English Banditry

Of all the linguistic ideas and flights of fantasy I've had in my life (quite a few), and all the ones I've initially hoped might be unique (quite a few), I realized I have happened across an article or reference to every single one with but only one exception. Is there nobody who is into the idea of highly customizing his or her idiolect in an explicit manner? Sure, we generally all construct our own idiolects tiny choice by tiny choice on a day by day basis as we grow up — but given the extremely personal nature of the way we speak, why doesn't anyone want to sit down and literally explicitly plan it out and choose a consistent word scheme and accent? Is the desire to do so really that different from the desire most of us here have to learn other languages and learn to express ourselves fully in those languages? To be honest, I was terribly disappointed that my web searches on the topic yielded no “custom-idiolect construction kit” or similar site where I could get a better grasp of how, exactly, to customize my English speech and what sorts of conceivable innovations I might have overlooked. (As well as how to go about systematically adjusting my speech to achieve whatever I decide is my ideal sound and flavor.)

Why Tech In China Is Going To Hell

I've been working in computers in China for some years now. Since this is my first real job after graduating, I didn't show up with any sort of preconceptions of how things are supposed to be. I have no firsthand knowledge of what the work environment in North America is like. I was here nearly a month before I spontaneously noticed what appeared to be immense age prejudice in the hiring process. Why is everyone so damn young and inexperienced? Even if they don't like "old people" here, wouldn't it be handy to have just one guy (other than management) on the team over 30 with some solid years of experience to help people out with tough questions? Maybe it should have been common sense, but after some asking around and realizing many of the fresh college graduates hadn't even touched a computer prior to their first programming assignment in college, it all started to make a lot more sense. This is a top international computer company and I know of lead programmers which DO NOT OWN a computer of their own and no shortage of employees that do not have internet access at home. I don't know why I seemed to have forgotten that Shanghai is still China. Just a few years back studying at a university in a smaller Chinese city it was a challenge to be able to get a shower on a regular basis.

What are the implications of all this? Well—let me mention my friend who also recently graduated and took a place in a top company in the US. I talked to him a short time after he started working and he excitedly related to me about how many things he was learning and what excellent resources some of his much more experienced coworkers would be in helping him rapidly grow his knowledge. I had no such experience. Not only did I fail to meet any inspiring über-hackers here, but if anything, my coworkers had a negative impact on me because I found it disgusting to see such a completely unenthusiastic passionless bunch of computer geeks. It's one thing if you are a societal reject computer geek: it's quite forgivable if you are crazy about it—but it's quite another thing if you are a geek that makes it look like your geekhood is a form of slavery.

What's the relevance? I would argue that in many cases even the fresh grads here are less experienced than (at least aside from that one batch of dot com bubble money-chasing imbeciles) a good portion of their geek-for-life freshly graduated counterparts in the West. I'm used to a considerable portion of programmers having gotten started on their own initiative practically from childhood. The lack of computer contact before college for many of the guys here was not so much a money or means to access issue as a lack of interest issue. We have guys who wanted to be doctors (more than one) but couldn't get quite the right score on the college admissions test for that major and were thus automatically reassigned to computer science. We have people who wanted to study and do a plethora of other things, but due to the whole business of filial piety and the parents thinking it was "a good idea" and more financially lucrative (actually the crux of the issue) the kids went along with what they were told and studied computers. Read: no passion. These "computer people" are not even computer people! It's purely a kind of job to them.

Another employee here has confided in me the fact that he believes he has no room for actual "career development" here because there is really no one he can ask about anything. If he doesn't know something there might be another guy on the team with a decent suggestion of what he can do, but there are no wizards that are going to make him feel as my friend in the U.S. did with the experienced coworkers: "I'm really learning to rock this stuff now!!!"

Since the stuff my group works on is not terribly sophisticated or mission critical, having highly experienced people is not "do or die" to this particular team and in such cases it is quite possible the company wouldn't want to incur the additional expense of paying real wizards. But I remain convinced that in many cases China is running into serious issues when it comes to talent availability. The fear of being outsourced, if you have decent experience, has been greatly exaggerated—the job market here is nearer than you might expect to being saturated with positions for which sufficient talent cannot be found to fill, and there are not 1.3 billion waiting in the wings to take your skilled job. A friend of mine that works on another team has actually indicated to me that for some of their serious applications where an extremely high level of experience really is mission critical to the project, they really cannot find the needed talent locally and are going to have no choice but to ship in folks from elsewhere.

Why There's No Prayer For The Future

What about 10 years down the road? Things don't look even the slightest bit rosier. Every computer operation in China is relatively new, so most of the people that stay long enough to accumulate the needed years of experience are eventually going to be needed to fill the higher ranks in new ventures or departments of existing companies. As they are shifted into management positions and have less need for the technical skills, their abilities stagnate or even atrophy. This cycle will likely continue for quite some time. Not everyone is suited for management, but the picture here doesn't looking any better: The once fresh guys who do stay at the entry level or in otherwise non-managerial positions for a protracted period are not getting the same 10 years of experience that their peers in the developed world are gaining. They're spending 10 years surrounded by peers of equal or lesser ability, while their counterparts in the Western world are spending 10 years picking up tips from peers who are simultaneously moving from 10 to 20 years of experience or perhaps even 20 to 30 years of experience—experienced people who themselves were shown the ropes a generation prior by an earlier generation of experienced people. I don't think this deficiency can be seen as completely insignificant or negligible. It's not about whether or not one can individually seek out the answer to a known problem, but more about whether one knows there is a problem at all. Do you want to drive over a bridge designed by an engineer who knows everything about calculating metal and concrete strength as it is the day of construction but who has never even heard of the practice of giving consideration to the way the materials are affected under continual stress and material wear over the course of 30 years of weathering and use?

Please no responses from (1) Chinese dudes trying to "save face" for the nation by contesting a point just for the sake of face (2) people who want to misread anything I've written as blanket stereotyping. When I say "they are passionless geeks" I know damn well exceptions exist.

My heart is still pounding as I write this. In the last minutes of 2008 and first seconds of 2009, I basically felt like I saw my life flash before my eyes. The firecrackers at midnight around the middle of Shanghai's Nanjing Pedestrian Street were like the light at the tunnel, and there was definitely no "countdown" for me because for the entire stretch of time I had no perception of the passage of time but only a perception like I was struggling to survive. Due to some very unfortunate poor decisions on the part of people whose job it is to know the danger of unlimited and uncontrolled immense crowds, and who were responsible for safety at the event, there was absolutely no limit or control whatsoever on the crowds nor was there enough man power or means, such as metal barriers, if they suddenly realized it was necessary to take action.

After making a lap and a half across the entirety of the street, a friend and I timed our walking to arrive at the center of the action about ten minutes before the final countdown. As we got closer the density of the crowd very quickly became such that one lost any choice in the matter of what direction to move. A street upon which cars can drive intersects with the middle of Nanjing Street and as a precursor to how nuts things were getting, I saw a lady driving a small motorized two-passenger carriage have the vehicle surrounded by all sides with people and shake and almost tip over several times in either direction as it rocked with the warring direction of the crowds. At this point the pressure on my chest was a bit frightful, but no more than I had endured in a Pantera concert up next to the stage many years back. My friend and I proceeded, as I foolishly thought that in another two minutes everyone would stop moving around and just watch so the dangerous back and forth rocking would stop and then probably everyone would just wait to move until there was enough space to do so.

My estimations were terribly wrong. As the pressure increased I saw a child wincing and a look of terror in the eyes of many nearby females. Some people began shouting to move in such and such direction and the crowd began rocking left, right, left and right faster than I could maintain my footing. Everyone was struggling to maintain their footing and I think more and more were beginning to panic. As I've no doubt heard countless stories of people being trampled to death in such a manner, I was pretty much seized with terror and the absolutely certainty that if I slipped down there was no chance anyone around could help me even if they wanted to. I got turned around such that walking backward it was impossible to keep my footing. Then, the guy behind me went down. I couldn't do anything. With him behind me I had no choice but to fall as well and I saw the image of 100 people piling up on me and knowledge of what it would be like to die of suffocation for there was already enough pressure that it was a bit hard to breath. My legs were underneath all the people in front of me and I reached out my hands screaming "救命，救命" (Help, help!) and "我喘不过气" (I can't breathe). The poor bastard behind me seemed to have already given up on living, being that much closer to the ground, and had a look of absolute terror and hopelessness on his face. There is NOTHING on this earth you can do to save yourself if things go wrong in such a crowd. It's like a force of nature.

In short, last night really, REALLY sucked. If you were there and were less in a panic, maybe you think I'm making too much of it. But, really, with just a bit more panic in the air, and if someone hadn't begun shouting "some people have fallen down, stop moving" then I know without a doubt how relentless the force would be if everyone had no choice but to just walk over top of me, leaving me unable to breath. I lost track of my friend for a half hour after, as cell phones were not working too well with the density of people there. He later told me people near him had fallen and were on the ground crying, but miraculously the crowd was able to pick them up one by one. If the slightest thing had set people apanic, the ones on the ground would have been goners. My friend also said it seemed some people got pushed through the glass doors of one of the stores. I don't have any evidence to confirm that, since he couldn't see clearly, but it sounds horrible.

When I reached my hands about three layers of people back screaming for help, they were able to help pull me up. The only way I could get my leg out from underneath all those feet was to yank it with all my might and discard my shoe in the process. I had to walk an hour in the freezing cold, missing one shoe, before finally getting a taxi. I would have spent more time looking for the shoe except for the fact that the whole street was littered with shoes, and the asshole street sweepers were already sweeping them up. Fortunately or unfortunately I was so much in shock for that hour that I didn't notice it was even cold outside.

静水流深 - 日记 [2008年12月31日] - Someone else who was there (in Chinese).
(Three video clips attached to the full entry.)

[Deactivate Chinese ability]

A charismatic speaker stands before a crowd of several thousand Chinese students of all ages. They raise their hands and shout out as male and female attendees alike have tears running from their eyes. Obviously a very mesmerizing preacher has taken it upon himself to lead god's lost little children to the salvation which can only be known through the salvation of the lord and savior Jesus Christ. But how on earth is such a thing being permitted on Chinese state-controlled television?

[Reactivate Chinese ability]

"Do you realize the sacrifices your parents have made to send you to college?" (The camera pans to more students driven to tears.) "Repeat after me, I - will - not - let - my - parents - down, I - will - learn - English - well." (Attendees all repeat after him in unison). Is this guy a fucking English Bandit manufacturing machine or what? If they're going to be this crazy to make me their "tool" should I feel any remorse if someone shouts their English at me like this and I spontaneously bop the little jackass in the mouth? Welcome to the future of China and a crazy ass dude named Li Yang's genius ploy to become filthy stinking rich: Crazy English.

Wikipedia reads:

His method can be described with the quote "To shout out loud, you learn." Students practice his technique by going behind buildings or on rooftops and shouting English.

Chinese TV is a barrel of laughs, though I'm not exactly sure if the remaining 1.4 billion are laughing their guts out for an hour at a time like me. For my 60 yuan every 6 months, I'm really getting top value for my money!!!

Continue reading "Chinese Cable TV: Top ... »

So last time, I related the tale of the challenges involved in getting a seat in this crazy country, one which might just have more students of Japanese language than Japan has population. I got lucky with that and was able to make a last minute adjustment to take the test in Jinan, Shandong. That's a swift 9 hour over-night train ride away. Get on the train. Flop on the bed. Wake up and suddenly you are there. The problem is that China grants admission to testing rooms based on a form called a 准考证 Zhunkaozheng, and they won't mail it to you, you have to show up in person with photo ID to claim it. The deadline for doing so meant I had to travel north four days in advance of the test.

I enter the Zhunkaozheng claiming room to bewildered expressions. Yes, just as I thought, I'm the only whitey out of more than 80,000 seats in this country. It seems other people don't come to CHINA to learn JAPANESE. I have to go to another office to register to have the results mailed to me as I'm not spending 18 hours and 800 kuai to claim it in person. The funny lady looks bewilderedly at the name written below the address and says, "No one knows what this [crap] means. Is this a name or something? You have to have a Chinese name. Write your Chinese name here." Yes, one needs a Chinese name to take an internationally conducted Japanese exam.

The fervor of it all way immense. If you want to be a part of something big, come take your JLPT test in China. For the past several weeks I didn't go a day without seeing someone doing some last reviews of JLPT prep books on the subway on the way to work. Now in the final stretch, studying around the clock myself, I entered a 24-hour McDonalds (to get a hot chocolate!) not even near the testing university and saw entire aisles of seats claimed by students zombie eye-edly scanning up and down the pages of their well-worn JLPT prep books. On the final night one unfortunate fellow (seems to have been a Japanese guy helping his Chinese girl with a few tough grammar points) made his native status a bit too obvious to surrounding parties and got totally ambushed. "Hey excusay-muah? Just a quick question..." A book shoved in his face I saw it took him more than 15 minutes to escape their merciless onslaught.

Test day arrived swiftly. The party of proctors (is three really necessary in one small room?) didn't want to let me in the room because they were convinced I should be taking a Chinese language exam instead somewhere else in a room with a bunch of non-Chinese. You'd think with three proctors they could force people to follow the rules, like the first one printed on the very first line on the cover of the test book "Don't open and start until instructed to do so". I turned and admired the girl behind me as she seemed full of entrepreneurial spirit and about ready to open her own 711 with the assortment of coffee, chocolate bars, and white rabbit candies arranged across the top of her desk. So much for only being allow pencils and erasers. I heard the sound of everyone flipping to the third page of the vocabulary section as the head proctor finally gave the word "go" and I flipped to the first page. It's not that I refuse to culturally assimilate in China, it's just that I'm trying to meet the international standard for this test, not the cheating Chinese one.

The extra minutes the room of cheaters stole on the vocab section didn't make an oodle of difference, I had no problem finish the section with surplus time. The listening section requires one to bubble in the correct one out of four options in the first wrong and the incorrect three out of four on the row after. An obvious Chinese test pro next to me began bubbling in all four in the odd rows, seeing as it is faster to erase one correct one later than to bubble in three wrong ones. Many others followed her lead and began bubbling away before the recording began. If only they used the headphones equipped on every desk I might have had a prayer on listening. Instead, they used a blaring boombox and crap cassette. Adjusting the volume and making sure everything worked the proctor played random segments of the tape allowing us an unfair "preview" off all the questions we're just supposed to be able to hear once. It didn't help, my hearing sucks. I guessed on every question for 35 minutes and got rather depressed. My brain's foreign language auditory processing unit just sucks in dealing with blaring noises and classroom echoes.

Passing out the reading and grammar section the proctors didn't even give the word "go" because I was the only person in the room who hadn't started immediately upon receiving the test book. Finally I made eye contact with the head proctor and she nodded for me to go. The dirty bastards got a full two minute head start on me, and this is a section where 30 seconds can make a difference of a few percentage points. Remember the test is "normalized" internationally in part based on the performance of the cheating Chinese (who comprise 40% of test takers). For the full 70 minutes the three proctors clickity-click made laps around the room eyeing everyone and consequently made me nervous as hell. There is nothing more intolerable to me than having someone watch me take a test or do a math problem. Ugh. Sit your ass down, woman!

So now I get to wait until March for the results.

I was just fantasizing: If it were somehow possible to strap every English speaker on earth with a mic and a box with infallible text to speech software (as well as a camera to catch anything the person reads) that would transmit everything uttered or read back as text to a central database for analysis, we'd have an amazingly cool and detailed picture of the language from a lexical perspective: how many exposures to a certain word are needed before a child can use it productively himself, exactly how much the language "changed" each year and what words died from the memory of the last living person who knew them, how long between exposures to a word leads to a person claiming he has never heard a word before in his life, etc. We might even be able to predict some really crazy stuff like a theoretical maximum average vocabulary for an average individual if the 'society' in which his interactions took place consisted only of individuals having PhD's with a certain very high input rate of low-frequency lexical elements (from books, etc.) based on the frequency of encounters required with an average lexical element before it tends to be integrated into one's productive vocabulary. Totally rad, huh? (Obviously a lot of the numbers would just be 'ranges', but with a large enough sample it would have huge implications for the design of some extremely scientifically perfected language course.)

I'm wondering about all of this in part because I learned a word the other day, one that I'm sure I've never seen before in my entire life. When I used it on a friend to see if he knew it, he told me he was absolutely certain I had used it quite often telling stories four years earlier. Frightening! I don't just mean cool or weird, but I was very literally frightened—the fragility of memories makes it feel like we all have Alzheimer's or something.

So my idea with the illustrations below is that as a native speaker there is a huge list of lexical items which there is a 99.9% chance you have acquired, which forms the basis for being a native. This is the semi-permanent vocabulary and is refreshed so often there is little chance of losing any of it except for the momentary memory "fart". Meanwhile there is another subset of dynamic words in each person's vocabulary which includes words which do not have the basis for being necessarily permanent:

• slang (once you stop hearing anyone else use it, it stops coming out of your mouth too, it becomes too dated),
• words one didn't really know previously but which are the "pet words" of a particular author in a book you just read,
• words which very specifically describe a present circumstance but which will fade from usefulness (news media makes everyone aware of the term, and when they stop it is subsequently forgotten by a lot of people).

If we had the massive data described above it would be possible to make really cool charts of at least two types for words as they pass through society almost like a virus: (1) words disseminated by news media, movies, or music which enter the brains of a huge portion of the population very quickly and pass away and are forgotten almost like a gradient effect in the end (2) words which people pick up in a book and think are cool enough to use once or twice before forgetting. For these there could be an animation of a "bug" jumping from brain to brain sometimes living on for a long time in one, sometimes dying rather quickly or even before jumping.

Two illustrations for you to check out:

My theory is that the only reason Linguistics is not overwhelmingly the coolest most exciting science on earth is that with all the cool and interesting 'experiments' which one could conceive of, the vast vast majority would be impossible to conduct for very practical reason such as: basic human rights (as in we cannot ethically take 1,000 babies and put them in a desolate region of the earth without teaching them any language and observe a human language as it is created from scratch) and the sheer volume of labor involved in collecting the necessary data (all the really cool analysis computers can do is negated because the only data we have to feed is mostly from polished written text, the collection and conversion to text of real living spoken language in mass quantities is not happening anywhere on earth).