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Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| seldnar Senior Member United States Joined 7132 days ago 189 posts - 287 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek | Message 9 of 57 03 November 2010 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, but unnatural in that it is purposely constructed to have [edited to add missing
verb] only the four different sounds: shi1, shi2, shi3,and shi4. It's a tongue twister. Edited by seldnar on 03 November 2010 at 1:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 10 of 57 04 November 2010 at 12:24am | IP Logged | ||
Well, first of all, that story is not written in Mandarin, but in Classical Chinese. Second, here's why English is difficult: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo. Or maybe this one: John while Jack had had had had had had had. Had had had had a better effect on the teacher. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5696 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 11 of 57 04 November 2010 at 4:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Don't forget:
That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is. Clearly English needs a character based orthography. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5574 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 12 of 57 04 November 2010 at 6:12am | IP Logged | ||
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The article did strike a chord with me, but I think it's a bit extreme. Learning the characters is difficult, but it's not appropriate to compare with learning the few dozen characters of a alphabet script. Most of the article seems hung up on "the characters are hard" which is true, but a more accurate story would not be "Chinese is hard", but "the process of learning Chinese is different from learning other language and you have to adapt." But it sounds like in this case the author and his graduate student friends did not adapt.
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| seldnar Senior Member United States Joined 7132 days ago 189 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek | Message 13 of 57 04 November 2010 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I can't say if the author "adapted" or not, but he did go on to to lecture at
Beijing University and work for China Central Television. And some of his graduate student friends are now professors who I'm sure play the same game of trying to guess the contents of a book just from the title. What one needs to remember about the article is that it is funny--its not meant to be a serious expose of how Chinese is inherently difficult. Its written for insiders-- (recall that it was published in a sinological journal for fellow sinologists honoring a very well respected Chinese linguist, John DeFrancis--I'm sure Victor Mair included it in the issue because he thought his readership would find it enjoyable; they wouldn't grumble and say "that's right! Chinese is too damn hard" but they would recall with some amusement situations similar to the ones the author descirbes). My fellow graduate students and I have all smiled as we've read the article. The situations he describes are familiar to us all. Its just a funny article about the peculiarities of learning Chinese written for other Chinese scholars. Speaking of funny articles about learning Chinese: In the 1960s Eiling Eide began his article on reform in teaching classical Chinese by comparing it to how boys of earlier generations learned about sex--from rumors on the street that they would share with their friends and together try to figure it out; because, of course, you could never ask an older boy and expose your ignorance of such a thing. ROFL. He described it much better than I can. It hasn't changed all that much. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gabungry Newbie United States gabungry.blogspot.co Joined 5133 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes | Message 14 of 57 05 November 2010 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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That was a great article. As someone who's just begun learning Mandarin, it really struck a chord. Here's a first-hand account at a beginner's attempt, you might find it amusing:
http://gabungry.blogspot.com/2010/11/microphone-agrees.html 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5693 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 15 of 57 06 November 2010 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
Haha, I love it! I would probably respond just the way you did in the "microphone agrees" situation. It's just such a relief when you DO get a joke in the target language, y'know? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6050 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 16 of 57 06 November 2010 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Honestly asking, how many characters are you Chinese majors expected to remember anyway?
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