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It's time to protect Chinese language

chinaculture.org | Updated: 2011-01-06 10:36

For Chinese students nowadays, no matter what kind of schools they are going to - universities, high schools and even primary schools, they have to face and tackle the problem of learning English. All examinations they want to pass require them to first pass English.

Examinations for entering further education, studying abroad and even graduating from college, all require scores in English examinations. English has become the most popular course in tutorial classes and even in the self-study classroom. If you have ever been in a self-study classroom in some college's and looked at the books in students' hands, you would find just how popular English is, even in a class of Chinese major students.

It's time to protect Chinese language
 

When nearly all students' attention is focused on English, looking at the situation of our mother language, even Chinese linguists get confused about its use. Not only have many new words and phrases which are very popular on the Internet started to fill in every corner of the society, common use of Chinese is full of mistakes and misunderstandings are all around.

Under such urgent situation for the Chinese language, it is time for every Chinese person to start protecting our mother tongue.

Chinese has the most speakers of any world language and also one of the oldest in history. Around the world, many countries have started enthusiastically learning English and Chinese has become one of the most important foreign languages in some foreign countries.

Besides, there are 282 Confucius Institutions around 88 countries and regions in the world that are teaching Chinese, while more than 260 institutions from 50 countries and regions applied to establish Confucius Institutions. The number of people learning Chinese is about 50 million outside China.

For those foreigners that are so crazy about Chinese language, what kind of attitude should the Chinese have? Frankly speaking, learning English itself shouldn't have been criticized too much, and we need to learn English to communicate with the world to show our culture and society.

However, it doesn't make any sense that the importance of Chinese is replaced by a foreign language in a native's mind. It's really time to protect our Chinese language! Are you ready?