Barbarians at the gate
Efforts to keep the language pure
THE guardians of Chinese language purity are challenging the French in their bid to keep out dastardly English words. A recent rant in the People’s Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, said intruders such as “MBA”, “CEO”, and “iPhone” were not welcome in Chinese when written in their Romanised form.
The paper cited experts who blamed laziness or infatuation with Western culture for the “excessive” use of borrowed terminology, and warned that this was “damaging the purity and health of the Chinese language”. (Never mind that the People’s Daily website last year said the growing number of Chinese terms used in English showed that “linguistic contribution reveals national power”.)
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline "Barbarians at the gate"
From the June 7th 2014 edition
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