Saturday, July 02, 2011
Chinese - Redundant Words
My son is learning Mandarin at school. Some of the first words that he's learnt relate to numbers and family members. It's interesting that the Chinese have words for sister, brother, older sister, younger sister, older brother, younger brother, etc. Aren't these words somewhat redundant, or about to become so, due to the one child policy? Did the Communist fathers consider this issue when implementing this policy? An unfortunate by-product methinks.
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5 comments:
That's not completely true. The one-child policy was only for city regions, and even then there are plenty of ways around it (many of my students have brothers and sisters).
Your boy is fine to learn it. Is he learning the Beijing dialect or from somewhere else (there is a difference, you should ask his teacher)
I wonder do they still leave the baby girls at the top of a hill to die. How sad. Gill
Didn´t know this policy is meant for cities only (@ Dave)!
Otherwise... yep. A little mean, though ;-)
Friends of mine are Chinese apparently the fine for having 1 child hasn't been indexed for inflation so it's the equivalent of a couple of hundred dollars AUD. Which is fine if your a city urbanite but shite if your in the country
Thanks for the feedback guys. I would like to know more about the one child policy in China. I understand that if you are willing to forgo certain government benefits you are able to have more than one child.
Bankruptcy Ben - I've added your blog to my current reading list.
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