Although the show never made it to a second season, Firefly fans (called Browncoats) popped up all over the place to protest the loss of the show and forums and fan clubs grew out of a real desire to share what made it so great.
One of those things was the fact that Joss chose to create a world for the characters where everyone was bilingual; everyone spoke a mixture of Chinese and English.
In Washington D.C., there pre-K kids are learning Mandarin, immersion-style:
When the boys and girls at the at the Yu Ying Public Charter School finish eighth grade, they will be fluent in Mandarin Chinese as well as English.
“One day they’re learning everything through English,” Sarah Harris, the school’s principal said. “One day they’re learning everything in Chinese, so it’s a very compelling model for a lot of parents.”
Harris said there are many advantages to learning Chinese at an early age.
“Children really do soak up languages when they’re young,” she explained. “They don’t have a lot of preconceived ideas about language, so they really come to it in an open way. We’ve seen children just soaking up the language and applying it in more and more contexts.”
According to school founder Mary Shaffner, it’s not just the students who want to learn Chinese.
“We are going to start Chinese classes for our parents, which many, many parents have been chomping at the bit for,” she said.
The article goes on to say that there are schools across the United States and all over the world (Panama and Manilla get mentions) offering similar programs and the desire to learn the language has really blossomed over the past few years. Chinese has the potential to become an international language as important to understand as English is today.
I think it’s kind of cool, actually. When I was in university in the ’90s, signs around the dorms were printed in both English and Chinese for the ESL students. We had a lot of kids there from China, I think. I always wondered why they’d come to Canada to study. I don’t know if there was an incentive program or if our school actually had a boastworthy computer curriculum or something. We had all manner of international students there – Ghana, Cameroon, Bulgaria. I couldn’t imagine going that far away from home for schooling. The uni was 2.5 hours away from my hometown and my mother had tears in her eyes every time it was time to go home after visiting. She’s lucky I didn’t go to Australia or something.
November 7, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I would like to argue the case for Esperanto as the international language. It is a planned language which belongs to no one country or group of states.
Take a look at http://www.esperanto.net
Esperanto works! I’ve used it in speech and writing in a dozen countries over recent years. Indeed, the language has some remarkable practical benefits. Personally, I’ve made friends around the world through Esperanto that I would never have been able to communicate with otherwise. And then there’s the Pasporta Servo, which provides free lodging and local information to Esperanto-speaking travellers in over 90 countries.
What do you think?
November 7, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Yeah, I’ve heard of Esperanto. It’d be easier to learn because it’s close to the romantic languages. If you’re familiar with Spanish or Italian, it’s probably fairly easy to pick up, yeah? Easier to read and write than Mandarin, too. At least for people who grew up with an alphabet rather than combined characters and brush strokes.
I didn’t realize how old the language was either.
I think the point the article was making, though, was how big an impact China has on the world and maybe it’s worthwhile to learn their language instead of assuming everyone’s going to want to learn English in order to do business.
November 8, 2008 at 6:59 am
Interesting discussion on Esperanto.
This up-and-coming language is also used by CRI in its daily broadcast programmes.
Check http://esperanto.cri.cn/ or http://www.lernu.net