To speak up against Western labels, China must first find its own words
- Whether in differing understandings of ‘democracy’, disagreement over ‘cold war’ or the outright fantasy of Chinese ‘colonialism’, words from the West have trapped China in a linguistic inferno
Words matter. But when words fail, they create problems. China faces this challenge with some Western words intended to explain aspects of China. Some words China has adopted into its own language but the West finds this confusing or fails to understand the Chinese context. Some words being thrown at China by the West China considers harmful.
Take how “past tense” is taught in Chinese. The Chinese language does not have a past tense, or any tenses for that matter. But when teaching Western students, many Chinese teachers adopt this term. When students ask how they can express past tense, these teachers say they can just add the Chinese character le (了) to the sentence, to indicate that the action described has already taken place.
The problem is that the Chinese language does not really work like that. There are sentences that describe past events but do not have this character, and sentences that do not describe past events but have this character. Consequently, students are confused even as teachers are trapped into trying to explain “past tense”.