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Chinese characters in jpns and chns | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 17 of 70 18 March 2010 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Just learned ANOTHER reading of 生, "ubu" from the name 生方幸夫 (Ubukata Yukio).That must be the 10th reading I've learned for that character. There's probably another 5 readings waiting somewhere out there for me too. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7182 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 18 of 70 19 March 2010 at 3:13am | IP Logged | |||||
Prof. Arguelles, Is a great language learner, I like watching his videos on You tube and his posts are often rich with details that can help all of us aspiring polyglots. However, while I think you can say 'x' part of Korean is harder than Chinese or Japanese, overall it just can't hang there with Chinese or Japanese. Well that is, until it gets rid of that nasty phonetic script, that makes learning to read and write Korean a breeze and reinstates its character system. When this happens, Korean can 'hang' with it's bigger, unwieldy and more abstract cousins (Chinese and Japanese). I remember reading the whole J+C+K debate where Prof. Arguelles stated Korean was the most difficult! I honestly felt it was a bit like the 'emperors new clothes'. Suddenly the debate was settled the king of the polyglots word was gospel. But of course Prof. Arguelles like the rest of us has his bias, he invested his time in an extremely difficult language that is Korean. If there was an Olympic language games, for native speakers of English, Korean would definitely be on the winners podium. However, Korean would have a lot of company and standing on the podium would be cramped as other competitors like Arabic, Mongolian, Thai (add any difficult but don't use character language) all squeeze onto the same spot receive their big collective BRONZE! Edited by delectric on 19 March 2010 at 3:15am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5465 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 19 of 70 19 March 2010 at 3:56am | IP Logged | |||||
Hmm, I can only think of four offhand - "nama", "i" for 生きる, "sei" for 生成, and "shou" for 生じる... Guess I'll never be done learning them. And to Pyx, sorry I got a bit uppity with you - I guess we all feel a bit defensive about "our" languages! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5736 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 20 of 70 19 March 2010 at 4:08am | IP Logged | |||||
That's alright, it's an emotional topic! ;) It's nice of you to say that though! No hard feelings :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6295 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 21 of 70 19 March 2010 at 4:25am | IP Logged | |||||
Try reading serious academic texts in Korean without knowing Chinese characters and then let's talk. Or, since you speak Mandarin, pop into the academic reference book section of the bookstore if you are ever in Korea and be amazed at how much you can read without knowing Korean. Edited by jimbo on 19 March 2010 at 4:28am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7182 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 22 of 70 19 March 2010 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Exactly Jimbo!
The 'old' Korean is difficult because it's like Chinese. It's precisely these characters that made Korean so difficult and why it was done away with. Certainly the swarms of Korean students in Beijing that I've met know very few characters before coming here to China. Learning thousands of Chinese characters just isn't a standard for being fluent in Korean any more. Ancient Chinese is notoriously difficult but nobody would claim that you need to know Ancient Chinese to be fluent in reading, writing, speaking or listening. Out of interest what language did you learn first Korean or Chinese, did you find one language helped you a lot with the other? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 23 of 70 19 March 2010 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know about that. With Japanese I'm at the stage where characters don't really pose a problem anymore but lack of vocabulary does. And I can say that already at this point I've spent at least 5x as much time learning vocabulary than learning characters. So in the grand scheme of learning Japanese to a high level I can't really say that characters have been much of a problem. Although at the beginning and early intermediate stages they certainly were awfully difficult to deal with. IMO characters are a large barrier for getting into the language, but once you have gotten over that barrier, learning Japanese/Chinese/Korean(with hanja) is just like learning any other language that is not related to your own language: a gruelling battle with tens of thousands of vocabulary. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 24 of 70 19 March 2010 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Here's a few more off the top of my head: 生地 きじ 芝生 しばふ 生い立ち おいたち 生む うむ Maybe うぶ is only the 9th reading that I've learned -.- 1 person has voted this message useful |
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