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Chinese characters - inefficient? | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7187 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes  7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 81 of 132 16 December 2009 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | ||
Exactly, and that I feel is what unites China linguistically. That the majority of all writing is done in a common language, Standard Chinese. The characters themselves do not create this unification. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| xiongshi7 Newbie United States Joined 4945 days ago 21 posts - 25 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 82 of 132 17 May 2011 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
Hanzi is the uniform means of written communication throughout China, regardless of the dialect an individual speaks. Therefore, someone who is Cantonese can effectively communicate by means of hanzi with someone who speaks Mandarin, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5700 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 83 of 132 17 May 2011 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, but only because they're both literate in Standard Chinese, which only incidentally happens to be written in hanzi. I don't deny that it is also a great help but the mutual intelligibility is definitely not because of the hanzi. This is especially true with topolects that are further away from Mandarin than Yue, e.g. Min. Were one to actually write Min down, making up characters or using POJ for ones that don't exist, I think one would have a hard time understanding. If you want to argue that that's still "effectively communicating" then I can only say that's not really that impressive. A Spanish speaker and a French speaker can effectively communicate with each other in this limited sense. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ichiro Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6213 days ago 111 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Malay | Message 84 of 132 19 May 2011 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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But how would you write your Standard Chinese, if not in the characters?
If it were written in an alphabetic script, the Minnan speaker's spelling of a 'Standard Chinese' word in the way they recognised to say it, would differ from the Shanghainese speaker's, would differ from the north Chinesian's. Whichever pronunciation / spelling you standardised on would be like learning a different language for the other groups. Which it isn't at the moment, because everyone understands the hanzi, the basic core at least, even if local languages have extra ones for their own speech. Hanzi are inseparable from all these different language groups having a common written language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Player01 Newbie Canada Joined 5044 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes | Message 85 of 132 19 May 2011 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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If the question is about whether characters can be replaced by pinyin as a system to record speech then yes. Linguistically all natural languages can be recorded in phonetic form.
If the question is about whether characters should be replaced by pinyin as a system to record speech then no. All the materials published in characters and the masses who are costumed to reading in characters will need a long and expensive transition. Changing to Hanyu Pinyin will also result in instability. The most practical approach would be digraphia. - - - - - @Ichiro Think of it in this way, You live in a world where Mandarin topolect doesn't exist and China has no official language yet. You're born in Shanghai and you don't speak any topolects or dialects other than Shanghainese. Then one day the government decides to make Cantonese the official language of China. The standard texts in Characters are now based on Cantonese Vernacular. Do you think you can still understand the contents correctly? The fact that the majority of Chinese can understand Characters is because they're trained to read characters base on the grammar, vocabs, and structure of the official language. By the way, the "advantages" of characters are actually disadvantages. For example, humans have to think in at least one language in order to "think". But most native Cantonese speakers think in Cantonese even when they are reading written vernacular Putonghua. This is probably due to the fact that both Cantonese and Putonghua use the same script and speakers will automatically choose a speech more fluent to think. Although this isn't a bad thing it can really slow down the progress of learning the common speech among them. Examples English: How much is this? Shanghainese: 几钿? Cantonese: 呢個幾蚊呀？ Mandarin: 这个多少钱？ English: I'm not feeling well. Shanghainese: 我有眼勿适意. Cantonese: 我有啲唔舒服。 Mandarin: 我有些不舒服。 Englsih: Please don't eat the chocolate in my house! Cantonese: 唔該你唔好食我屋企啲朱古力！ Mandarin: 请你不要吃我家的巧克力！ Resource: http://www.omniglot.com/index.htm http://www.wikipedia.org/ Edited by Player01 on 19 May 2011 at 8:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6586 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 86 of 132 20 May 2011 at 7:41am | IP Logged | ||
While I suppose it's technically correct, it sounds to me a bit like "How many dollars does this cost?". In my experience, everyone says "幾钱呀?" 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ichiro Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6213 days ago 111 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Malay | Message 87 of 132 21 May 2011 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
No, that would be very hard. However, we don't live in that world. I think that when Shanghainese see standard Chinese written down they are able to read it because they recognise the characters. If they vocalise them, they can vocalise with Shanghainese pronunciation. If standard Chinese were written in an alphabetic script, it would have to be in some dialect - say Mandarin - which doesn't match Shanghainese at all. And that would have to be learnt like a foreign language, ergo not be any kind of standard Chinese at all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 88 of 132 21 May 2011 at 11:04am | IP Logged | ||
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For me, learning Chinese characters is great fun.
Yesterday I came across two new characters, and ... I have guessed how do you read it! 趔趄 I am sure it has something to do with movement. I cannot guess the tone though. I think if you know the radicals learning new words is easier if you sue Chinese characters, you have more to learn, but it's more vivid, and you have something like mnemonics to help you remember the pronunciation! When am I learning Vietnamese I am trying to find the characters behind the script, because it makes it easier to remember. I am talking only about Chinese loanwords. Moreover the Chinese characters make you use less paper! Harry Potter and Sorcerer's stone in Chinese has only 200 pages! But you have to remember how to learn the characters, start with the most simple ones, and the rest will be like a walk in the park. When learning Japanese I even learn non standard characters. Simply because I like it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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