Yesterday Imagethief had lunch with four of his Chinese colleagues. In deference to one woman, who was a little self-conscious about her English skills, much of the conversation was held in Mandarin. This will show you where I sit on the sympathy ladder, since I am a little self-conscious about my Mandarin skills. In the course of the discussion, that young woman remarked on how difficult English was to learn and speak. I wanted to cackle with maniacal laughter and crow, "See? See what I live with every single day? Now you all know what it feels like! BWAHHH hah hah hahrrrrrr!"

Despite my natural tendency toward petty vindictiveness, what I actually said was, "I completely understand". Such is life in PR. You can almost never say what you really think. At least, not if you want to keep your job and friends.

But behind my callow glee there is a real issue here. Millions of Chinese people are busy studying English. As we know from today's China Daily, increasing numbers of Americans are busy studying Chinese*. Anybody who has studied either language will cheerfully complain at length about how difficult and impenetrable it is. There can be no doubt; Chinese and English are two of the world's most headbreaking languages. Shocking, considering their global importance.

Therefore, in the interest of furthering international brotherhood and cultural understanding, Imagethief would like to advance a plan to make life simpler for everyone. I suggested the germ of this idea yesterday in a comment on Dishuiguanyin's "Life After Jiangxi" blog, but I've fleshed it out a bit. I propose a series of high-level talks between the American and Chinese governments to strategically reduce the most complex grammatical elements of both languages, thus making life easier for everyone burdened with having to use both.

For instance, America could agree to simplify the article usage ("the", "a", "an")  that bedevils so many Chinese speakers if China would limit the "了" particle to just one use, instead of throwing it around for past-tense, state changes, emphasis and about a dozen other things. America might surrender subject-verb agreement if the Chinese would agree to dispose of the  dangerous "把" construction for statements involving manipulation and transitive verbs. America could put irregular conjugations on the table (the infield-fly rule of English grammar) in return for a substantial enough concession from the Chinese, such as clearing up the whole "complements of degree" issue, or maybe sorting out the "adjunct vs. complement" problem.

Once enough confidence building steps have been taken, we could progress beyond grammar to some other areas. For instance, America might offer irregular spellings in return for a phased reduction of the Chinese third tone.

There are of course some sticky points to work through. I recognize that England, Canada and various other Anglophone countries may feel some resentment at America unilaterally bartering away bits of their language. But being the world hyperpower has its advantages, and I'm sure they'd come around sooner or later, especially with expanded access to China. Also, some "purists" out there might think that debasing two rich and complex languages into simplified forms would represent a crime against culture. On the other hand, a quarter-billion  Indonesians (and another 20 million Malaysians) get by on Bahasa, which has far fewer of the brain-destroying eccentricities of either English or Mandarin, and also has the charming habit of using phoneticized English for about half its vocabulary (eg. "ais krim" for ice cream). And Indonesia is a rich and lovely country.

If this plan were taken to its logical conclusion, English and Chinese might converge into one pan-global language marrying the best of each. The current strategy of Mutually Assured Confusion could end, and people could go anywhere in the world and be understood. Movies would never need be subtitled again. Chinglish could cease to be a derisive word for badly written signs and become the language of the future, ushering in a new era of global understanding and brotherhood.

Isn't that worth fighting for?

Note: I recommend Guardian China correspondent Jonathan Watts' entertaining article about learning Chinese (via Billsdue). Also, this entire idea is advanced with apologies to Joss Whedon, who has theorized something similar in his Firefly/Serenity science-fiction universe. Whedon made one big mistake though: he assumed future profanity would be in Mandarin. That is, of course, wrong. It would be in Cantonese or Fujianese.

*I note that the China Daily article mentions "a brief dip" in the popularity of Chinese language study in 1989 but, for some reason, neglects to explore what the cause of that might have been.

Note to younger readers: The title of this post is a pun on the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, which occurred during my early childhood in the late 60s and early 70s and lead to arms reduction treaties between the US and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, you may recall from your high school classes, was America's geopolitical bete noir before China. If you're too young for SALT, you may remember the successor "START" talks from the early '90s. Or, then again, you may have been watching MTV and not give a damn. If you were watching MTV, this would have been happening at exactly the same time that Nirvana went mainstream with the hit "Smells Like Teen Spirit", just so you can date it.