Learning To Communicate In China

Maybe it’s the project manager in me, but when I saw that sign I laughed hard! We see this a lot on China, English placeholder text on signs. Picture 2 shows the Chinese to English translation. ⁣

I found understanding China and the Chinese language very interesting and eye-opening. I wish I’d known more before we entered China, as it would’ve aided understanding and patience when communicating.⁣

In Xinjiang we didn’t have a SIM card, so we didn’t have the “conversation” feature of Google translate. This meant we could only communicate by writing a message on our translator. Frequently people would look at my phone with the message, acknowledge it and then make no effort to help us. We were bemused and really frustrated by us – then we noticed a trend. It was the older people who “weren’t helpful”. Stew soon concluded that maybe they were illiterate. Ah…well that changes things, doesn’t it?⁣

I took to Google to learn a bit more. ⁣

To put it VERY simply, in the 1950s the Chinese language was simplified. This made the written word noticeably less intricate and easier to write, thus improving literacy in China. In the 50s 54% of speakers could understand simplified Chinese, by the 80s this number rose to 91%. Understandably it’s the older generation in China who may not be able to read or write.⁣

Another observation was that young people, on their mobile phones would use the Latin alphabet. Also, hotels had a QWERTY keyboard, so that got me thinking…⁣

Young Chinese people will type message using the latin character set, then a Chinese symbol comes up for them to select. Basically the computer/mobile trand lates the latin character set to Chinese. I learned that this is called “Pinyin”. This was also developed in the 1950s and aids communication / writing on electronic devices.⁣

It seems the Chinese language has been through a lot of revisions over the years. There’s more to it than I know, and not enough characters in one post to write about it in full.⁣

These are the two aspects that interested us the most during our travels here, so I thought I’d share. ⁣

Do you want to add anything? Let us know in the comments. @ Yunnan