lindseylbb Bilingual Triglot Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4933 days ago 92 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean
| Message 25 of 32 08 March 2012 at 5:05pm | IP Logged |
Longer than "half" that if counted from chin but shorten than that if remove those "ununited" in between. I was thinking about the invention of characters when I typed that......Sorry for that. From my limited history knowledge, I want to point out that even in those ununited time, union was a eternal dream. they just lack of capacity to do that.
Edited by lindseylbb on 08 March 2012 at 5:44pm
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Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German
| Message 26 of 32 08 March 2012 at 8:10pm | IP Logged |
^ But before the Qin, the writing system wasn't unified. Qin Shihuang standardized the writing system of all his
conquered territories by burning all the books written in the wrong characters and killing all the scholars who took
issue with that.
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HenryMW Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5175 days ago 125 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French Studies: Modern Hebrew
| Message 27 of 32 08 March 2012 at 11:18pm | IP Logged |
Wow. That's such a big loss. Did they at least keep the old characters around for
historical purposes?
Edited by HenryMW on 09 March 2012 at 12:01am
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egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5697 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 28 of 32 09 March 2012 at 1:10am | IP Logged |
HenryMW wrote:
Wow. That's such a big loss. Did they at least keep the old characters around for
historical purposes? |
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I don't know how common they are, but there are of course archæological remains—most notably:
Sword of Guojian
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lindseylbb Bilingual Triglot Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4933 days ago 92 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean
| Message 29 of 32 09 March 2012 at 5:47am | IP Logged |
Do better search, Ari. First, 书同文(union of script)and 焚书坑儒(burn books of different philosophies, while having copies in the government, and bury fellows of confucian ) were two different things, with different purpose and different actions. Second, there are debates on whenand how exactly 书同文 occured. I should have said it's the dependence on characters which conbine largely with meanings, instead of phonics made us together. Chinese speeches, as you may know, vary a lot. So there are talks that how to define languages and dialects should be different because westerners dont understand how our system works and their system doesn't fit us etc etc. Not my opinion.
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JasonYin Newbie China Joined 4645 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes
| Message 30 of 32 09 March 2012 at 9:14am | IP Logged |
haha maybe
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nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean
| Message 31 of 32 09 March 2012 at 4:52pm | IP Logged |
lindseylbb wrote:
westerners dont understand how our system works |
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I'm pretty sure there are quite a few Westerners who do. It's not some "mystery" to Western Sinologists.
lindseylbb wrote:
and their system doesn't fit us etc etc. Not my opinion. |
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The concept of an alphabetic system is not "Western", unless you consider Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Iran, and the Arab world to be part of the "West".
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LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech*
| Message 32 of 32 13 March 2012 at 1:02am | IP Logged |
lindseylbb wrote:
I should have said it's the dependence on characters which conbine largely with meanings, instead of phonics made us together. Chinese speeches, as you may know, vary a lot. So there are talks that how to define languages and dialects should be different because westerners dont understand how our system works and their system doesn't fit us etc etc. Not my opinion. |
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You still need Mandarin grammar and vocabulary in order to read and write. So you don't have to learn the pronunciation, but otherwise it's not different from learning any other language.
Chinese has many sounds*, but that's nothing that can't be solved, even languages with more sounds use alphabets.
*I dont know how native speakers hear it, but it seems to me that there are more sounds than pinyin letters.
Edited by LaughingChimp on 13 March 2012 at 1:07am
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