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Easier to Make Mistakes in Mandarin?

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16 messages over 2 pages: 1
Lucky Charms
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
lapacifica.net
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 Message 9 of 16
13 March 2012 at 2:15am | IP Logged 
vermillon wrote:
Hasn't Japanse like 46 syllables only? That must be a lot harder than
Mandarin then! ;-)
(Well, I surely do believe that Japanese is harder, but not for that reason)


Japanese makes up for the limited phoneme inventory with long morphemes that are easy to
distinguish (e.g. hajimaru for "to begin"), so there is little issue with homophones in
the native vocabulary. On the other hand, though, the lack of phonemes makes Chinese-
imported vocabulary even more difficult to distinguish than in the original Chinese (e.g.
"kaishi" for "begin", which has even more homophones than in Chinese because it is
stripped of its tones.)
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Ari
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Norway
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Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese
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 Message 10 of 16
13 March 2012 at 6:56am | IP Logged 
I'm not convinced Mandarin has more homophones than English. I'm trying to come up with homophones, and I can only think of a handful.

LaughingChimp wrote:
Can you explain it in more detail? Why do you need two sets of grammar and vocabulary?

Because writing in Hong Kong is generally done in Standard Chinese (aka Mandarin*). There's quite a lot of written Cantonese once you look for it, but one can hardly be considered literate in Cantonese without being able to read Mandarin. This is different from learning Mandarin, though, as Hong Kongers still read it with Cantonese pronunciation, making it a sort of Mandarin-Cantonese hybrid. So you need to learn both the Cantonese word (頭先) and the Mandarin word (剛才), because one will be used in speech and the other in writing. Same thing with grammar.

* Hong Kongers will generally object to it being called Mandarin (國語). They don't see it as such, but as the "written language" (書面語). As evidence, they sometimes point out that northerners have some trouble reading Hong-Kong-style Mandarin. Hong Kongers are wrong and I'm right. It's historically evident that what's being written in Hong Kong is Mandarin, and the differences are so small that I will at most consider the written language of Hong Kong to be a dialect of Mandarin.
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vonPeterhof
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Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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 Message 11 of 16
13 March 2012 at 8:53am | IP Logged 
Superking wrote:
Japanese has 46 kana (times 2 for hiragana and katakana), but modifications to the kana can create a larger number than that. I don't have Japanese installed at work, but for example: There is a kana for the syllable for "ka", but you can create the syllable "kya" using "ki" plus a "ya" printed about half the size, right next to it. Then there are the syllables that can be voiced with the two tick marks written on the side, and the "H" row which can be converted to "B" using the tick marks and "P" using a small circle. On top of that, there's a syllable final "-n" kana that also extends the possible number of syllables.

I have no idea what the number is, but it thankfully turns out to be more than 46, especially considering Japanese's lack of tones to differentiate words.


First of all, in Japanese the concept of the mora is more important than the concept of the syllable. -n is an independent mora, and so are the vowel extensions that turn them into long vowels. The total number of possible morae, reflected by kana, is about 102 (I am not entirely sure if we should include loanword morae like テゥ and ティ, as well as the geminated consonants). Add to that the long vowels, syllables that can be ended with -n, polysyllabic morphemes and tones (yes, Japanese actually does have a tonal system, it's just much less extensive than the Chinese ones), and the number of syllables becomes fairly workable. Still fewer than Mandarin though.
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egill
Diglot
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United States
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 Message 12 of 16
13 March 2012 at 9:28pm | IP Logged 
Ari wrote:
Thanks for your corrections, egill! I haven't studied Hokkien, though I just
got a coworker from Fujian, so maybe I'll try to steal some lessons. I don't want to
hijack the thread, but if you know any good resources, maybe you could message me?

As for the tone changes, Wikipedia says that both the fourth and the eighth tones change
depending on the following syllable.
Wikipedia wrote:

...
If the original tone number is 8 and the final consonant is not h (that is, it is
p, t, or k), pronounce it as tone number 4.
If the original tone number is 8 and the final consonant is h, pronounce it as
tone number 3.
...



Sure Ari, I'll PM you right now. Hokkien is awesome. I can see how the explanation can be
confusing, but actually the quote there not only doesn't mention the tone of the
following syllable, it doesn't even mention the following syllable at all. When it says
it depends on the final consonant, it means the final consonant of the same syllable.

For example in the word Pe̍h-ōe-jī (白話字), the h [ʔ] in pe̍h is the final consonant. Pe̍h
is tone eight, which must have a final consonant of either p,t,k, or h. So had it p,t, or
k it would go to tone four. However since it does end in h it goes to tone three instead.
The change is conditioned solely on its consonant ending and position in the utterance,
and not dependent on the following syllable at all.
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vermillon
Triglot
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United Kingdom
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 Message 13 of 16
13 March 2012 at 10:12pm | IP Logged 
egill wrote:
Sure Ari, I'll PM you right now. Hokkien is awesome.


Actually, if you don't mind, I would like to know about it too, because until now I haven't been able to find good resources to learn it. I wouldn't mind a PM as well :-)
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egill
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: Mandarin, English*
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 Message 14 of 16
14 March 2012 at 1:03am | IP Logged 
vermillon wrote:
egill wrote:
Sure Ari, I'll PM you right now. Hokkien is awesome.


Actually, if you don't mind, I would like to know about it too, because until now I
haven't been able to find good resources to learn it. I wouldn't mind a PM as well :-)


Sure, done.
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OneEye
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
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Speaks: English*, Mandarin
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 Message 15 of 16
26 March 2012 at 7:30pm | IP Logged 
Ooh, ooh, me too! I'm not learning 台語 yet, but in the foreseeable future I plan to!
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Ari
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Norway
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Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese
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 Message 16 of 16
27 March 2012 at 7:06am | IP Logged 
Man, we could get a Taiwanese study group going here! Unfortunately, I'm not sure I'm ready to start studying it right now, but I'm getting more and more eager to! If I could just get my Cantonese and Mandarin up to the high level I want them on, I'd totally dive into Taiwanese.


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