One of the world's leading experts of Putonghua believes that the influence of foreign languages, especially English, has greatly damaged the language in Hong Kong and even more on the mainland.
Yu Guangzhong was born in the Nationalist capital of Nanjing in October 1928 and has been a professor since 1956, in Taiwan, the United States, and at Chinese University in Hong Kong from 1974 to 1985. He has written dozens of books and poems, and has been quoted in textbooks in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland. He also speaks English, French and other Western languages.
One of Yu's great missions in life has been the preservation and improvement of the Chinese language
'The British controlled Hong Kong for 150 years and wanted people to speak English well,' he said in an interview during a visit to Hong Kong to attend the screening of films about famous authors of Taiwan, including himself. 'They did not care about Chinese. The language here is infected by English.
'The situation on the mainland is even worse, with the impact of not only English but also Russian. Ordinary people do not realise how serious the situation is, but those with a good standard of Chinese do. Even scholars use pseudo-scientific terminology that is incorrect Chinese,' Yu said. As an example, he said the phrase 'using mice to do experiments' was a translation from English that incorrectly reflected the English parts of speech. The correct Chinese phrase is , because in Putonghua 'experiment' and 'to do' are both verbs, making the first translation redundant.
'Everyone on the mainland wants to study English. That will produce these mistakes, and these mistakes will be exported as Putonghua becomes an international language,' he said. 'A Westernisation that is too fast and strong has destroyed the natural state of Chinese and become malignant. People with strong feelings should immediately wake up to this and resist it with all their energy.'