Language Log has an interesting post that contains most of a recent article from The Taiwan News (8.31.2019):
"World Civilization Research Association" (世界文明研究促進會) scholars are claiming that Western civilization originates from China and all European languages are merely Mandarin dialects, the Liberty Times reports.
World Civilization Research Association Vice President and Secretary-General Zhai Guiyun (翟桂鋆) said during an interview with Sina Online that some English words derive from Mandarin. For example, "yellow" resembles Mandarin for "leaf falling" (葉落, yeluo) because it is the color of autumn, while "heart" resembles "core" (核的, hede).
Zhai concluded this "proves" English is, in fact, a "dialect" of Mandarin. He further claimed that after Chinese formed the English language, Russian, French, German, and other European-based languages, went through a similar process of sinicization.
The World Civilization Research Association group of scholars are professors from a number of Chinese academic institutions. Association member Zhu Xuanshi (諸玄識) further claimed that Western civilization is a "sub-civilization" of Chinese culture.
He said Europeans "felt ashamed" due to the "fact" there was no history in Europe before the 15th century, compared to China. In an attempt to paper over this historical humiliation, the Europeans "fabricated" stories about ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilizations – all based on Chinese history.
World Civilization Research Association founder Du Gangjian (杜鋼建) said the organization has set up branches in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Thailand, South Korea, and Madagascar to "restore" the truth of world history. "Do not let fake, Western-centered history hinder the great Sino-Renaissance," he was quoted as saying.
They omitted the final paragraph:
Many Chinese citizens were unconvinced, however, with some mocking the association members by calling them “Wolf Warrior Scholars” – which references a patriotic Chinese movie. “Thanks, we can no longer laugh at the Koreans who claimed Confucius and Genghis Khan are Korean,” one commenter sardonically lamented.
When you scan down to the comments you find:
The author is not quite up to date. As P. Choudhury has shown decades ago, the origins of Chinese language, culture etc. have be sought in ancient India:
Choudhury, P. Indian origin of the Chinese nation: a challenging, unconventional theory of the origin of the Chinese, Calcutta 1990.
What’s going on? I’m pretty sure that the people promulgating their ideas aren’t stupid or uneducated. So why these strange ideas? I think it’s nationalism gone amuck. And it seems to be akin to the sort of thinking that goes on in conspiracy theories of various kinds – flat earth, moon landings are fake, 9/11 was a false flag operation, etc. And, for that matter, it’s not unlike the narcissism that countermands the National Weather Service in favor of the Presidential Sharpie. It’s an attempt to make sense of the world albeit subject to certain preconditions.
So, if the Middle Kingdom is indeed the center of the universe, then it necessarily follows that Western Civilization is an offshoot of China. And for 1000s of years it was reasonable for the Chinese to think of themselves as being the center. And now that China is on the rise, why not elide the embarrassments of the last two centuries or so and once again stand firm on that ancient truth?
I am a citizen of a large, rich, technologically advanced country, the remaining superpower, the United State of America. I may not like some of the things this superpower does in my name, I may have complex and ambivalent feelings about this superpower, but the fact that I am a citizen of the USofA is part of my identity and it's a way I think of myself in the world and in history.
What if you’re living in a nation-state that doesn’t have a very prominent place in world affairs, but you’ve got a TV and radio and through them have some sense of the larger world? You know that there’s a world beyond your village, or town, or your neighborhood. How do you relate to that larger world?
Some years ago I published an article about three post-WWII manga by Osamu Tezuka: “Dr. Tezuka’s Ontological Laboratory and the Discovery of Japan”. I argue that in these three manga, published between 1948 and 1951, Tezuka in effect creates a mythology which establishes Japan as a small peace-loving nation mediating between two warring superpowers. Only the third one, Next World, is overtly political. What interested me about these manga is that in them Tezuka reconstructs the whole world, the whole chain of being from top to bottom, thus giving them a science fiction cast. My point was that, as a conceptual device, nationalism pervades one’s world view.
Given that, it’s not so hard to understand what this “World Civilization Research Association” is up to. Standard mythological business. Here’s another Language Log post about these scholar-mythographers.
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