Amiram Hayardeny's My China Experience

Struggling with Chinese

As I am struggling with my Chinese studies, the following thought occurred to me.  How would one determine whether a language is "easy" or "difficult".  Obviously, Chinese is difficult for me, but is it difficult for others?  Is it difficult for the Chinese?  The book "Freakonomics" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics) suggests that conclusions can be drawn from existing data, if only you know how to ask the questions and where to get the data. 

I was wondering if we could ask the following question: is the number of titles published yearly in a certain language in relation to the people who are speaking that language a good indicator for the level of difficulty of a language?  The underlying assumption is that "easier" languages will have more writers within the population speaking them, than the "more difficult" languages.  The disclaimer will be: the assumption could be wrong, and the conclusions, if any, biased to my own level of difficulty in Chinese.  I will say in my defense, that as I am writing these paragraphs, I don't yet have a clue as for what the findings will be.  In fact, I am not even sure that  will be able to get the data.

Another thought is that book production may indicate the level of literacy in certain countries.  But is it possible that the level of literacy is a derivative of the language "difficulty" index?  Just a thought.  There is also the matter of censorship of course.

There is some information in Wikipedia, based on data from UNESCO.  But it is very difficult for comparison.  The problem is that the data is not provided for every year, and knowing the incredible advancement in China in recent years, I thought it would not b e the right thing to take the numbers from Wikipedia.  However, for curiosity purposes, here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year

This is what I was able to find.  In 2004, English speaking countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand released 375,000 new titles and editions.  Including imported editions available in multiple markets, the total number of new English language books available for sale in the English-speaking world in 2004 was 450,000.  (http://www.bowker.com/press/bowker/2005_1012_bowker.htm).  Combined population in the countries included ~418M.  For every 928 people, a new title is published.

In a site discussing "Publishing in China's Minority Languages" I found that 200,000 titles are published each year in Chinese.  New releases make up 120,000 of the Chinese titles (http://www.danwei.org/books/problems_in_minority_language.php).  Documented population in China: 1.316B.  For every 6580 people, a new title is published.

The Wikipedia number for India for 1996 was 11,903. 

I am not sure what my conclusion is (except of course that Chinese is difficult for ME).  I think, though, that this makes interesting reading.

Posted at 05:07PM Nov 16, 2006 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[8]

Diversity

The United States of America is a country of immigrants.  Many would even go as far as to suggest that America's greatness is based on the ability to include people of all kinds in its industry, government, and every other aspect of life.  Variety is usually considered a good thing, even in nature.  It is well documented that the larger the gene pool, the better the survival rate of the population is.

A new study was published yesterday, suggests that immigrants Start 1-in-4 Public Venture-Backed Companies in the US representing a market capitalization of more than $500 billion.  The survey goes ahead and gives five examples: Intel, Google, Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems and eBay. 

http://www.njbiz.com/article.asp?aID=35957303.1063449.897793.4428483.57964802.987&aID2=69052

Back to diversity in nature.  The more variety in the gene pool, the better a species is equipped to deal with changes in the environment.  Less variety or a small gene pool, may lead to extinction.   http://www.seaworld.org/just-for-teachers/guides/diversity-of-life/what-is-diversity.htm

Global companies know that.  They fully understand the powers of diversity.  People from different parts of the world bring different skills to the table.  Knowing how to use these skills to promote business is an art.

Posted at 08:11AM Nov 16, 2006 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]