English is becoming another Chinese dialect for me!!!

[learningculture]

I'm discovering a very interesting phenomenon for myself, and I wanted to see if anyone else experienced it too, or if it's a common thing!
 

I was born and raised in English speaking country, so English is my first language.  My brain thinks in English.  Also, I am reasonably fluent speaking Cantonese because of the environment I grew up in. I never learnt to read and write chinese growing up. Last year, I started to learn to read and write chinese by watching TVB shows with Chinese subtitles.

 

These days, when my eyes see Chinese characters, they immediately register in my brain as English words.  For example, when my eyes see 我想吃飯, I "pronounce" these words as "I want eat food", not as the cantonese "Ngo Seung Sick Fan".  When reading Chinese characters, there is no longer any Cantonese voices in my head...they are all English.

 

This got me thinking.....does that mean English is now a new Chinese dialect for me?   It's basically like how when 潮州 people read 我想吃飯, the words are immediately pronounced in the  潮州 dialect in their head.   潮州 people don't translate the words to mandarin before translating it into  潮州.  That's basically happening for me, except Chinese characters go straight to English pronunciation.

I remember people saying the beauty of the Chinese writing system is that it can be used with any dialect.  How you write and how you pronounce can be completely different, which makes it possible for so many different ethnic groups in China and overseas to communicate with each other.

Other examples of pronouncing Chinese characters/phrases that goes on in my head:
 

你是高手 - Pronounced as "You are Elite Level"

分久必合，合久必分 - Pronounced as "Divided for long time must unite, united for long time must divide"

名不虛傳 - Pronounced as "Reputation is not fake"

花拳繡腿 - Pronounced as "Flowery fists embroidered legs" - (looks good, but not practical)
 

Curious if other people pronounce Chinese characters in a non-Asian dialect?  Like pronouncing Chinese words in Hebrew, Russian, German etc...?  Is this a common thing for "Chinese as a second language" person?

[sanchuan]

I think you got it the other way around: Chinese is shaping up into another dialect of English for you.

 

By your account, the way you learned to read Chinese has allowed you to develop a parallel spelling system for the English language (e.g. where either [food] or [饭] can be interchangeably used to spell out the English word "food"). This is happening both at the level of words and larger conceptual chunks. 

 

Reading Chinese out in English like that may or may not end up affecting your English to some extent, so you could potentially argue that you are developing an English dialect all your own (e.g. where clunky expressions, like "divided for long time must unite", come to sound perfectly acceptable). 

 

I speculate that this may be largely due to having learned Chinese characters under the assumption that there exists a one-to-one correspondence between characters in Chinese and words in English. (Which there is not; any one character can correspond to many, one, half of one, or no English words at all. Outside of beginner Chinese lessons, it's really just not true to maintain, e.g., that 想=want or 饭=food. Every 词 and every 字 has its own spectrum of meanings, connotations and uses and it's hard to force parallels with English words like that.) So I would rather encourage you to only read characters out in Chinese and, when you do, to only think of their Chinese meaning, in context. 

 

There's nothing wrong with training oneself to use the Chinese script to spell out all sorts of English words and concepts, as long as you are clear that all you're doing is playing around with English, not Chinese.

 

 

[learningculture]

@sanchuan I want to share another encounter for your opinion!
 

Last year, I met an American in cultural exchange zoom meeting.  He was Caucasian and only spoke English.  Due to my limited Chinese reading skills at the time , he seemed to be able to read most Chinese characters. We would send him a wikipedia page written in chinese on various topics like movie actor biographies, dental hygiene, automotive manufacturers etc... He could mostly read the chiense.  But he couldn't speak Chinese because everything he learnt from chinese was only from books.  He never had any formal speaking lessons which is why he is joining the zoom calls, to learn the pronunciation of the chinese words.
 

He says chinese writing i sbasically a system of logically arranged pictures.   He said if you are learning a new chinese character for the first, you can first get hints of its meaning by looking at the construction of the character (eg. trying to identify the radical).  Then secondly, you look at how the word is used within the context of a sentence or phrase.  And third, through repeated appearances of the characters in other context, you start to understand the meaning of that character and in all the various uses cases.  He said he did all this, but still don't know how to pronounce any of it beyond counting numbers and a few casual greetings.  But when he reads chinese text, it all happens in English in his head.

---> SO my first question is, is this an example of Chinese writing is just a dialect of English?
 

Going to the one-to-one mapping of English concepts to Chinese concepts, i agree there can be some that are hard to map.   But is that a thing that happens "a lot" (ie more than 25% of the times)?  And when it does happen, isn't it more of a "cultural" challenge rather than a "language" challenge? Like this phrase which I found really amazing when I read for first time:
 

敬酒唔飲, 要飲罰酒 - First time I read his, i pronounced it as "Salute or respecting wine deny drinking, need to drink punishment wine".  I didn't know what this meant at all.  But after thinking about it I thought this would sound cool if used in a context where someone chooses the "difficult path" over the "easy path".  So now when I see these sequences of chinese characters, I immediately imagine Two Fighters both holding a mug of beer, then one of them pours the beer on the ground in defiance, the other fighter gets offended, then they both draw their guns and go to war..  The chinese pronunciation of 敬酒唔飲, 要飲罰酒 does not enter my head, just the image of 2 fighters in a stand off and the words "drink with me or die".

---> my second question is whether one-to-one mappings between Chinese and English words/concepts/ideas can "mostly" be done?  like more than 75% of the times?  And the remaining 25% of the times where it can't be done, that's more of a cultural barrier that language on its own doesn't solve, and instead, you solve this culture problem through immersion and "living with the native /local people"?

 

[learningculture]

@sanchuan You just made me think of something else.  How do people born deaf learn to read and write?  People who are born deaf will have never had the chance to hear the pronunciation of any written Chinese words. So how woudl they "read out" the word?

I did a quick google search and some people born deaf say is when they see words, their "inner monologue" can vary between hand sign symbols (eg. sign language), pictures, feelings, scenes from movies or past experience, etc...

I guess my inner dialogue is English.  And I'm learning Chinese reading and writing using the same mechanisms as people who were born deaf?
 

[sanchuan]

Characters are arbitrary signs developed to remind a reader about bits of their language so that they can put them together and 'see' their language on a page (and hence transmit meaning asynchronously).

 

One can certainly appropriate those signs and use them for something else. We use Greek letters to represent the language of mathematics, Latin letters to represent the language of us Anglophones, or Chinese characters to represent the language of the Japanese. But we're not speaking a dialect of Latin any more than a Japanese person using kanji is speaking a dialect of Chinese.

 

It's true that the Chinese script is different, and countless people in the historical sinosphere were able to interpret it and not speak it. However, doing so didn't make their native language a dialect of Chinese: they simply got good at interpreting code, like the American student in your example. Being good at solving puzzles like that takes skill and can be a very useful thing in language learning. But it's not equivalent to using, or learning to use, the language. 

 

The question about word equivalence between languages is too complex to address here so all I'll say is that I for one maintain that language isn't a neutral veil: it is clearly a cultural product in and of itself and, as such, it shapes (if only sometimes and in very small ways) how you think and talk about things. 

 

To anyone 'doing Chinese characters' the way you described, I would gently suggest refraining from looking at Chinese text as a jumble of words to decode (or to 'put right' in your English-language head), but as its own system with its own internal logic and references. Don't decode it - just take it exactly as it comes, and exactly in the form that it does. For behind it lies a whole language! Fancy that.

 

[learningculture]

@sanchuan I appreciate your thoughtful responses! Don't feel like you need to answer right away, it can be done at your leisure!

a) Are you able to elaborate more on your comment about "Being good at solving puzzles like that takes skill and can be a very useful thing in language learning. But it's not equivalent to using, or learning to use, the language.  "  Particularly the part on it not being equivalent to using, or learning to use, the language?  If you can use this puzzle decoding and encoding process to comprehend information and construct more information for others to ingest and comprehend, can you suggest a list of remaining criteria we should attempt to satisfy before the methodology is sufficient to be labelled as "using a language"?

b) for my current methodology of transcribing the characters I read to a familiar inner english monologue, I can appreciate there are some costs associated with that, such as perhaps overlooking a layer of meaning behind the surface level meanings.   But do you know if there are any benefits to the methodology? 

[abcdefg]

On 9/11/2024 at 4:15 PM, sanchuan said:

Don't decode it - just take it exactly as it comes, and exactly in the form that it does.

 

Yes! Well said, @sanchuan. When I was "immersed" and living in China, I thought almost entirely in Chinese. So it was only natural that I would also talk in Chinese. No translation was involved. No transition was involved.  

 

@learningculture >>"for my current methodology of transcribing the characters I read to a familiar inner english monologue, I can appreciate there are some costs associated with that, such as perhaps overlooking a layer of meaning behind the surface level meanings.   But do you know if there are any benefits to the methodology?" 

 

The only benefit I can think of is comfort. I do not think it's a method that will speed your acquisition of high-level Chinese language skills. I would caution against that kind of "internal translation" as an un-necessary step that will hold you back. 

 

I understand that since you also speak Cantonese, your process might be different. I am not a "heritage learner." 

[learningculture]

@abcdefg

There's a term that many Chinese people would call ethnically chinese people born in the west: 竹升.   They use this term because when you pour water in one end of a bamboo pole, it does not exit through the other end, because the bamboo is made of compartmentalized chambers.  This is to mean ethnically born chinese will never be able to bridge the the language, ideas, culture between the east and the west.
 

The people who would use these terms are not necessarily language professors, teachers, historians, or other individual highly trained in liberal arts. etc... They are just your average Chinese person who would resign to using the term 竹升 when either:
 

a) there are disagreements between the 竹升
b) the 竹升 legitimately has difficulty interpreting or reconciling a subject matter between two or more cultures
 

Even though I've only been learning to read and write chinese in just hte past year, i've spent the past 25 years working to "remove" the differences in attitudes, culture, communication etc... for newly arrived chiense people who wish to work in the West.  I have my own business, and we often employ people who just arrive from another country, and Chinese speaking individuals from HK are some of them.  When helping others transition to a new country, it helps to make things as familiar as possible for BOTH parties, for whatever Chinese idiom exists, find a relevant Western idiom, and vice versa.   I have found that for the majority of topics for casual conversation or in professional work place, the one-to-one mapping exists.  And when it does not exist, it becomes an opportunity for both parties to explore why it does not exist.  Or ther eare times where the mapping of concepts/values does exist, but the priorities or emphasis are quite different (eg. filial piety is thought of a lot in chinese culture, and although can exist in 21st century American culture, it may not be as emphasized unless you're willing to travel further back in time).
 

I remember hearing some podcasts a while back that language has a large biological/genetic component too it.  Theoretical linguists are abel to classify languages and devise frameworks because there are a lot common things between langauges, at least for daily usage or usage in an occupational setting (eg. engineering, legal, economics, etc...excluding language researchers).  A lot of it is just the way brain thinks and others is how various human groups will operate in various environmental conditions.  Identifying common patterns, repeating tactics etc...is a useful way to understand the deeper nature of being human, as opposed to any one specific culture.
 

When I read chiense text, the English inner monologue or image of what's communicated is not an "additional" step.  It is immediate, effortless and natural.  The majority of chiense texts i'm reading in chiense are subtitles to old TVB shows from the 1980s (I turn off audio so that I can focus on just the text and the acting), newspaper advertisements for good deals in chinese super markets, medical literature for patients (written in for general population) and government application forms that I need to fill out for senior citizens.  So I'm definitely not reading anyhting like 水滸傳, 紅樓夢 or anything before the 20th century.  I'm just reading day-to-day stuff chinese people are running into.

 

The closes thing I can think to compare to is software engineering code.  Engineers that see this:

```
class Lion extends Mammal {
  public Lion (gender, dateOfBirth) {
    // ...initialize...
  }
  public isRoaring() {
    return true;
  }
  /// etc...
}
```
We don't "read" this out word for word in english.  Instead, you "visualize right away" that it's of a Lion of a particular gender and age and you know it can roar, and you can comprehend it is a mammal (vertabrate, etc..)
 

Chinese text is basically the same...the english monologue or images are immediately evoked ... the `class Lion ......` might as well be 咆哮的獅子.
 

So to answer my own question about the advantage reading Chinese text with an inner monologue that is not mandarin (read it in Spanish, klingon, javascript, whatever)
a) devising tools that help various human factions find common ground and reduce division, friction and animosity
b) identify linguistic items that were overlooked as "culturally influenced" when it may be beneficial to study under another scientific branch (eg. evolution, biology, genetics, etc...)

Very few of us choose to be professors or academics in language and culture...i'm definitely not looking to do that.  I just watn to develop enough CHinese literacy skills to work with me peers locally and abroad.  There is a lot of emphasis on finding common ground when trying to bring together people from different parts of the world.  As we enter an increasingly globalized economy, it would be beneficial to develop more tools to expediently find common ground between various human groups.

The older generation of chinese people came from a time where post-secondary education and "white collared" jobs are difficult to acquire, so it is understandable for them to use terms like 竹升 to voice their frustrations communicating with individuals from a different background.  Now that I am much older and having also worked in sales and marketing for more than 20 years, I am able to speak with the generaton chiense people more senior than me, and any time they attempt to conclude a disagreement with "竹升唔會明白", I take the time to convince them the common ground we both share, and that the differences we are debating over are not cultural or linguistic, but something more fundamental to human nature (eg. money, family, etc...), something that most people of many other culture would also relate too, and that you can have two chinese people also disagreeing over the same points of contention.

---
Tangetial idea, that i'll write more some day when I have time.  Another big point of friction when speaking with chiense and americans would be around deities/religion/superstitions etc...  I remember Chinese resaurant owner serve an american family one time.  And the american family said their prayers before eating.  The owner said to me, "上帝比你？  開幻笑!!".  This owner was thinking, "I made the food for you, why are you thanking God? Don't make me laugh."  The owner is very nationalistic, always says CHinese people are the most hard working, and often citing chiense idioms about how chiense people are self-determined/self-reliant, etc...  He's quick to "divide" and make it out liek the American family was different from him because of culture.  I spent time over the years challenging this "us" vs "them" mentality, that for every chinese idiom is mentioned, i find the western analogue...When he  拜財神 , he's doing hte same thing, when he says, 天安定, he's just as fatalist.  These types of attempts to bridge differences and find common ground in language, culture etc... works more often then not as long as people are patient and see the value in "working together".  (also have countless stories of the opposite, of me convincing americans that the Chinese language, thoughts, etc.. is no diffrent from the western view point...everyone is so quick to dismiss and resign to "we are too different, we have nothing in common, and the only language we all speak and respect is the language of force, power, intimidation and violence.")

[abcdefg]

On 9/16/2024 at 10:36 AM, learningculture said:

There's a term that many Chinese people would call ethnically Chinese people born in the west: 竹升. 

 

Very interesting! Thank you for explaining this perspective. 

[learningculture]

Another story to add, I definitely think it's a good thing to "specialize" like learning a language by living in the culture itself.  There should continue to be more investment in such things. But there should also be more investment in collaboration and cross pollination of subject matters where appropriate. About 30 years ago, a math professor told me this story I will never forget:
 

Professor: Calculus is basically summing up small things.  One times one is one. 2 times 0.5 is 1... 4 times 0.25 is 1...  Notice that I'm just adding up smaller and smaller pieces?? 8 times 0.125 is 1...16 times 0.0625 is 1.

While the first number is getting bigger, the  second number is getting smaller.  32 times 0.03125 is 1.  64 times 0.015625 is 1.  Eventually you get to some very very big number multiplied by some very very small number, and you still get 1.  Correct?
 

Me: Yes, I agree.
 

Professor: Imagine the first number is so big that it is infinity.  And the second number is so small that it is zero. Now tell me, what is infinity times zero?
 

Me: Uh...I failed subspace math and quantum physics...so, I'm not sure what infinity times zero is.
 

Professor: Infinity times zero is zero.  I don't care which type of infinity you're talking about in any dimension...any type of infinity multiplied by zero is zero.  I'm trying to tell you that we live in a world of SPECIALIZATION.  In science, we like to take a big thing, and break it down into its smallest individual parts to study it.  You have these medical doctors studying very specific types of stem cells, you have engineers working on a very specific type of semiconductor fabrication process, and as years go by, these specializations get even more specialized.    People are knowing more and more about less and less, and eventually these same specialists will know everything there is to know about nothing.

Me: ok...soo....

Professor: People are so specialized they forget the greater mission. People divide up into factions and argue against each other over minutae that are often inconsequential towards solving a more system problem, or a greater problem.  They study their problems in insulated environments which then fail to integrate effectively into the larger human problem because there wasn't enough collaboration between different disciplines.

-----

Sometime in the 1300s, 羅貫中 wrote 分久必合，合久必分.  Three hundred years later, half way around the world a person named Isaac Newton wrote this:

Area = a∫by.dx

The professor I spoke to 30 years ago interpreted Area = a∫by.dx as  分久必合，合久必分.

[sanchuan]

On 9/16/2024 at 5:36 PM, learningculture said:

The closes thing I can think to compare to is software engineering code. 

That's more or less why I took the liberty of calling your system a 'parallel spelling system' of English. Writing is a technology, and a relatively recent one at that: a way of recording language (because language is spoken, and/or gestural). You can opt for a writing system that's phonetic, idiographic or based on some kind of programming-language code that uses a bit of both (which, at heart, is what most writing systems end up doing anyway). But whatever you're writing - or reading, in your case - is the actual language you have in mind. And it sounds like the language you have in mind when reading Chinese characters is English; that's why it's more accurate to say that you're reading English using the Chinese script.

 

Is it beneficial? To the extent that you're learning the script, and that a one-to-one mapping between Chinese characters and English words is often possible, then yes: it's a way of learning and reviewing the Chinese script. 

 

Is it beneficial for the purposes of actually learning the language (if you're not a fluent heritage speaker already)? Less so, because 1. You're not reading the actual 'Chinese' that's being recorded by those characters; 2. A one-to-one mapping is not always practically possible, and hardly ever theoretically true.

 

To illustrate the latter point, allow me to make a poor monolingual analogy: Is there a one-to-one mapping between the word 'year' used by a native English speaker and the word 'year' used by another native English speaker? On the face of it, yes, of course: the word refers to the concept of 365 days for the both of them. But what if the first speaker is a 10-year-old and the second one a 70-year-old? The word 'year' may still refer to the same thing, but will mean something different to them. Something akin to that happens with words like 'filial piety', which is perfectly translatable, but which means so much more to a Chinese speaker than it does an American (never mind words like 青 which aren't even directly translatable). My point is that such discrepancies are culturally embedded in the language and much, much more frequent than commonly understood, especially when having to do with verbs rather than nouns, even in everyday language.

 

Sometimes the same concepts, even the most mundane, are loaded with cultural associations that are effectively foreign, hence the merit in learning a foreign language. Wanting to bridge perceived cultural gaps is admirable, but something is lost when differences are flattened in direct, one-to-one translations (or trans-scriptions, seeing as this is about scripts).

 

[abcdefg]

On 9/17/2024 at 4:56 AM, sanchuan said:

Sometimes the same concepts, even the most mundane, are loaded with cultural associations that are effectively foreign, hence the merit in learning a foreign language.

 

Well said! I found that over and over while living in China. Some of these differences might have been less surprising if I had possessed a better cultural background in the history and literature of China, if I had been better read, more broadly educated. In my ignorance, I missed a whole lot.

[learningculture]

@sanchuan Thanks again. I'm going write some notes that i will be researching so I can return to this conversation after a few project deadlines. 

```
such discrepancies are culturally embedded in the language and much, much more frequent than commonly understood, especially when having to do with verbs rather than nouns, even in everyday language
```

Where I'm stuck right now is the popular sentiment of "language and culture being intertwined".  I have to convince myself of this.  Some examples / questions I'm trying to work through in my head are:

 

Scenario 1: The older generation of Chinese people like to classify foods as 涼 (cool), 熱 (hot), 濕熱 (wet hot), etc...These concepts are probably from Traditional Chinese Medicine, and even though most Chinese people are not formally trained in TCM, many of the older Chinese people still use these terms casually to explain the results of people's health based on nutritional intake.  Even I do that when speaking with Chinese people.  However, when I say to an American, "You're coughing because Green Tea is considered cool, and you need to balance with [some other food] that is hot", they scratch their head and think I'm referring to the temperature of their drink.  You can make the argument that the TCM language is for the TCM culture.   Explore the situation where native English speakers have adopted TCM practice, but use English words to describe every medical practice of TCM.

Scenario 2: Television actors for science fiction shows often have to speak "techno-babble". They memorize a script of technology jargon but don't understand what they mean because they are not professional trained physicists, engineers or scientists. Let's say these actors do not have the ability to craft the dialogue for the characters they portray...is it because
a) They do not know the technology language
b) They do not know the technology subject matter
c) They do not know the both the technology language and the technology subject matter

At time of writing this post, my answer is B).  It is not A) because language is independent of subject matter and science culture.
 

Transpose Scenario 2 to the concept of "Filial Piety" between Americans and Chiense.  An American is not abel to speak about comprehend the significance of Filial Piety because:
a) They do not know the chinese language
b) they do not know the chinese culture
c) They do not know the chinese language and they do not know chinese culture

At time of writing this post, my answer is B).  It is not A) because language is independent of culture. Just like the science fiction scenario, i can learn a bunch of chinese babble and memorize a bunch of chinese words, but the language does not help me understand the culture.

Final question to resolve, how often is culture adopted/appropriated without the native language that originated the culture?  Eg. technology culture aroudn electronics has been adopted by Chinese in the mid-20th centrury, and they basically translated a bunch of English words to Chinese words.  For example, 電腦 means computer, but is literally Electronic Brain.  But my guess is when a chines eperson sees the words 電腦, it evokes image of a desktop computer or laptop, and they don't actually think about an electronic brain (at least not any more).  Chiense people can learn technology without learning the english language.

A lot of Americans have adopted Buddhist philosophies and translated or developed new words to retain the meaning and significance of Buddhist notions...so they can become buddhist without learning any of the Asian languages.

A lot of Chinese have adopted Christianity without knowing Hebrew, Greek or any of the other ancient biblical languages.

Once i've explored these more i'll reply back.  ANy notes you can add for my research will be appreciated!

---
ON the subject of 青 --- is it not translated based on it's use in a sentence or phrase ?  Like in english, green is a color, house is a building, green house means a building to grow plants, which may not be immediately obvious by looking at jsut the word green on its own or house on its own.  電 is electricity, 腦 is brain, but together it is computer.  You often have to translate a word based on context, and that's how 青 would have to be interpreted?

[learningculture]

I'm not versed in hip-hop music, but I remember seeing Chinese rappers, French Rappers, etc...  These people may not even speak english at all, but I take it they have retained the hip-hop and rap culture?  Due to the presence of communication technologies like the internet, television and radios, is it more beneficial to think of language and culture as two different things because now they grow independent of each other?

Also....I vaguely remember Koreans practice ancestor worship and also value Filial Piety the same way many chiense peopel do as well..but many of the younger Koreans may not speak, read or write CHinese.  You can argue, Korean and Chinese share similar historical roots to explain the cultural relatability.  But now that we have the internet,what stops a community in Nigeria from adopting chinese culture without the Chinese language ?  Basically thigns like youtube, discord, tiktok, chinese-forums.com etc... are the tools that allow any one to adopt a culture without its originating language. 

[learningculture]

@sanchuan @abcdefg I know i'm long winded, but i want to genuinely express my gratitude for taking part in these conversations.  Most people get fed up with me, thanks for being patient.  I have a learning disability that prevents me from understanding and applying new concepts until I am able to "connect all the dots".

[learningculture]

I wrote this to ChatGPT.  It wasn't useful because ChatGPT just agreed with me, and didn't argue against me (I will ask for more opposition later).  But posting here as part of my research notes:


I propose that language is a product of a culture. (even though language can influence culture, i'll also propose that is not as important).

I propose that a culture can produce more than one language.  For example 漢 Han culture produced the modern "Chinese Language" that we are all aware of.  However, it is theoretically possible for Han culture to have produced a completely different language that still embodies every aspect of Han culture.  (as a separate topic that warrants a different discussion thread, we can argue that Cantonese, Mandarin, Shanghainese, TeoChow etc... are all different languages).  Therefore, it is possible to UPGRADE the English language to embody every aspect of Han culture such that it is equivalent to (or maybe more effective) at conveying every aspect of Han culture down to its most minute details.

We can always add new vocabulary to the English language for any new Han concepts that currently doesn't exist in the English language.  Throughout history, humans have a tendency to make up new words to describe new discoveries, beliefs, values etc... Eg. Chiense people made up the word Electronic Brain to mean computer, Westerners come up with the term nirvana to mean (I don't know what it means cause i don't know spirituality/religous things), etc....

We can separately educate an English audience on Han cultural beliefs, values, way of thinking etc...

Therefore it is possible to transplant the modern Chinese language with a modern English language without losing even the most trivial details of Han culture.

The purpose of such a proposal is to attempt to make the following advancements:
a) there can be substantial benefits to studying culture and language as two independent streams
b) to devise tools to expedite the transmission of culture using ANY language while also not losing any fidelity/nuances/subtleties of the culture being transmitted.  With continued advancements of translation technologies on our phones, internet and other digital devices, the ability to separate culture from a language will enable a human to focus entirely on culture which is the most important aspect of relating to other humans.  Language is merely a system (and possibly antiquated delivery mechanism) that can be automated within the next 200 years (possibly shorter time horizon).

Such advancements can open opportunities to:
- improve the way humans collaborate internationally
- improve understanding between various human groups around the world to facilitate mediation, negotiations, and conflict resolution

---
I used Han culture as the "topic".  We can replace the topic with Star Wars, Abrahamic religions, Photonics, Neurology, Metallica, International law, accounting and taxes etc...