Learning Chinese the Mackay Way: “Repetition, Repetition, Repetition,” What Can Be Accomplished in a Single Year and What Cannot

[[abstract]]George Leslie Mackay's Diaries shed considerable light on his phenomenal life, ministry, and near-instantaneous grasp of Chinese, or Amoy. Is there anything to be learned from his example, Mackay claiming to master the Amoy dialect after only four months and simply by means of repetition, repetition, repetition? Curiously, Mackay credits McGowan's English and Chinese Dictionary of the Amoy Dialect as his text of choice in 1872. However, the grammar in question was not published until 1883, or ten years after the fact. And so, we should take with a grain of salt the idea that Mackay learned Chinese as quickly as he claims. Indeed, both the storyline and timeline borders on the fantastic in more ways than one. One cannot imagine any responsible teacher of Chinese for English Speakers attempting to follow Mackay's example and/or adapt Mackay’s method—oral repetition--to the classroom with any real hope of success. Mackay, like other Christian missionaries at the time, wrote a good deal of missionary propaganda, his Diaries in this instance a mythic representation of the "facts" surrounding his study of Chinese and thus an unrealistic characterization of what can be accomplished in a few months by any earnest Christian hoping to disseminate the Gospel message in late Victorian Formosa. There is no doubt that Mackay mastered the Amoy dialect and how he said he did. However, in response to the issue of how long it really took, his Dairies suggest it was, and as one would expect, a matter of years and not months

A Marriage of Necessity: The Return of Polygamy to Central Asia in the Aftermath of Democratization

[[abstract]]Polygamy has always been a facet of Central Asian family life. It existed prior to the coming of Islam and persisted under the Soviets despite attempts to root it out. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgyzstan) polygamy is on the rise and despite democratic reforms in the region. This paper will survey briefly the history of the region and on-going debate over legalizing polygamy and, indeed, the decriminalization of polygamy in Kazakhstan of late. The case of two polygamous families, one Islamic and one Russian Orthodox, living in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, underscores the argument here that polygamy in Central Asia is largely economic rather than religious in nature and thus a corollary of democratization