http://www.my1510.cn/article.php?id=21c36aed00d54eb5
Hybrid or dead, no purebred
China’s State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has issued a set of regulations that prohibits the use of English initials. Their motives are not specified, but they have plenty of reasons, one of which is said to defend the purity of the Chinese language.
The attempt to defend the purity of a language is absolutely a stupid idea, and it’s not going to succeed anyway. Just like attempting to defend the women’s virginity, if the women of a nation all stayed as virgins, the nation would become extinct.
Hybrid vigor exists in biology. Same with a language. English, the most powerful language in the world, is said to come up with thousands of new words every year. The English language is screwed up by English speaking countries all over the world. However, just because of the ‘mating’, it’s become the most powerful language.
If the language of a nation becomes more and more impure, it just suggests that it’s becoming increasingly more powerful, which is an excellent thing one would wish for. If there were a SARFT in the UK, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to issue a regulation to forbid the use of English initials.
Vitality is dependent on hybrid. In this world, it’s either hybrid, or dead, never purebred.
People in China start learning English since they kindergarten. Up till graduation from college, English learning lasts for ten to twenty years. Why would you learn it if you don’t use it at all? After the opening-up and reform, along with the increasingly wider and deeper economical and cultural exchange, the chances for Chinese people to use English has been increasing as well. More and more English expressions have been integrated into the Chinese language. They’ve become conventional, and impossible to tear apart. Moreover, it is concise, convenient and fast to use English initials. What’s not good about it anyway?
Regarding the language inclusion of Chinese and English, some people are unhappy about it; some just fail to understand it. But we cannot cruelly deprive people of their rights to use English or English initials just because some people are unhappy about it or some people cannot understand it.
Being unhappy is just a personal feeling. I have nothing to say about it but being respectful. Let’s just take a look at the part of failing to understand:
As we all know, the majority of English initials are technical terms. Even though we transform those terms into Chinese, laymen still cannot understand them. For example, ‘HTTP’ means Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, ‘USB’ stands for Universal Serial BUS. May I ask, do non-professionals of computer sciences have the slightest idea about what they mean? Even though those terms are translated into Chinese, people still don’t understand them. What’s the point to forbid the use of English initials? Why don’t we just let those who understand English initials use them for free expressions?
Anyway, SARFT’s restrictions on the use of English initials may yield some results in a short term, but it won’t be effective in the long run. Such a thing as language is impossible to restrict. No force can prevent the tendency of the Chinese language integrating with foreign languages.
Because we live in an era of global integration.
In this era, different races, cultures, political systems, legal systems, customs, daily lives from all over the world, all aspects of human life, are seeking mutual acceptance and approaching Great Harmony. How can language possibly become an exception?
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