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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6301 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 49 of 80 16 September 2009 at 2:49am | IP Logged | |||||
Don't forget the upside of learning the characters --> just learn another way to pronounce them and you have lots of vocabulary help in Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and the major Chinese "dialects" (Cantonese, Wu, Min Nan (Taiwanese), Gan, Hakka, etc.). Oh, and the thousands of years of history, poetry, science, travel writing.... Sure characters can be a pain to learn and are easy to forget how to write. I've started to appreciate them more now that I'm trying to teach myself Latin. Let's take the the conjugation of "to be" as an example: sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt. Is is more difficult to learn one Chinese character or that lot? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Z.J.J Senior Member China Joined 5615 days ago 243 posts - 305 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 50 of 80 16 September 2009 at 6:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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If the character system were a car, then the latinisation would be a wheelbarrow. Honestly, it's no exaggeration to say that, without the assistance of characters, the Chinese system that written in Latin alphabet, for either classical or so-called modern Chinese, would mostly be a confused mass of illegible or inefficient rubbish texts. Let's do an experiment to prove my point, please pick 3 Chinese books at random, and completely convert them into latinised texts, then show your achievements to native Chinese or foreign learners who're proficient in Mandarin, and listen carefully to what they think about it. In this case, it's more than likely you'll comprehend why Chinese can never, on any account, be entirely latinised. Actions speak louder than words.
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| munkala Newbie Joined 5558 days ago 10 posts - 9 votes | Message 51 of 80 16 September 2009 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree not all works can be converted to PinYin and still make sense due to the heavy use of monosyllabic homonyms and formal styles. But most of us do not converse in monosyllic homonyms. If we did, then we would never be able to communicate orally and make sense. Couldn't we just write like the way we speak? After all, we don't "see" the characters when we are speaking colloquially and yet we still understand one another.
Off topic. Let's say we were to develop a written vernacular for Wenzhou hua (Zhejiang province) would it be better to start with characters or western alphabets? And the Wenzhou words that are not cognates of Mandarin, do we have to create new characters? Edited by munkala on 16 September 2009 at 2:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5772 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 52 of 80 16 September 2009 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
In this case, several solutions exist. Take Taiwanese lâng (human) for example 1) Han-Roman style 2) Usually a corresponding character exists for dialectical words, though it's not in use in Modern Standard Mandarin. (the "original character") -> Taiwanese lâng becomes 儂 3) Use a pan-Chinese glyph to record the meaning of a sound. -> Taiwanese lâng becomes 人 4) Use a pan-Chinese homophone -> 郎, for example 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6857 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 53 of 80 16 September 2009 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
We're not talking about conversing here. We're talking about writing. It sounds like you're advocating using pinyin for colloquial written communication and characters for formal, literary, and academic writing. What's the point? The majority of the written language is in a higher register than day to day conversation in the first place, so most of the written material would still be in hanzi.
The Taiwanese example is a good one. Also see how the Japanese use kanji. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6323 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 54 of 80 16 September 2009 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
No he wasn't: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afaVjLlnUtQ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| munkala Newbie Joined 5558 days ago 10 posts - 9 votes | Message 55 of 80 17 September 2009 at 12:57am | IP Logged | |||||
Interesting. So many conflicting reports. Other journalists who have interviewed him have said he was so pissed off about the communists not abandoning the characters and was the reason it took him so long to return back to China. And in some of his books, he seems so pro-latinization. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Z.J.J Senior Member China Joined 5615 days ago 243 posts - 305 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 56 of 80 17 September 2009 at 5:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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In fact, I don't fully understand why 人 must be written as 儂 in Minnanese, formally, 人 is the correct original character while 儂 informally means "person" too in Minnanese, and it also means "I" (as well as "you" in modern style) in Wunese. No matter how it should be pronounced (文讀 or 白讀), the written form is always supposed to use original characters that can express their meanings accurately. For example, in Cantonese, (佢俾本書我), if you know what 渠 & 畀 exactly mean in classical Chinese, you won't choose the borrowed homophone 佢 & 俾 any more, and probably will turn to write (渠畀本書我). So, as a native Chinese, I'm strongly against "homophone substitutions" that almost have nothing to do with their origins (classical Chinese) or contexts. In some dialects such as Minnanese, Cantonese and Wunese, there are plenty of non-standard characters which should be all replaced by their original characters. Incidentally, I sincerely hope you can understand what I'm saying. The real soul of Chinese is the characters themselves, instead of various pronunciation of Chinese dialects, maybe the first step in learning Chinese is to understand this relative truth little by little.
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