|
 |
Chinese cannot be Latinised ! | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5765 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 17 of 77 14 July 2009 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||
No, you lose popularly-accessible morpheme analysis, which is the key between learned Chinese and popular Chinese. Romanization of Vietnamese is doable, because Vietnamese has more tones and more complex syllable structure than Mandarin, still permitting a meaning-attribution to individual syllables. Korea... They are revising the Chinese vocabulary to a more word-by-word basis, a revising that, if happened to Chinese, many Chinese won't be too fond to see. Edited by minus273 on 14 July 2009 at 12:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5765 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 18 of 77 14 July 2009 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Anyway, as a Chinese myself, I don't wish to lose the capacity to coin Wenyan-sounding compounds in writing. If they don't continue the regime of Chinese characters and Classical Chinese education, latter generations will not understand my writings. For my personal comfort, yes, Chinese characters must survive.
The DeFrancis book is well-written, indeed. But he calls for another written language for Chinese, where the main point lies. Edited by minus273 on 14 July 2009 at 12:56pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5735 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 19 of 77 14 July 2009 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | ||
|
minus273, you are right of course, there are obviously downsides to it, but I find the upsides, an enormous increase in literacy for instance, the gain in time for everybody that otherwise would have to learn characters, the increased flexibility of the written language, and so on, well worth the loss.
Actually, as a learner of Chinese, less Wenyan writing would count as an upside to me too, personal comfort speaking ;) ps: only now saw your note about the book. You're right, you would have to write Chinese differently without characters. It would be impossible to convert them one to one. But again, that's a small price to pay in my opinion. I generally think that the written language shouldn't divert too much from the spoken one, but that's another story ;) Edited by Pyx on 14 July 2009 at 1:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5765 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 20 of 77 14 July 2009 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | ||
Another route would be changing the official language to a phonologically more complex one. If the standard language is Vietnamese-pronounced Chinese, we can even write Wényán romanized! This is the route taken by the Germans, actually. They picked up a kind of pan-German language with distinction-making features taken from a variety of dialects. Edited by minus273 on 14 July 2009 at 1:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Linguistics Diglot Groupie Finland Joined 5628 days ago 59 posts - 62 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: German, Finnish | Message 21 of 77 14 July 2009 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I'd like to know who started to learn Chinese for its "simplicity". Anyone?
Well, people's literacy has nothing to do with the "difficulty" of a language, but a nation's education system. Actually, the "complicated" bits of a language can be called as "art". You will have to collect enough knowledge in order to enjoy and appreciate that "art" part. What do you think makes Chinese language so attractive? Its simple grammar or simple Pinyin? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gaa1gaa1 Newbie China Joined 5614 days ago 30 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 22 of 77 14 July 2009 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Mandarin Tones(as follows): Let me write something in Latin alphabet with related tones.
ā(1), á(2), ǎ(3), à(4), a(5). bai2 hua4 wen2, yi4 cheng1 zuo4 yu3 ti3 wen2, shi4 zhi3 yi3 min2 guo2 guan1 hua4 wei2 ji1 chu3, jing1 guo4 jia1 gong1 de5 shu1 mian4 yu3. bai2 hua4 wen2 yun4 dong4 yi3 hou4, bai2 hua4 wen2 cai2 qu3 dai4 le5 wen2 yan2, cheng2 wei2 xie3 zuo4 de5 zhu3 liu2, zhi4 shi3 wen2 yan2 zhu2 jian4 tui4 chu1 le5 li4 shi3 wu3 tai2. The sentences above aren't classical Chinese(ancient Chinese), they're simple modern Mandarin, if you can understand what I typed, then it proves the possibility of changing characters into Latin alphabet with tones' remarks, to tell the truth, I believe that most Chinese people don't like the Chinese writing system to be as awful as this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gaa1gaa1 Newbie China Joined 5614 days ago 30 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 24 of 77 14 July 2009 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Chinese Character Classification (liùshū) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificatio n Edited by gaa1gaa1 on 14 July 2009 at 2:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
