I’m sitting in my kitchen in London, trying to figure out a text message from my brother. He lives in our home country of Germany. We speak German to each other, a language that's rich in strange words, but I've never heard this one before: fremdschämen.

The experience gets me to consider: can we lose our mother language? Most immigrants (移民)know what it’s like to be not as good at their mother language as before. The process seems obvious: the longer you are away, the more your language suffers. But it’s not quite so straightforward. It turns out that how long you've been away doesn't always matter. Socializing with other native speakers abroad can worsen your own native skills. And emotional factors like trauma(精神创伤) can be the biggest factor of all.

In children, the phenomenon of language attrition (语言磨蚀)is somewhat easier to explain since their brains are generally more flexible and adaptable. Until the age of about 12, a person’s language skills are relatively easy to change. Studies on international adopters have found that even nine-year-olds can almost completely forget their first language when they are removed from their country of birth.

But in adults, the first language is unlikely to disappear entirely except in extreme circumstances. For example, Monika Schmid analyzed the German of elderly German-Jewish wartime refugees(难民) in the UK and the US. The main factor that influenced their language skills wasn't how long they had been abroad or how old they were when they left. It was how much trauma they had experienced as victims. Those who left Germany in the early days of Nazi occupation, before the worst violence, tended to speak better German – despite having been abroad the longest. Those who left later, tended to speak German with difficulty or not at all.

“It seemed very clearly a result of this trauma”, says Schmid. “Even though German was the language of childhood, home and family, it was also the language of painful memories”. The most traumatized refugees had held them back. As one of them said: “I feel that Germany betrayed me. America is my country, and English is my language.”

“I love China,” declared Boris Johnson, then mayor of London, in 2013, encouraging British children, his own included, to study Chinese. Seven years on, the popularity of studying Chinese seems to be fading in England.

Well-to-do parents saw Chinese as a good investment in their children’s future. In 2015 Hatching Dragons, Britain’s first bilingual English-Chinese nursery, opened its doors to 32 little learners; it has since taught over 500 children, for around £1,881 a month per child.

But Cennydd John, the nursery’s chief executive, feels sorry that there is “almost no option” for children to continue their bilingual education once they leave at the age of five. Fewer than 3% of primary schools in England offer Chinese.

Many independent schools followed the fashion: 24% of them offer Chinese, compared with 4.4% in state schools. But finding a school that offers Chinese is no longer the priority it was for parents three years ago, says Ralph Lucas, editor in chief of The Good Schools Guide. Part of the reason is that “the perception of China as a place where you would want your child to make a career has taken a severe knock”. Learning Chinese to a useful level is difficult.

That shift shows up in exam figures. In 2015, 3,099 students took a Chinese A-level. In 2019 those figures had dropped to 2,272 for A-level, according to the Joint Council for Qualifications.

Advocates of learning Chinese say that a more complex situation is exactly why children should be practicing their tones. But those who have invested the hours (and the cash) don’t always reap the rewards. “The only real advantage of me speaking Chinese was having a much better understanding of how difficult it was for my Chinese colleagues to operate in English,” says Alex Wilson, who worked in public relations in Beijing and Shanghai.

Chinese culture is over 5,000 years old. 【小题1】

The spirit of the tea ceremony

Xihu Longjing and Yunnan Pu’er have long been world famous. 【小题2】 The spirit of the Chinese tea ceremony captures the Chinese attitude toward life and spirituality. These are the things that people all over the world can benefit from.

A handful of good tea leaves with some boiling water and a set of lovely teaware is the perfect way to spend a sunny afternoon and gain some insight into the wisdom of this ancient civilisation.

【小题3】

During the 5,000 years of Chinese civilisation, many different flavours, styles, and cuisine (烹饪) have developed based on traditional philosophy and culture. This ancient food culture has had a direct impact on the countries, such as Japan, Mongolia, South Korea, Thailand, and Singapore. It has benefited billions of people around the world through such innovations as Chinese vegetarian culture, tea culture, vinegar, pasta, medicated diets, ceramic tableware, and the use of soybeans in the diet.

Confucianism(儒学)

Confucianism has flourished during the last 2,500 years of China’s 5,000-year history. 【小题4】 This school of thought has had the most profound and long-lasting influence in China’s history. Seventy-four Nobel Prize winners and many other highly respected scholars have stated that for the benefit of mankind’s livelihood and development into the next century, these teachings should be promoted and adopted worldwide. 【小题5】