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fǎngxiào

fǎngxiĂ o (fǎng·xiĂ o imitate; copy · imitate; {follow the example of} [→ [emulate]] ä»żæ•ˆ 仿/ć€Łæ•ˆ/悚) đŸ‘ˆđŸŒ Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

As part of a series of posts about some common myths about Chinese characters, this post discusses the Emulatability Myth. So, this week’s MEotW is “fǎngxiĂ o (fǎng·xiĂ o imitate; copy · imitate; {follow the example of} [→ [emulate]] ä»żæ•ˆ 仿/ć€Łæ•ˆ/悚)”, an expression that seems to express well the emulating that the Emulatability Myth claims is a good thing.

The first morpheme in “fǎngxiĂ o (fǎng·xiĂ o imitate; copy · imitate; {follow the example of} [→ [emulate]] ä»żæ•ˆ 仿/ć€Łæ•ˆ/悚)” means “imitate; copy”, and other expressions in which it appears include “fǎngshēng‐xuĂ© ((fǎng·shēng {to imitate; copy} · {life → [living things]} ä»żç”Ÿ)‐(xuĂ© studying ć­Š ć­ž) → [bionics | biomimetics])”, “fǎngfĂș (resembling; {[is] like}; {as if}; seemingly ä»żäœ› ćœ·/é«Ł/ä»żćœż/é«Ž/䜛)”, and “mĂłfǎng (mó·fǎng imitating · imitating; copying [→ [imitation; model]] æšĄä»ż)”.

As for the second morpheme in “fǎngxiĂ o (fǎng·xiĂ o imitate; copy · imitate; {follow the example of} [→ [emulate]] ä»żæ•ˆ 仿/ć€Łæ•ˆ/悚)”, it here means “imitate; follow the example of”, and it also appears in the well-known expression “xiĂ ofǎ (xiĂ o·fǎ imitate · {follow the model of} æ•ˆæł•)”.

When put together, the morphemes in fǎngxiĂ o (fǎng·xiĂ o imitate; copy · imitate; {follow the example of} [→ [emulate]] ä»żæ•ˆ 仿/ć€Łæ•ˆ/悚)” can effectively mean “emulate”. According to the Emulatability Myth, it would be good for other writing systems to emulate Chinese characters when it comes to (supposedly) representing meaning directly, without depending on speech sounds. Is this really a good thing to seek to emulate?

A Good Example?

In the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, linguist and sinologist John DeFrancis thus introduces the chapter entitled “The Emulatability Myth”:

The caveat sounded at the end of the preceding chapter is no tongue-in-cheek turn of phrase intended merely to amuse. It is a sober warning of the consequences, some of them quite serious, resulting from the fact that just as the Ideographic Myth leads logically to the Universality Myth, so does the latter lead to the Emulatability Myth—the idea that Chinese characters provide a model to be followed in one way or another in writing without regard to sound.

The Emulatability Myth, then, is the idea that because Chinese characters supposedly represent meaning visually, without dependence on speech sounds (the Ideographic Myth), they are supposedly exceptionally good at functioning across barriers of space, time, and language as universal enablers of communication (the Universality Myth), and thus are able to serve as “a model to be followed in one way or another in writing without regard to sound”. How so? DeFrancis continues:

The reports of missionaries from the sixteenth century onward firmly established the idea that Chinese characters already served as a common written language among the peoples of the East and therefore could be further extended as a universal language for Europe and the rest of the world.




Chinese characters can indeed be extended beyond their present use to replace alphabetic writing in the case of English, French, Russian, Hindi, Arabic and all other languages, but at such an astronomical cost that this venture can only be envisaged by those so blinded by their view of Chinese characters and so lacking in responsibility that they feel no need to look below the surface and confront reality. Small wonder that the idea of directly emulating the Asian use of Chinese characters has received little serious consideration in the four centuries that the subject of Chinese as a universal script has been under discussion.

Much more attention has been devoted to the idea of developing a new “Universal Language” and “Universal Writing” based on “Real Characters” or “Universal Characters” that would adapt what were generally considered to be the underlying principles of Chinese writing—namely, that the characters represented meaning without regard to sound and that a single character was ascribed to a single thing, whether concrete or abstract. The supposed one-to-one correspondence between thing and symbol was seized upon for two reasons. The first was the tendency, against which linguists still have to inveigh, to overemphasize the role of vocabulary compared to grammar and other linguistic aspects in the working of language. The second was the need to find a means of labeling and classifying the vast amount of new scientific and technological knowledge that was coming into being. The concept of a universal set of written symbols dovetailed neatly with the concept of a universal taxonomy of nature (Slaughter 1982).




In a more recent expression of the emulatability thesis we find the well-known anthropologist Margaret Mead calling on scholars in various fields to put aside their parochial differences and unite in seeking to create

a written form of communication independent of any languages of the world, but dependent upon the concepts essential to high-level philosophical, political, and scientific communication. We have, of course, many such partial artificial languages now in the Arabic numeral system, in chemistry and physics, in engineering diagrams. But the most complete model we have of a written language that is independent of particular languages is the classical Chinese system of writing through which two educated men, who cannot understand a word the other speaks, may nevertheless communicate fully with each other by writing. [Mead and Modley 1968:62]

So, missionaries of Christendom were involved in spreading the idea that Chinese characters could show us how to create a universal language (i.e., a universal writing system) for the world. As we who have learned Bible truth know, this wouldn’t be the first thing that members of Christendom have gotten wrong! Additionally and unfortunately, even people such as the well-known anthropologist Margaret Mead got on board with this particular train of thought.

“Humanly Quite Impossible”

What, in particular, is wrong with the seemingly appealing idea of universal writing? DeFrancis has this to say:

One of the basic reasons for the failure of the proposed schemes is the now obvious impossibility of classifying all things known in tables so devised that each item would be assigned its own universal character. These attempts to invent a universal language based on a universal nomenclature were inevitably incomplete, impossibly clumsy, and wholly impractical (Knowlson 1975; Slaughter 1982). Even more fundamental, such attempts are doomed to failure at the outset because, as pointed out in the earlier discussion refuting the notion of Chinese as an ideographic script, any system of writing not based on actual speech would require feats of memory that are humanly quite impossible.

This reminds us of one of the fundamental flaws of Chinese characters as a writing system for us imperfect humans. While Jehovah in his wisdom designed us to communicate with speech based on the relatively few basic sounds used in any particular human language, combined in various ways to potentially abstractly represent anything one may think or feel, different Chinese characters represent the different syllables (which are the highly numerous combinations of a language’s few basic speech sounds) with meaning that are used in a language, which can theoretically be as infinite in number as are all the things humans may want or need to talk about.

As experience has plainly shown, this high, theoretically potentially infinite number of different Chinese characters, many of which are quite complex, is simply beyond the ability of our limited, imperfect human brains to manageably deal with. The character amnesia that’s common even among native Chinese speakers who have been learning characters for decades is clear evidence of this.

To illustrate the problem of trying to be too direct in representing a large number of things, with too little abstraction, consider an example that many of us in the Mandarin field are quite familiar with:

JW Library app, Library tab (iPad)

The Library tab in the JW Library app

As shown above, a relatively manageable number of categories are used to abstract and organize the many individual items that are available in the Library tab. Alphabets like the Latin alphabet used in English, French, Spanish, PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł), etc. similarly use a relatively mentally manageable number of symbols to basically represent the sounds of a language, which in turn are combined in various ways and used to abstractly represent the various and hugely numerous meanings that can be expressed in that language.

In contrast, using Chinese characters is more like trying to directly use a single unorganized list of all the many items available in the JW Library app’s Library tab, every book, brochure, tract, video, etc., without the abstraction and organization provided by the categories, or even by consistent sorting. (Imagine if a developer on the JW Library app team actually implemented such a usability nightmare. It’s highly doubtful that this developer would be allowed to remain on the team!) And actually, the situation with Chinese characters is really much, much worse than that, because even the many items available in the JW Library app’s Library tab are few in number compared to the practically infinite number of things and concepts that human language can represent, that Chinese characters seek to represent relatively directly.

Myths and Consequences

Continuing on, DeFrancis highlights a serious harmful effect of the Emulatability Myth about Chinese characters, that reaches beyond those who are trying to learn a Chinese language:

CHINESE INFLUENCE ON READING THEORY

It is not enough, however, to note shortcomings in the aspect of the Emulatability Myth that seeks to create a universal language while still advancing the notion of “the special learning that characterizes a logographic system such as Chinese.” Pursuit of the will-o’-the-wisp of a universal language has the result merely of wasting countless hours of time. Much more serious is the result of the thesis, which underlies Kolers’ reference to “special learning,” that “there are two major systems of writing in the world today, the semantic and the phonetic” (Kolers 1970:113). This belief in the semantic nature of Chinese writing leads Kolers to argue that all research into reading—that is, how we read and how children should be taught to read—should be based on the alleged existence of two completely disparate systems of ideographic and phonetic writing. Kolers’ assumption that readers of the Chinese “semantic” script go directly from print to meaning leads to the conclusion, as Gough points out (1972:335), that “if they can do it, so can we.” And on this conclusion of emulatability is based a pedagogical approach to reading that affects millions of little victims of the Ideographic Myth.

There is an enormous literature on the teaching of reading. For present purposes, at the risk of oversimplifying the complexities involved in this literature, we can say that there are two main schools of thought on the subject: one arguing for the use of phonics [Wikipedia link] in teaching reading, another arguing against the use of phonics and for an approach in which readers go directly from writing to meaning. Adherents of the second approach constantly buttress their argument by reference to the “ideographic” or “semantic” nature of Chinese writing. So widespread is this aspect of the Emulatability Myth, and so serious are its consequences, that the whole question merits a thorough and long-overdue airing.

We can begin by observing that the line of reasoning espoused by adherents of the emulatability approach can be summarized as “Since A is true, therefore B is true.” Since readers of “semantic Chinese” read without regard to sound, therefore readers of “alphabetic English” can read without regard to sound. But what happens to this line of argument if it turns out that A is false? Does this mean that B is also false? Not necessarily. Proposition B may still be correct, but the proof of its correctness must be sought elsewhere than by citing the false proposition A. The least we can say is that confidence in the truth of B is seriously undermined when it is advanced on the basis of something so patently false. Perhaps it should also be added that specialists in reading, although responsible for the application of the Ideographic Myth to the teaching of reading, can be excused to some extent because they have been misled by specialists in Chinese.

This reminds me of an article I came across a few years ago, about how children are being taught to read English:

Here are a couple of excerpts from the article linked to in the above post:

For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don’t know there’s anything wrong with it.

Goldberg decided to teach some of her students using the phonics program and some of her students using three cueing [Wikipedia link]. And she began to notice differences between the two groups of kids. "Not just in their abilities to read," she said, "but in the way they approached their reading."

Goldberg and a colleague recorded first-graders talking about what makes them good readers.

One video shows Mia, on the left, who was in the phonics program. Mia says she's a good reader because she looks at the words and sounds them out. JaBrea, on the right, was taught the cueing system. JaBrea says: "I look at the pictures and I read it."

Courtesy of Margaret Goldberg, Oakland Unified School District

It was clear to Goldberg after just a few months of teaching both approaches that the students learning phonics were doing better. "One of the things that I still struggle with is a lot of guilt," she said.

She thinks the students who learned three cueing were actually harmed by the approach. "I did lasting damage to these kids. It was so hard to ever get them to stop looking at a picture to guess what a word would be. It was so hard to ever get them to slow down and sound a word out because they had had this experience of knowing that you predict what you read before you read it."

Goldberg soon discovered the decades of scientific evidence against cueing.25 She was shocked. She had never come across any of this science in her teacher preparation or on the job.

This problem is real, and it has really affected us Mandarin field language learners. I remember that a few years ago, I talked to a brother who was learning Mandarin, and who insisted that PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) was bad, just like learning how to read English with phonics was bad. Unfortunately, the actual, verified cognitive science shows that he was completely wrong! I wonder how many other Mandarin field language learners have been similarly misled by the ripple effects of the linguistic idolatry of the Ideographic Myth and the Emulatability Myth


Writing Is Not Pictures

Another interesting point that DeFrancis touches on is:

A fundamental error made by psycholinguists who uphold this type of investigation is the belief that since we can recognize many objects in the physical world around us we can equally well memorize the meanings of thousands of Chinese characters or the meanings of English words approached as ideographs. Thus Smith (1973:75) states that

we can both recognize and recall many thousands of words in our spoken vocabulary, and recognize many thousands of different faces and animals and plants and objects in our visual world. Why should this fantastic memorizing capacity suddenly run out in the case of reading? It is surely no more difficult for a person to remember that 柶 or the printed word house is called “house” than that 🏠 (or an actual house) is called “house.” Unfortunately, we tend to believe that the alphabetic form house is read in an exclusive manner, simply because it is composed of letters.

This is an astonishing statement. How can the cognitive impact of little two-dimensional black-on-white symbols be compared with that of three-dimensional, multicolored, multitextured, and otherwise differentiated objects in our visual world? Smith has apparently not bothered to acquaint himself with the well-known difficulty of mastering Chinese characters. A modicum of inquiry would have revealed to him the sad but incontrovertible truth that this “fantastic memorizing capacity” does in fact run out for most Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, not to mention Western students, when they are confronted with what actual experience has clearly shown to be the much more difficult task of recognizing and remembering many thousands of different characters.

While Chinese characters have taken some inspiration from the visual world that we humans see around us, which can be represented in pictures, characters are just characters (a type of writing), not actual pictures. So, while we humans are designed to be able to naturally connect speech and pictures of physical objects with meanings, abundant actual experience shows that connecting the inhumanly numerous and crazy complex (for writing) Chinese characters with meanings in our minds requires a long, hard, unnatural struggle. It follows, then, that no, Chinese characters are not a good model to follow by attempting to design a hypothetical universal writing system for use by us limited, imperfect humans, nor are they a good system to take inspiration from when it comes to teaching children how to read writing written in an alphabet, like English writing is.

Yes, since the Ideographic Myth and the Universality Myth are just myths, the Emulatability Myth that is based on them is also
BUSTED!

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Culture History Language Learning Languages Names Science

Yuùyǔ

YuĂšyǔ (YuÚ·yǔ Yue · Language [→ [Cantonese]] çČ€èŻ­ çČ”èȘž) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

This week’s MEotW, “YuĂšyǔ (YuÚ·yǔ Yue · Language [→ [Cantonese]] çČ€èŻ­ çČ”èȘž)”, is a term that over the years one may occasionally have come across in the Chinese fields. For example, it used to be used on publication download pages on jw.org, where it has been replaced by a term that is more familiar to many: “GuǎngdƍnghuĂ  (Guǎng·dƍng·huĂ  {Wide · East → [Canton]} · Speech → [Cantonese speech/language] ćčżäžœèŻ ć»Łæ±è©±)” (“Cantonese”).

The Language(s)

Regarding “YuĂšyǔ (YuÚ·yǔ Yue · Language [→ [Cantonese]] çČ€èŻ­ çČ”èȘž)”, the Wikipedia article on Yue Chinese provides this summary:

Yue (Cantonese pronunciation: [jyːt̚˚]) is a branch of the Sinitic languages primarily spoken in Southern China, particularly in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi (collectively known as Liangguang).

The term Cantonese is often used to refer to the whole branch, but linguists prefer to reserve the name Cantonese for the variety used in Guangzhou (Canton), Wuzhou (Ngchow), Hong Kong and Macau, which is the prestige dialect of the group. Taishanese, from the coastal area of Jiangmen (Kongmoon) located southwest of Guangzhou, was the language of most of the 19th-century emigrants from Guangdong to Southeast Asia and North America. Most later migrants have been speakers of Cantonese.

Yue varieties are not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Chinese,[source] and they are not mutually intelligible within the Yue family either.[source]

This Wikipedia page also cites Ethnologue as saying that the number of native speakers worldwide of YuĂšyǔ (YuÚ·yǔ Yue · Language [→ [Cantonese]] çČ€èŻ­ çČ”èȘž) was recently about “86 million (2022)[source]”. That’s not as many as Mandarin has (no other language/language branch currently has as many native speakers as Mandarin does), but that’s still a lot of people.

Regarding how Cantonese relates to other Chinese speech varieties, note the following excerpt from the MEotW post on “yǔzĂș (yǔ·zĂș language · {ethnic group → [group of things with common characteristics] → [group]} èŻ­æ— èȘžæ—)”:

It’s interesting to note that according to Prof. [Victor H.] Mair’s article (p. 737) mentioned above, not only are Mandarin and Cantonese separate languages (not just “dialects”), it would be more accurate to consider them to be in separate language branches, as defined by the language classisification scheme he uses:

Cantonese and Mandarin are separate languages. Cantonese is not a ‘dialect’ of Mandarin or of Hanyu, and it is grossly erroneous to refer to it as such. Since Cantonese and Mandarin are separate languages (or, perhaps more accurately, separate branches), it is wrong to refer to them as ‘dialects.’ The same holds for Hokkien, Shanghainese, and so forth.

That Mandarin and Cantonese should really be considered to be in separate language branches emphasizes to us politically neutral Mandarin field language-learners that we must not repeat or be misled by the politically motivated erroneous assertion that Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc. are just dialects of “Chinese”. That might be even more wrong than saying that English, French, Spanish, etc. are just dialects of “European”!

Some Geography

To clarify regarding some of the places related to “YuĂšyǔ (YuÚ·yǔ Yue · Language [→ [Cantonese]] çČ€èŻ­ çČ”èȘž)”:

  • Guǎngdƍng (Guǎng·dƍng Wide · East → [Guangdong (Canton) Province] ćčżäžœ ć»Łæ±)
  • Guǎngzhƍu (Guǎng·zhƍu Wide · Prefecture → [Guangzhou (Canton (city))] ćčżć·ž 滣淞)
    • This is the capital city of Guǎngdƍng (Guǎng·dƍng Wide · East → [Guangdong (Canton) Province] ćčżäžœ ć»Łæ±) province.
  • GuǎngxÄ« (Guǎng·xÄ« Wide · West → [Guangxi (Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region)] ćčżè„ż ć»Łè„ż)
    • This is an autonomous region that’s located just to the west of Guǎngdƍng (Guǎng·dƍng Wide · East → [Guangdong (Canton) Province] ćčżäžœ ć»Łæ±).

Some History

This summary from the Wikipedia article on Baiyue provides us with some historical background:

The Baiyue, Hundred Yue, or simply Yue, were various ethnic groups who inhabited the regions of Southern China and Northern Vietnam during the 1st millennium BC and 1st millennium AD.[source][source][source] They were known for their short hair, body tattoos, fine swords, and naval prowess.




The Yue tribes were gradually displaced or assimilated into Chinese culture as the Han empire expanded into what is now Southern China and Northern Vietnam.[source][source][source][source] Many modern southern Chinese dialects bear traces of substrate languages[citation needed] originally spoken by the ancient Yue. Variations of the name are still used for the name of modern Vietnam [YuĂšnĂĄn (YuÚ·nĂĄn Yue · South → [Vietnam] è¶Šć—)], in Zhejiang-related names including Yue opera, the Yue Chinese language, and in the abbreviation for Guangdong.




The modern term “Yue” (traditional Chinese: è¶Šă€çČ”; simplified Chinese: è¶Šă€çČ€; pinyin: YuĂš; Cantonese Jyutping: Jyut6; Wade–Giles: YĂŒeh4; Vietnamese: Việt; Early Middle Chinese: Wuat) comes from Old Chinese *ÉąÊ·at.[source] It was first written using the pictograph 戉 for an axe (a homophone), in oracle bone and bronze inscriptions of the late Shang dynasty (c. 1200 BC), and later as 越.[source]

Is Cantonese Only Spoken?

Native Cantonese speakers I have known, like those in the Cantonese congregation that I used to be in, would tell me that the Cantonese we spoke was spoken Chinese, and that the Chinese in the official publications of the time, which was different in some ways from spoken Cantonese, was written Chinese. However, as I gained more knowledge about the history and the language situation of China, I came to understand that actually, the Chinese writing in the publications we were using was Mandarin, which was used because Mandarin-speaking people had gained political power in China, resulting in Chinese publications generally being published in Mandarin—it wasn’t a matter of spoken and written Chinese being different, but rather, of Cantonese and Mandarin being different.

Eventually, the organization came to also publish publications written in other Chinese varieties in addition to Mandarin. As of this writing, searching for “Chinese” on jw.org results in the following options, which includes Cantonese options:

Chinese varieties on jw.org as of 2024-04-14

Something to Remember

This week’s MEotW, “YuĂšyǔ (YuÚ·yǔ Yue · Language [→ [Cantonese]] çČ€èŻ­ çČ”èȘž)”, reminds us that while the central government of China wants everyone to just think of China as one monolithic political entity that should be governed by them, the central government, modern China actually is made up of many different parts. If it wasn’t for QĂ­n ShǐhuĂĄng ((QĂ­n {Qin (dynasty)} 秊) (Shǐ·huĂĄng Beginning · Emperor 構皇) (the founder of the QĂ­n dynasty and the first emperor of China)) (Wikipedia article), who (rather forcefully) united several warring states and became the first emperor of China, China could have ended up like modern Europe, with its several independent nations.

These different parts of modern China, that in an alternate timeline could have become independent nations, each have their own history, including their own linguistic history—just like modern France, Spain, Germany, etc. have historically had their own mutually unintelligible languages, modern Guǎngdƍng (Guǎng·dƍng Wide · East → [Guangdong (Canton) Province] ćčżäžœ ć»Łæ±), ShĂ nghǎi (ShĂ ng·hǎi Upon · {the Sea} → [Shanghai] 䞊攷), FĂșjiĂ n (FĂș·jiĂ n {Blessing (abbr. for the city name FĂșzhƍu)} · {Established (abbr. for the city name JiĂ nzhƍu)} → [Fujian (Province)] 犏ć»ș), etc. also have historically had their own mutually unintelligible languages, even if China’s central government would like everyone to just (erroneously) call them dialects of “Chinese”. This reality of China’s many mutually unintelligible languages is being emphasized, not for any political purpose, but rather, to help us language learners in the Chinese fields to be equipped with the truth as we try to make practical progress in learning and using Chinese languages to spread our God-honouring and life-saving message.

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Culture Current Events History Language Learning Science Technology

xuānchuån

xuānchuĂĄn (xuān·chuĂĄn declaring; proclaiming; announcing · {passing on}; spreading; transmitting → [conducting propaganda; propagating; disseminating; publicizing | propaganda] ćźŁäŒ  漣悳) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

Several MEotW posts, including last week’s post on “cì’ěr (cÏ’·ěr {stabs; pricks → [irritates; pierces]} · ear → [grating on the ear; jarring; ear-piercing] ćˆșè€ł)”, have mentioned propaganda. So, it seems that it’s about time to consider the Mandarin expression “xuānchuĂĄn (xuān·chuĂĄn declaring; proclaiming; announcing · {passing on}; spreading; transmitting → [conducting propaganda; propagating; disseminating; publicizing | propaganda] ćźŁäŒ  漣悳)”, which is often used to translate “propaganda”.

Morphemic Breakdown

The “xuān (declare; proclaim; announce 柣)” in “xuānchuĂĄn (xuān·chuĂĄn declaring; proclaiming; announcing · {passing on}; spreading; transmitting → [conducting propaganda; propagating; disseminating; publicizing | propaganda] ćźŁäŒ  漣悳)” means “declare; proclaim; announce”, and it also appears in expressions like “xuānbĂč (xuān·bĂč declare; proclaim; announce · declare; spread; announce; publish; proclaim 柣枃 柣枃/䜈)”, “xuānjiǎng (xuān·jiǎng declare; proclaim; announce · {speak of → [explain]} 柣èźČ ćźŁèŹ›)”, “xuānyĂĄng (xuān·yĂĄng declare; proclaim; announce · {raise → [make known]} ćźŁæ‰Ź ćźŁæš)”, etc.

The “chuĂĄn ({pass on}; {hand down}; spread; transmit [→ [summon]] 䌠 悳)” in “xuānchuĂĄn (xuān·chuĂĄn declaring; proclaiming; announcing · {passing on}; spreading; transmitting → [conducting propaganda; propagating; disseminating; publicizing | propaganda] ćźŁäŒ  漣悳)” means “pass on; hand down; spread; transmit”, and it also appears in expressions like “chuĂĄndĂ o (chuĂĄn·dĂ o spreading · way → [preaching] 䌠道 悳道)”, “ChuĂĄndĂ oshĆ« (ChuĂĄn·dĂ o·shĆ« Spreading · Way · Book → [Ecclesiastes] 䌠道äčŠ ć‚łé“æ›ž)”, “chuĂĄnjiǎng (chuĂĄn·jiǎng spread · {speak of; say; tell} [(that)] 䌠èźČ ć‚łèŹ›)”, “chuĂĄntǒng (chuĂĄn·tǒng {passed on} · {gathered together (things) → [interconnected system]} → [tradition | traditional] 䌠统 ć‚łç”±)”, etc.

The above-mentioned morphemes in “xuānchuĂĄn (xuān·chuĂĄn declaring; proclaiming; announcing · {passing on}; spreading; transmitting → [conducting propaganda; propagating; disseminating; publicizing | propaganda] ćźŁäŒ  漣悳)” are both basically verbs, and “xuānchuĂĄn (xuān·chuĂĄn declaring; proclaiming; announcing · {passing on}; spreading; transmitting → [conducting propaganda; propagating; disseminating; publicizing | propaganda] ćźŁäŒ  漣悳)” itself is also basically a verb. However, it’s also used as a noun, making it a verbal noun, or a gerundial noun, in those cases.

How Bad Is It?

As mentioned in the excellent Referenced Theo. Expressions (RTE) resource, “it seems ćźŁäŒ  [xuānchuĂĄn] is a neutral word in Chinese (can be either positive or negative)”. Indeed, the morphemes that make up “xuānchuĂĄn (xuān·chuĂĄn declaring; proclaiming; announcing · {passing on}; spreading; transmitting → [conducting propaganda; propagating; disseminating; publicizing | propaganda] ćźŁäŒ  漣悳)”, mentioned above, are themselves both morally neutral. Like any technology, whether the things that these morphemes represent result in good or harm depends on how they are used. Unfortunately, we are now living in the last days of a world ruled by Satan the Devil, a world filled with self-seeking people who totally would misuse anything that would potentially enable them to exert influence over other people.—2 Timothy 3:1–5; 1 John 5:19.

It should not be surprising, then, that the worldly Chinese governing authorities may at times disseminate what many would recognize as propaganda—biased, misleading distortions of the truth meant to promote certain viewpoints, political or cultural objectives, etc. Add to that how Eastern culture generally encourages people to conform to the group and not question authority, and it’s not surprising that many who grew up marinated in Chinese culture have come to just accept such propaganda as fact, as just the way things are in the Chinese world.

As for the West, even though it has more of a culture of questioning authority, it, along with the world in general that the Internet can reach, has been experiencing a rise in misinformation and disinformation. Social media and other technologies that have become available have given people more power to select what information they want to take in, and, egged on by engagement-seeking algorithms, many have unfortunately chosen to just focus on information sources that tell them what they want to hear, whether it’s true or not. As the Bible foretold long ago:

For there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the wholesome teaching, but according to their own desires, they will surround themselves with teachers to have their ears tickled. They will turn away from listening to the truth and give attention to false stories.
—2 Timothy 4:3, 4.

As Jehovah’s people, we especially need to be wary of any worldly propaganda, because we want to be the true worshippers spoken of by Jesus, ones who “must worship with spirit and truth”.—John 4:23, 24.

Unfortunately, these days, even something as basically human as language gets politicized, so even just being language learners in the Mandarin field, we still need to watch out for worldly propaganda. Below are a couple of commonly accepted beliefs about the Chinese languages that are actually propaganda, not truth.

Propaganda About “Dialects”

“Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc. are just dialects of the one Chinese language.” The truth is that being mutually unintelligible, Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc. are really different languages, like French and English are different languages. The erroneous belief that Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc. are just dialects of the one Chinese language has been promoted by the worldly central governing authorities in China to bolster the idea that China is indeed one big happy political entity that should have a central government—them.

Historically, though, it wasn’t always the case that there was just one government over the land that China now occupies. That didn’t become the case until QĂ­n ShǐhuĂĄng ((QĂ­n {Qin (dynasty)} 秊) (Shǐ·huĂĄng Beginning · Emperor 構皇) (the founder of the QĂ­n dynasty and the first emperor of China)) conquered the other Warring States—which were peers of his own state of QĂ­n ({Qin (one of the Warring States)} 秊)—and became the first emperor of a forcefully unified China. If it wasn’t for this, China could conceivably have become like modern-day Europe, with several peer states which are recognized as having their own distinct languages and cultures.

So, there is no need to allow the idea that Mandarin, Cantonese, etc. are just dialects to sabotage our efforts to learn Mandarin well by making us think that we can just take Cantonese, etc. and twist it a little to get Mandarin—all we would get then is a twisted mess!

Propaganda and the Characters

“Chinese characters are the primary aspect of the Chinese languages.” The truth is that when it comes to human language, speech is primary, not writing.

However, given how so many people around the world are so enchanted with the visually intricate Chinese characters, some may feel that the characters give China a certain amount of cultural—and maybe even political—soft power. Many also feel that characters have a unifying effect on Chinese people, since they use characters to write even if they speak different Chinese languages, as explained above. Thus, many may also feel that there may be some political advantages to characters for China’s worldly central ruling authorities. So, they may thus be motivated to promote Chinese characters over, say, a system like PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) that doesn’t have the same perceived visual and cultural pizzaz that the characters have, and that is only for Mandarin.

The truth is, though, that there is really no technical requirement for any language, Chinese or otherwise, to be written using Chinese characters—PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) works fine as a writing system for Mandarin without incurring the extraordinary costs in time and effort that the characters do, and separate but similar alphabetical systems can conceivably be designed and used for other Chinese languages as well.

Re the supposed unifying effect of the Chinese characters, there is not necessarily really much of a unifying effect among the Mandarin-speakers, Cantonese-speakers, Japanese-speakers, Korean-speakers, etc. who may use characters to write, any more than the use of the Latin alphabet unifies English-speakers, French-speakers, Italian-speakers, Mandarin-speakers, etc. who may use it to write. An especially stark current example of the relative insignificance of any unifying effect that a script or writing system may have is that unfortunately, Russia and Ukraine have hardly been unified because of their both using the Cyrillic script.

We who are Jehovah’s people in particular don’t need a product of human culture like the Chinese characters to unite us—we are united by the culture of spirit and truth from Jehovah God himself!—John 4:23, 24.

Don’t Be a Gullible “Tourist”!

As Jehovah’s people, let us make sure we are advancing the interests of God’s Kingdom, and not unwittingly serving the interests of worldly Chinese governments. As missionaries and rescue workers in the Mandarin field, and not just tourists (email me for login information, and include information on who referred you and/or what group/cong. you are in), let us be focused on what really helps us to do our God-honouring and life-saving work better. Let us not be misled by the self-serving xuānchuĂĄn (xuān·chuĂĄn declaring · spreading → [propaganda] ćźŁäŒ  漣悳), the propaganda, from Satan’s world.