An answer to Dr. Qian’s question 钱学森之问的答案

An answer to Dr. Qian’s question

Dr. Qian Xuesen, a renowned Chinese scientist, more than once asked a former Chinese premier a question. “Why do our schools always fail in training outstanding talent”, he asked. Talent here refers to scientific and technological talent only. There may be many answers to the question Dr. Qian posed. However, many people often ignore an answer – the limitation of the written language, or Chinese characters, on human thinking.

Why is the answer ignored? The reason is that until now the linguists in the world have not yet known what a Chinese word is, or what a Chinese unit is. The linguistic professors in China have been debating whether a Chinese word is a Chinese character or a group of Chinese characters for decades without a result. As a result, they cannot correctly compare Chinese and alphabet languages, such as English, and they do not know the gap between them. Some people in China even think that Chinese characters are better than alphabets, and so they resist Chinese alphabets.

Creating a scientific theory requires human brain thinking, and language is a thinking tool. If the other conditions are the same, language is the determining factor. Hence, the advanced language promotes human thinking while the backward language limits human thinking.  

Numerous overseas Chinese have achieved great successes in scientific field. Among them, quite a few have won the Nobel Prize. However, until now, people cannot create scientific theories in written Chinese. The reason is that the written Chinese limits human thinking.

The linguists sometimes confuse the spoken language with the written because they often shorten both two phrasal terms of “the spoken language” and “the written language” to a word of “language”. Compared to the spoken, the written is a superior tool for human thinking. Therefore, the sophistication or primitiveness of a written language may be decisive in human thinking.

How does the written Chinese limit thinking? Let me try to explain by contrasting Chinese with English. In general, the more units, the more advanced the language. Units, or basic units, are words. That is to say, the more words, the more advanced the language.

Chinese characters are Chinese words. Chinese has only ten thousand words while English has more than one million words that are still growing. This is the gap between Chinese and English. The reason is that the quantity of Chinese words is finite and fixed.

The small quantity of the Chinese words limits Chinese people thinking severely. Therefore, the number of Chinese words is too small and finite is an answer to Dr. Qian’s question.

reference: New Concept Linguistics

钱学森之问的答案

中国著名的科学家钱学森不止一次地问中国前总理一个问题。 “为什么我们的学校总是培养不出优秀人才？”他问。这里的人才是指科技人才。钱学森提出的问题可能有许多答案。然而，许多人总是忽略一个答案，那就是书面语言的限制，或者说中文汉字对人类思维的限制。

为什么会忽略这个答案（原因）？因为直到现在，世界上的语言学家还不知道什么是中文的word。或者说，什么是中文的单位？中国的语言学教授一直在争论中文的单位是一个字，还是一个词，至今也没有结果。所以他们不能正确地比较中文和拼音文字，如英文。他们也不知道中文和英文的差距。中国还有些人甚至认为汉字比拼音文字好，所以他们抵制汉语拼音文字。

创造科学理论要靠人类的大脑思维，language是思维的工具。如果其他条件大体相当，那么language就是决定的因素。因此，先进的language促进人类的思维，落后language限制人类的思维。

许多海外华人在科技领域取得了巨大成功。其中不少人还获得了诺贝尔奖。然而至今还没有人使用中文创造出科学理论。原因就是中文限制了人的思维。

语言学家常常混淆语言和文字这两个概念。原因就是他们常常把 spoken language 和 written language 这两个词简化成一个字language。和口语相比，书面语言是更先进的思维工具。因此，书面语言的先进与落后在人类思维中的作用是决定性的。

中文是如何限制思维的？我们可以从中文和英文的比较中找到答案。一般来说，单位越多，书面语言越先进。单位，也叫基本单位，就是word。也就是说，基本单位越多，书面语越先进。

中文的基本单位就是汉字。中文只使用一万个基本单位，而英文已经超过了一百万个，而且数量还在不断增加。这就是中文和英文之间的差距。原因就是中文基本单位的数量太少，而且是不能发展。

中文基本单位的数量太少，严重限制了中国人的思维。因此，中文基本单位的数量不能增加，而且数量太少，就是钱学森之问的一个答案。

参考：新概念语言学

Classification of Chinese Languages

Classification of Chinese Languages

Is Chinese a language or a group of languages? Before we answer the question, let's define the word “language” at first. There are four languages commonly used by humans: signed, spoken, written, and Braille.

We take English as an example. If you define “English” as the written English, then there is only one English. If you define “English” as the spoken English, there may be many English languages. For example, British English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English, South Africa English, India English, Hawaii English, Texas English, etc., and as many as you can name.

Similarly, if you define Chinese as a written language, there is only one form -- Baihuawen. If you define Chinese as spoken, the answer varies. For example, there are two -- southern and northern, or six, seven, eight dialects, or as many as you want. The truth is that we cannot classify spoken languages by each spoken language itself, because everybody speaks differently, strictly speaking. Usually we classify spoken languages by the group of people, like countries, areas, tribes etc., as we need. Therefore, the classification of spoken languages belongs to sociology, instead of linguistics.

Welcome to New Concept Linguistics.

Chinese Languages 的分类

Chinese 是一种language还是一组language？在我们回答问题之前，让我们先定义language。人类通常使用四种language：手语，口语，书面语，和盲文。

我们以English为例。如果你定义English 为英文，那么只有一种英文。如果你定义English 为英语，可能有许多英语。例如，英国英语，美国英语，加拿大英语，澳大利亚英语，南非英语，印度英语，夏威夷英语，德克萨斯英语等，以及更多的你能说出来的各种英语。

同样的道理，如果你定义Chinese为中文，那么现在中文只有一种，就是白话文。如果你定义Chinese为汉语，那么答案有多种。例如两种话 -- 南方话和北方话。或者六种，七种，八种方言。或者你想说有多少种就多少种。因为严格地说，我们每个人说的话都不同，现实的情况是，我们并不根据口语本身对口语进行分类。通常，我们是按照我们的需要，根据人群，如国家，地区，部落等，对口语进行分类。因此，口语的分类属于社会学，而不是语言学。


请参考新概念语言学。