What are the characteristics of Chinese grammar compared with the grammars of the Indo-European languages and the the
grammar of the Japanese which is quite similar to the Chinese? Briefly speaking, the biggest one is that Chinese uses word order and functional words ( e.g. prepositions and adverbs, etc.) to realize grammatical functions. In this sense, there are only two kinds of languages in the world: Chinese ( and its subsidiary branches) and other languages.

What is interesting is that English is the most approaching language to Chinese among those which don't belong to the Chinese family. Modern English also depends on word order and functional words to realize grammatical functions. Compared with other European languages, There are much fewer changes in the English "case" and suffixes. The early English was different. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes spoke one (or three) German. The history of English language began from 600. Before that was pre-history period. From 600 to 1100 was called Old English period. English at that time was a kind of German with many changes of cases and suffixes. For example, there were three forms of numerals, besides single and plural there were double or binary forms. Old English nouns had four cases and three genders, adjectives had five cases and verbs had twelve forms. The word orders of Old English were more casual than modern English. While in modern English, nouns have only two cases and there exists no gender for nouns and no cases for adjectives, and there remains only four forms for verbs. The evolution of English began from Old English period and became more evident in the Middle English.

From 1100 to 1450 is called Middle English period. During this period, there happened a very important event: Norman Conquest. The French conquered England for more than 300 years and the upper class society fawn on speaking French. French became the mode and even the names were given in French ways. This was also the case in the upper class  in China when it was conquered by the Europeans and Japanese. While in the lower class society, people didn't need or have the asset to learn the language or the French styles. They still spoke English. Therefore, in spite of 300 years' French Conquest, English wasn't assimilated into French. When the French receded, there remained only many French words. As for the English grammar, There was no French assimilation at all. But English grammar changed tremendously during this period and from then on English was separated from the German origin. Compared with the Old English, in the Changed English, there was a huge reduction in the changes of "case" and suffixes. It depends more on the word order and functional words. We know, both French and German depend on large amount of changes in "case" and suffixes. English survived the historical surroundings of German and French and developed in a different direction. It is really worthy of studying. But whatever the reason is, all the change makes English grammar more like that of Chinese. We may say that the change of English during this period is a process of chinesization. In fact, English is chinesized from German.

This chinesization extended to pronunciation in Early Modern English (1400--1600). The main change is the suffix '-e' was no longer pronounced. For example, in modern English, name is pronounced as [neim], while before it was pronounced as [neimi]. That is to say, the disyllabic word became monosyllabic word. And monosyllable is an exact characteristic of Chinese pronunciation. Thus this change in English pronunciation can be regarded as chinesization.

Concerning this change of English during the Middle English period, it is surely not accepted as chinesization in the western world. As for the reasons, the western historians ambiguously explain that it is due to the influence of the Norman Conquest. As far as this is concerned, it is not logical, as explained previously, because English didn't change along the direction of French.  Besides the change of English grammar began in the Old English. How did the chinesization of English begin then? Here two hypotheses are put forward to explain the reasons of the changes in English.

The first hypothesis is that the changes in English happened under the direct influence of Chinese. The civilization of English people began from 600. In China at that time it was Tang Dynasty, when the volume of communication of Silk Road reached the summit. Through the Silk Road, it was possible that what was exported was not only silk, but also Chinese books, teaching methods and even teachers. During the hundreds of years of Tang Dynasty, there must have been many westerners who came to China to study and then went back. This cultural export very likely reached England and led to the chinesization of English later on. If someone asks why this did not lead to chinesization in Germany or France or other countries who are nearer to China. It perhaps has something to do with that England is an island. there were much fewer people there and the changes in the language were much easier to be understood and finally accepted and thus new linguistics rules were generally recognized. Therefore the language of the island people could easily be changed. On the contrary, it is much more difficult to form new and generally accepted linguistic rules in the densely populated and geographically large continent. Thus the language changed comparatively more slowly. The eastern island country, Japan, was influenced by the Chinese civilization and accepted Chinese. It may also have something to do with the geographical setting. The result was that the eastern island people imported Chinese and kept a grammar which is different from Chinese; while the western island people imported Chinese grammar and kept its own writing. They reached the same result by different approaches.

It is a normal process of language evolution that the languages of the two island people were half chinesized. The evolution of a language can only be a gradual process. If permitted, the chinesization of the two island languages might continue. However there did not exist the historical condition that might lead to such a result. On the one hand, there was the traffic difficulty. On the east is the sea. In the Tang Dynasty, Mosque Jian Zhen swore to go to Japan and failed till the the seventh time. So the trip was really very dangerous. The English Straight is not so wide and not so difficult to get across, but from China, there is hundreds and thousands of miles to go there and there were robbers and dangerous animals on the road too. The trip was just like that described in the book "Western Trip" which was more dangerous. On the other hand, there was the decline of Tang Dynasty. The prosperous period of Tang lasted for only more than a hundred years. From then on, china began to be on the wane and have no more ability to export culture till Qing Dynasty which contributed greatly to the development of China. It extended its territory to to a much larger expand than that of Tang Dynasty and left to the Chinese people a large living space just before the world entered the modern society and thus maintained the Chinese civilization. However the Chinese culture did not resume its glory. Suppose that glorious Tang Dynasty had lasted another 300 years, Japanese might have been completely chinesized. English people lived much further away and might have needed 500 years, and with the Chinese books continuously transported to the island, English might also have been completely chinesized.

Another hypothesis here is that the chinesization of English was not influenced by the Chinese language but the result of a self-evolution. In such a historical social background, English evoluted to the direction of chinese. We can only attribute this to that compared to the other languages such as German, Chinese grammar fits better human thinking and it is more flexible, expressive and efficient.

Whatever is the reason, the chinesization of English is a historical fact. However the chinesization of English grammar was not complete. In modern English there still exist some changes of suffixes. Here are some example to illustrate the difficulties led by these remaining old grammar. E.g. when you hear some birds singing in the tree outside your windows, you can get the Chinese expression:"". In Chinese this is a concise and complete expression. While in English, the expression becomes more troublesome: " There is a bird on the tree." or " There are birds on the tree.". In either case, we should be clear whether there is one bird or more than one on the tree. If this information is important to you, you may go to count and get the number. but in most cases, we do not care the exact number. Even though we know this kind of information, it's not necessary to say it and what's more, sometimes we have no way to know. Besides, if there are more than one tree outside the window, in English, there will be: "There are birds on the tree." and " There are birds on the trees.". If you want to express yourself exactly, you need not only to count the birds, but also to know whether the birds are on the same tree or on different trees. How troublesome! The cause of the problem resides on the remaining of suffix changes in English. So we can see the advantage of Chinese grammar. This kind of suffix changes appear to be helpful in precise expressions, but in reality the more the suffix changes, the less efficient the language.

It is really a pity that the prosperous Tang did not last longer. Otherwise English would have more been chinesized and thus there would have been no more such problems as appeared in the above example. The further chinesized English  would have been like this: when we know there are some birds on the tree but don't know the exact number or don't want to express the number, we might say:" There be bird on the tree.". When we know that there is a bird in the tree and want to tell others that there is only one bird, we might say:" There be a bird on the tree.". When we know there are more than one bird on the tree and want to tell others about the exact number, we might say:" There be two bird on the tree." or "There be three bird on the tree." or " There be some (many, etc.) bird on the tree.". If the suffix changes concerning numbers were deleted, the  English expressive capability would not at all deduced. Therefore we may say that the English suffix changes are unnecessary or at least there are more disadvantages that advantages.

Generally speaking, English (German and French, etc.) has no problem in describing concrete things, but is very difficult in expressing  abstract things. Besides the trouble of "number" as in the above example, there are also problem in "tense" and even "gender" (as that in German and French). In logic, it is very difficult to choose a suitable "tense" for an abstract event or to decide a correct "gender" for an abstract thing. Thus we can infer that the Chinese grammar is more helpful to abstract thinking. And abstract thinking appears not only in sciences but also in arts.

Chinese does not change the suffixes because of number or tenses, etc. To put it in C++ (a computer language), it is a kind of Overload. Overload is one of the two features of C++ ( another feature is Class ). Overload means that a function or a mathematical symbol has more than one different meanings and the computer define their meanings according to the context in executing them. Here "context", in C++, includes the type, number, order, etc. of variables. In the above example "" the "", when there is one bird, it equals "is"; when there are many birds, it equals "are". As far as tenses are concerned, it, in fact, overload four meanings: "is", "are", "was" and "were". The advantage of such an overloading is, as in C++, that the language becomes more flexible and more efficient. Without overload, before using a variable, a computer language must check the type and number of the variables so as to find the corresponding variable. similarly, English, without overload, must first count the number of the birds and then create logically and grammatically correct sentences. While Chinese, with overload, can create correct sentences without counting the the birds beforehand. This is exactly advantage of the Chinese grammar. The overload of C++ is in a small sense, while a natural language includes much wider sense, because the "context" as mentioned above is more variable. We may understand it in this way: the same sentence may have quite different meanings in different time, situation and place, etc. This is in reality wide-sense overload. It is just because of overload that the languages appear to be lively and rich in connotation. By the way, the other feature of C++ --- Class, in fact is one feature of Chinese too. Because of the limit of this paper, it will not be dealt with here.