Languages
Today (September 12, 2016) I am only reporting on my English learning activities, but just yesterday I have determined to give up all my other languages – German, French, Russian, Esperanto, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. They are in different level of proficiency. It took me 11 years to make this fatal decision. It was one of my most painful decisions since I have spent 3 decades on language studies consistently and roughly speaking, about 1/5 to 1/5 of my past life was spent on languages. That was a huge loss to me, and rather a major loss of life. But I have no other choice. The reasons is again the same as I have given up computer chip studies as described in the “graph theory” section. What’s more, all these languages except English are no more useful in my life and career.
I started to learn foreign languages very young and by 20, I was able to use 5 foreign languages apart my mother tongue of Chinese – English, German, French, Russian and Esperanto, among them, only German and Russian was learned from classes while the rest – French, English and Esperanto were totally my own initiative. Since then I have never stopped learning these languages over the long long period.
I have special enthusiasm for German, German literature, science and the German nation. I am reading German daily and particularly those books written by famous German novelists such as Thomas Mann, Günther Grass and of course Goethe and Schiller.
And since 2007 I have even added two other languages to my competence list – Greek and Latin. I have superb learning capacity. I have also learned Hebrew a little to prepare for my theological studies.
Nevertheless English is now my working language, much more oftener used than my mother tongue of Chinese, for almost all scientific literature and works are published in English.
Ironically though, I didn’t like foreign languages at all at the beginning of my university days, but some time around the early 80’s, suddenly I found foreign languages very fun, and ever since I have been keeping learning these languages – English, German, French and Russia – occasionally also some others – till now. It’s part of my life now.
And now my foreign language level has even become a sign to differentiate me frommy fellow friends and collegues, as a character of mine. Each time I am introduced to new friends, they always say oh Mr Chen can speak several languages, great! And they wonder how I can manage the many languages without confusion.
However, I have now shifted my concentration from languages to sciences, therefore I would not main competencies in all the languages I have learned before. At the moment I only keep reading English novels and other materials, with some exception of French and German, in fear that they might be useful in one way or other. I read English novel every day, and as a result I've read most of the classics. Because I might go to a French exam, therfore I am now also listening some French videos to improve my French oral skills. I am also watching German youtubes to renew my German knowledge, but I've stopped reading German literature, science and newspapers.
))Current Reading
Current English reading:
Continue reading Eliot Middlemarch p1193.
Finished reading Ellison Invisible Man p451.
Finished reading of Dickens Great Expectations p685
(actualy a continuation of interrupted reading)
Finished reading of James' "The Portrait of a Lady"
Current French Learning:
Listening to various online French courses and practising videos, reading some French news portals such as Figaro, Lemonde etc. French novel reading is stopped.
Current German Learning:
Watching youtube German videos for 20 mins or so.
Current Learning of Other Languages:
Resumed Chinese literature reading:
RED CHAMBER 红楼梦
Explanation of Red Chamber, more than 3500 pages 红楼梦典藏版套装共8册
Stopped
Latest Development 2014-11-24
Because my talent and research ambition were not recognized and also because my career and business were not promoted, I have once again and finally determined the following: Stop the maintenance of all languages – French, German, Russian, Greek and Latin again except English. No one in these countries speaking these languages will help me in any of my researches, career and business. I especially hate the Germans and German language because they have destroyed my career.
I will also eventually switch to Esperanto to replace English as my everyday language.
I will join some of the Esperanto organizations in China and other countries through their websites or other systems. I need people with whom I can communicate and exchange views and opinion and I also need person to person contacts not just email communications.
Linguistic Activities
DEHMitglied.doc
deutschecke.htm
LangServicesTools.doc
LangServicesToolsResources.doc
LangStudiesEnglish_20131111.docx
LangStudiesEsperantoEnglish_20141124.docx
LangStudiesInfo.doc
LangStudies_20130106.docx
LangStudies_20130115.docx
LangStudies_20130126.docx
LangStudies_20130201.docx
Some language certificates
- 01ielts.jpg - IELTS (International English Language Test System) score
- 01ielts1992.jpg - IELTS (International English Language Test System) score
- 02gre.jpg - GRE score
- 02gre1992.jpg - GRE score
- 03toefl.jpg - TOEFL score
- 03toefl1993.jpg - TOEFL score
Some language certificates |
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为什么学那么多外语？世界上估计没有一个国家的人民象中国人那样花费如此巨大的努力去学别人的语言。 绝大多数中国人似乎从幼儿园开始就准备学好英语，以便有朝一日留学移民。世界上没有那一个国家的国民象中国人那样为了离开自己的国家而不顾一切。这里必定有某种很奇怪的因素起作用。什么因素？笔者愚拙，不得其解。 我不能说自己有语言天才。这个世界上什么奇迹都有，但都轮不到我。 论语言天才，据我所知，就有俄罗斯人会100种语言，有13岁少年会13种语言等等。数不胜数的例子。 俄语是我们那个时代的必修外语， 就如同现在的英语，因为当时中苏友好（不过等我们学的时候中苏已经交恶，而且在黑龙江珍宝岛打了一架，还好只是热身）。 德语是因为某某大学要跟德国恢复传统的交往， 而这个大学是原来德国人创办的（当今中国的许多老牌大学多有西方教会等背景），而我恰巧被选中进入那个德语班。 法语纯粹是个人的爱好，没有人叫我学，当时也没有说要用到哪里去。 英语也是我自学，只花了6个月就通过了英语硕士考试。 我学英语的出发点是，没有英语，等于是聋子，德语法语不管用。 世界语纯粹是爱好，当时1982-1984年间在神州大地掀起了学世界语热，我也置身其中。 希腊语是很晚才学的，是因为意识到，现代（西方）文明 – 语言，科学，文化，艺术等都来自希腊。 当然，希腊文化又来自古代叙利亚，伊拉克，埃及，阿拉伯一带（可以说西方文明源自阿拉伯世界）。 作为一个学者， 就必须懂得希腊语， 阅读希腊语原著，尤其是欧几里德的“几何原本”。 学希腊语的另一个原始冲动是我当时热终于基督教（现在当然已经消退），而所谓“圣经”的新约的原文就是由希腊语写成。但希腊语之难不是一般人所能克服的。 相比之下， 德语法语俄语真是容易极了。 例如，一个只有2个字母的动词，经变换后，增加到十几个字母，跟原来的字母完全看不出来，没有任何痕迹的地步。单词变格之多令人眼花缭乱。 过去，西方学校里希腊语是必修课，现在如何不得而知。 学希伯来语纯粹是当时对基督教的狂热，不过基本上没有学到什么。过去我跟许多人一样，把犹太人捧得很高，看作是世界上最优秀的民族或至少是之一。 但我现在不怎么看。 前一段时间报道，他们的前总统犯猥琐女性罪判了刑坐监了。 我接触的以色列人也不过如此。 以色列人会赚钱是事实，那也不过是近畿百年的事情，他们在科学，文化，等等领域有不俗表现， 也是在最近几百年的事。 犹太人为了金钱可以不顾一切，所以世界各国都很反感犹太人。 莎士比亚的戏剧就有讽刺犹太人的。 但跟希腊相比，就不是一个等级的了。 希腊文明奠定了现代文明的基础， 而犹太人只是会赚钱， 同时在某些科学领域作出了巨大贡献（爱因斯坦就是犹太籍德国人）。 这些语言就是这样陆陆续续学到的了。在我职业生涯的前期， 有些是发挥了巨大作用， 有些根本是点缀而已。 俄语从未派过用场， 唯一一次是上个月跟一个俄罗斯人谈发电设备业务，后来我俄语不想写了就不跟他谈了。 德语是我过去十几年职业生涯的基础。我在西门子，巴高克，莱茵技术等德国公司，德语充分发挥了作用。 法语也在阿尔斯通工作期间稍微有点用场， 特别是跟公司高层交往时，因为法国人特别感冒英语。 世界语没有半点用处。 前一段时间我还想跟世界语爱好者通过世界语交流，可惜没有任何反应。 英语就不言自明了。 希腊语没有用。 希伯来语更没用。 在最近的11年里， 我时不时在想，到底要不要维持那么多外语。 跟过去不同， 除了英语，其它外语都没有用场了。 我不可能再有去德国，法国，美国或其它国家公司工作的机会， 也没有去那些国家的大学研究机构搞研究的机会（这些事情我以后会提到），一句话， 什么机会都没有。居然这样，还要维护这些语言干嘛？这些问题困扰我11年，有时决定彻底放弃，有时又舍不得放弃，来来回回反反复复考虑决定撤回决定等等等等，整整11年时间，最后才真正决定，还是保留，不过希伯来语和世界语就彻底放弃。 我的基本出发点是，我保留的语言要我比较能使用，而且有许多伟大的作品可阅读。 但不管怎样， 对一般人来讲， 我建议除了英语， 不必再去学其它语言。除非你有特殊情况。 |
| I started to learn Russian in 1976 when I was a high school student at the age of 13, as all other students at those days have to learn. Ironically I passed the University Entry exam in 1978 with a high grade of Russian, although I did not show any likelihood towards languagues at that time. But this has already shown an early sign of my language talent. |
| During the first semester of Tongji University in later 1978, I continued with my Russian, but the second semester has changed my course - to German in early 1979, when I was enrolled into the socalled "Deutsches Klass" to learn German for preparation for a studies in Germany. Although I did not like languages at all as I considered languages are the areas where women are talented, and I thought as a man I shall concentrate on engineering and science, yet still I have achieved relatively good scores in German. Although I did not manage to go to Germany later on, my languge studies remained intensive after that class was over in early 1980. And afterwards, before 1983, I have even self-learned several other languages incl. also English, French and Esperanto, as well as Russian. |
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| After the university my language studies have never been stopped a single day till today. Meanwhile I have worked in some of the key multinational corporations in the energy and power industries, where my English, German and partly French were proven to be useful and proficient. I have helped my partners to communicate with Chinese people with my intepretation or translation, I have made my Chinese people understand foreign partners and their technologies vice versa. My English was as good as my Chinese, and once a time a ABB manager was so impressed that he asked me where did I learn my English from? |
| Yet I am not satisfied with my language skills, because from 1983 to 2007, my language skills did not improve much: when I looked into my diary at those days in 1980-1983, it was clear at that time my language skills were not much lower than that at the present time. Therefore I decided to upgade it by learning Greek, Latin and Hebrew in parallel since 2007. And as far as English is concerned, during the 2003-2006 period of my business activities, I have prepared about 10 000 pages of commercial reports to my multinational clients. My German is still OK, and I can still read French novels without much difficulty, and simple Russian reading is still possible. |
| Since 2003 I have also translated many documents from German and English to Chinese, and this ensures that my clients today may rest assured of the highest quality of the translation they can ever find in the market. Most translators or interpreters have no or little experiences with the technologies and industries, while I have a lot of them. I have long time business and working relations with German, English and French people and have once lived in Germany for a while. The most important asset is yet my special talent for and my interest in languages, though. |
I started to learn Russian – my first foreign language – at high school at home. I did quite well at it, and could get a fairly good score in an entry exam to University four years later. But I have not shown any special talent in language learning after well three to four years when I have completed my German studies at Tongji University. Only afterwards I was very much attracted by foreign languages and their cultures and by then I have already completed the studies of basic languages skills of English, German, French, Russian and even Esperanto, an universal and man-made language. Among them, only Russian and German were learned through school teachers, the rest three by self-studies. After finishing my schools, I’ve never stopped learning foreign languages and reading their literatures for a single days, to maintain at least or even to improve them a little bit. For example I was able to work in a number of foreign companies of nationalities of the U.S., U.K., Germany, France and several others, so at that time period I was able also to practice thus to improve my spoken English, German, and French. Around 1991/2 I passed an IELTS done at the British Embassy in Beijing with an overall score of 7.0 – which is considered high as the highest is 10.0 -? and my oral score was even 9.0 and the examiner commented my oral English as “near native”. But in all I have not made major progress in all of these languages, either in depth or in width. I’ve not tried to learn more languages nor to learn more sophisticated linguistics such as literatures. However, just a year ago (it was about 2007, but this essay was written in about 2008), out of my desire to study ancient Greek, Latin science literatures and Hebrew Scripture, I was very keen to learn these languages, after a year’s delay and hesitation, I finally decided to move on with the studies of these three languages. Although language studies are now not among my priority, I still plan to finish the studies in about three years, so that I will be able to understand the basics of these languages after three years. I will also complement my studies with listening practices and literature reading, not just lessons. |
So as a result I have to maintain a total of 8 languages in different level of competency:
I consider it absurd to learn a language of another nationality and in the end I shall only use a world language that is most likely Esperanto. There are hundreds of world languages, but I don't want to research which one is the best for me, because Esperanto is the one I learned the earliest and so far the only world language. |
Language Studies
Every student starts learning a foreign language in China after their primary school.
At my days we all were learning Russian, although China and the Soviet Union were fighting for more than a decade since the early 60's. Apparently there was no alternatives - english, german, french all capitalistic, Japan our traditional rivalry and what else ?
I don't have talent in language - I was a shy, taciturn and introvert boy. To speak chinese makes me even uneasy in some cases, not talking foreign languages. It is completely a mistake to work in that direction, but no other choices.
Enrolled at Tongji, I continued my Russian studies, and my scores were quite good. I was able to read some scientific literature such as math, physics. I studied for a semester then as you know I was regrouped in a german class. After the german class, I continued my Russian studies, and at the same time also my german studies during my bachelor studies from 1978 to 1983.
At that time, learning materials were scarcely to be found. I went to the foreign language bookstore at Fuzhou Road not far from the People's Square, and bought whatever was available. I also went to the Shanghai Library located at the end of the East Nanjing Road close to the Square to find any german literature.
About two years before graduation in 1981, I found people were all learning english, was also found that english is more popular and useful than my languages. If I couldn't learn english, it might be difficult to survive in the world. And I turned to english, and happily to find it much easier to learn, especially if you have already learned russian and german whose grammars were much more complex than english. For example, russian and german verbs, adjectives have to be changed along with the subjects, english have not such necessary or much simpler. The "Nebensatz" or subordinate sentences are very complicated in german, and many times I would simply forget to put the verbs at then end in speaking. The prepositions are also sophisticated, and even today they make me headaches.
There are no other tips as reading, writing, speaking and listening if you want to command a language. I read every book I can found, newspaper, magazines, radio and so on. And you must learn it in an intensive and fast pace - I remembered about 50 new words a day. And a book took me normally a week or so for a quick reading. Of course, I will come back later, perhaps more than once, or never if this is only a light reading. Nowadays, my learning speed is even faster. I remember the Spring Festival day in 1992, when I have to stay in Shenzhen, I managed to finish reading an english novel of 500 pages in a day or two. And in 1999-2000 period, very often I bought a IT book of 300 pages, and the next morning, it was a old book - hence I vowed never to buy IT books ever since.
If you try to learn a language by "Daily Collection and Monthly Accumulation" approach, I would say, the failure rate will be high. It is my firm view that to accomplish something you have to be quick and decisive. A moment's hesitation means a total retreat in many cases.
After six months' diligent studies, my english level caught up with others' and I was thinking about other languages - french. In fact, I tried japanese, but the strange characters (like old chinese signs) prevented my learning desire. French was much more difficult. Particularly the pronunciation. Without a good teacher you have difficulties to learn that language. The techniques in english learning cannot be simply implanted into french. I was too confident in learning languages so I attended no school and very seldom listened to radio, cassettes or conversed with french speaking people.
Nevertheless, I ventured to conquer that language, one year before my bachelor graduation. At the same time, I also started learning Esperanto, an artificial language invented by a polish doctor in the late 19's century. Esperanto combines the grammar, vocabularies and syntaxes of the major european languages and therefore is easy to learn, but easy to forget as well, because its use is rarely to be found. I have no single word of Esperanto now, as with Russian.
As your language base becomes larger and larger, your time spent on learning, maintaining and improving those languages will be more and more. More than 1/3 of my time has been devoted to languages and sometime I found it not worthwhile.
During my postgraduate studies, I continued my studies in English, German and French but forgot all others. I couldn't manage the others. If I don't want to be a linguist then stop there.
I have studied relatively more languages, not for immigrating to other countries. Like many other colleagues, I am also not keen to leave China for a better life in western countries. By mastering the prevailing world languages, I am freely accessibly to all information of the outside world so that nobody can cheat me. Just like mastering the IT technologies has opened the information age in front of me, although I don't need to be a linguist or an IT industrialist.
Now language skills are still one of my strong points and will remain to be one of my qualifications for my career and daily life. It's fun to learn a language and a culture.
Languages - tools to other worlds
Languages - either spoken or in writing - are the most important instruments of mankind for understanding other people of the same race or other races, and to the daily life. Without languages no mankind.
The first language which I knew is of course my mother language, the language my mother spoke or speaks before and after my birth and also now. It's not the native language - the mandarin or the dialect of my hometown though. The mother language is the most important language in my whole private life.
Then the family language, which comes a little different from the dialect in my hometown, as every family has its own language. The dialect is also a language which I can never forget. Our dialect is covered in the surrounding areas of the so-called WU culture region, an area that includes the southern Jiangsu province, Shanghai and the northern Zhejiang province. Within this region man can understand each other without much difficulty. Nevertheless there are hundred of variations - the smaller or larger - among different counties, towns even villages.
Mandarin (Putonghua) is the legal language of China, which origins from the north. Mandarin is being used through my life and career in China.
The first "foreign language" was the Russian, which I started to learn in 1976. Until 1989 I can still read Russian literature, but I nearly know no single Russian word now. That is very unfortunate. Russia is one of the greatest countries in the world. I believe, in few years Russia will become strong again.
The second foreign language is now the German, which I have studies and used very intensively ever since 1979. But my writing abilities and speaking are now only about 40-50% of my best time (around 1989).
English comes already very late. One year before my graduation from university study I decided to learn English. I was of the opinion, without English one can't survive, although I had already rather good Russian and German. Within half a year I had a quite reasonable English already, And what's more, I took the entry exam of master degree where I chose English as foreign language, not German.
I have also strong desire for French however it sounds difficult to me. From 1982 I began to study French, however my french level is not high. At my best time I can only understand 70% spoken French, now I can only read the simplest french literature.
In the the 80's years I have also tried several other languages, like Esperanto, Japanese, but the attempt did not last long. After the graduation in 1983 and 1989 I have hardly time to learn other languages. Then I have also scarcely time to improve the existing languages.
Languages are not my specialty, but they took me 1/4 - 1/3 of my time, and now perhaps a little more (50%).
(machine-translated from German, sounds strange ???)
Multilinguistic
Multilinguistic has become a special label of mine to differ me from other people. Each time I am introduced to new friends, they always say oh Mr Chen can speak several languages, great! And they wonder how I can manage the four without confusion.
Over the last 30 years or so, I have been spending at least one hour on reading foreign language materials.
I will continue to read literatures and some of the other cultural relics of the four major languages – English, German, French and Russian to keep my language level not declining too quickly. I am not planning to improve my linguistic competence, but I also don’t want say farewell to them because I have spent too much time on them.
I’m now proficient in English, German and French with some basics in Russian and am still planning to expand this listing.
I also used to have a plan to devote completely to the studies and teaching of German literature, therefore I have learned quite intensively the German literature from Classic to Post-modern.
I also plan to give up all other studies, leaving only the above two areas – a little foreign languages and lots of Solar and Solar Aviation.
Ironically, I didn’t like foreign languages at all at the beginning of my university days, but some time around the early 80’s, suddenly I found foreign languages very fun, and ever since I have been keeping learning these languages – English, German, French and Russia – occasionally also some others – till now. It’s part of my life now.
Here below some history of language studies.
I started to learn Russian – my first foreign language – at high school at home. I did quite well at it, and could get a fairly good score in an entry exam to University four years later. But I have not shown any special talent in language learning after well three to four years when I have completed my German studies at Tongji University. Only afterwards I was very much attracted by foreign languages and their cultures and by then I have already completed the studies of basic languages skills of English, German, French, Russian and even Esperanto, an universal and man-made language. Among them, only Russian and German were learned through school teachers, the rest three by self-studies.
After finishing my schools, I’ve never stopped learning foreign languages and reading their literatures for a single days, to maintain at least or even to improve them a little bit. For example I was able to work in a number of foreign companies of nationalities of the U.S., U.K., Germany, France and several others, so at that time period I was able also to practice thus to improve my spoken English, German, and French. Around 1991/2 I passed an IELTS done at the British Embassy in Beijing with an overall score of 7.0 – which is considered high as the highest is 10.0 -? and my oral score was even 9.0 and the examiner commented my oral English as “near native”.
But in all I have not made major progress in all of these languages, either in depth or in width. I’ve not tried to learn more languages nor to learn more sophisticated linguistics such as literatures.
However, just a year ago (it was about 2007, but this essay was written in about 2008), out of my desire to study ancient Greek, Latin science literatures and Hebrew Scripture, I was very keen to learn these languages, after a year’s delay and hesitation, I finally decided to move on with the studies of these three languages. Although language studies are now not among my priority, I still plan to finish the studies in about three years, so that I will be able to understand the basics of these languages after three years. I will also complement my studies with listening practices and literature reading, not just lessons.
So as a result I have to maintain a total of 8 languages in different level of competency:
- English at working level
- German quite OK
- French so and so
- Russian simple reading
- Greek a few sentences
- Latin mamahuhu
- Hebrew almost nothing
- Esperanto a few words but will soon replace English as my working language.
I consider it absurd to learn a language of another nationality and in the end I shall only use a world language that is most likely Esperanto. There are hundreds of world languages, but I don't want to research which one is the best for me, because Esperanto is the one I learned the earliest and so far the only world language.
)