facility. Because Chinese grammar is not based of verb declensions and the like, it is easy to be unaware of one's errors. I still make errors far more frequently than I care to think about.  Second point: putting Chinese into characters with the click of a computer button? I hardly think so. There are far too many homophones. I find that  sometimes the Microsoft input tool will change a correct character that I  enter into an incorrect one after I've gone on to the next character. If  one doesn't read, how would one know?  Finally, and I brought this up early in the series of posts on this topic, from what I've read and heard, given a good education system, there's no  difference in learning simplified or full-form characters.  David Schak  International Business and Asian Studies Centre for Environment and Public Health Griffith University -- Ed. Note: This post raises several important points regarding foreign language learning in general, and Chinese in particular.  First, at the beginning level, when learning "survival" language skills, it is easy to be unaware of errors--and it is also likely that the communication does not require mastery of the sophisticated nuances of language and culture that comprise any true social interaction.  For an adult second language speaker in any language, error free "communicative competency" as the linguists would call it, is not attainable.  We are always learning.  Nonetheless, linguists remind us that the overall competency of a highly skilled second language speaker means that errors most often only serve to mark the speaker as one who is using a second language.  If one wishes to think in terms of Asian speakers of English, the occasional he/she confusion of a speaker with decades of experience in is easily overlooked in spoken context.  Similarly, an occasional missing article does not inhibit meaning, but might mark the speaker.  We do occasionally use a different turn of phrase, sounding bookish or even weird.  Thus, the ability to converse with linguistic and cultural competencies requires a different, but overlapping, preparation from that for literary competencies.  My students in Chinese 101 want to know why we don't solely read and write, as they did in high school when learning Spanish. It's because speaking is nested in culture and requires not only pronunciation skills, but an entire repertoire of paralinguistic skills. Students who learn only to read and translate are served inadequately in a language program.  In terms of writing Chinese, my own experience is that, for less commonly used characters, I struggle with writing in simplified script since I learned traditional first.  In short, I have to use a dictionary.  However, I remember that when I was an undergrad, a professor of Chinese literature once gestured to the bookshelves in his office stating that the deeper one studies the language, the more dictionaries one needs.  He regularly used five. My guess is that a Chinese speaker studying Shakespeare and Chaucer might comment similarly.  Which leads to my next point, someone who is a student of Chinese language and literature, or who wishes to study historical documents will need to learn not only traditional characters, but also classical Chinese. I am finding that overseas Chinese students are able to both quote and sing Tang and Song poetry and have an interest in their classical tradition.  We held a Mid-Autumn Festival a bit early this week, with moon cakes and song, and dipped into that Tang and Song repertoire for our Chinese language students.  Therefore, it may be that for even the contemporary period, those who are serious about learning Chinese may benefit from at least an excursus into the classical literature. Given the way that phrases from that literature, and even story line, has embedded itself in ordinary speech, it may be useful for even the pragmatic business student to have at least a survey course of Chinese literature in English. Cultural and linguistic competencies are interwoven.  Learning any language so that one might function with highest levels of competency is a lifelong challenge.  Yet, as David Schak reminds us, one can attain those levels in speaking with a native pronunciation, writing at professional levels, and presenting professionally in Chinese (and vice versa--from Chinese into English).  It isn't easy or error-free, but as we would all affirm, I believe, it's enormously rewarding. Linda Dwyer