For our international friends!

Thank you so much for looking at our blog!

The last view days Seiken and I realized, that our blog is not just read in Germany, but from people all over the world! For example, we get answers from friends from China, England, Ohio, South Carolina, Georgia, New York and New Zealand!

We wanna be international orientated, and also wanna make our international friends feel welcome. That’s the reason why we designed one English Post. We also could do one in Chinese, but of course most of our friend’s wouldn´t understand it, and so we stick to English.

Our topic is: China and the english language!

English is spoken by about 340 million people as a mother tongue. As a second language it is spoken by at least 190 million people. So, more than 530 million people can speak English. In the same time Mandarin-Chinese’s is spoken by over 880 million people. But still many Chinese people try to learn English. In City's like Shanghai most of the people we asked could speak English without any problem. On the other hand we have been to places were nearly no one could speak more than "hello".

We did get to know the Chinese people as world open and interested in other cultures, since mainly they also want to join into the world economic, they try their best to learn English.
That’s why you can find in every big city languages schools to learn English. There is a big need for native speakers like Sebi, to teach children and adults. To understand why they need native speakers it is important to understand the situation here in China. Normally they don't have any opportunity to practice there English. So most of the time they can understand what they read. Maybe they are able to write English texts, but they can't express themselves. So they have a huge need for native speakers where they can practice there English.

So for conclusion, you can use your English quite well here in China, especially when visiting tourist places. Inside the country you really should learn Chinese. Instead you can survive by teaching English in a language school. (The picture shows a museum exit gate in four languages. Do you find the mistake? :-))

And last but not least: of course we would appriciate a view comments from our international friends... ;-)

And look what we found the other day:

Euro-English Instead of German

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as Euro-English (Euro for short). In the first year, 's' will be used instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard 'c' will be replaced with 'k.' Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome 'ph' will be replaced by 'f'. This will make words like 'fotograf' 20 per sent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' by 'z' and 'W' by 'V'. During ze fifz year, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou', and similar changes vud of kors; be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil b no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.