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Mandarin - Pinyin Only | ||
Tags: Writing System | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5192 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 17 of 25 30 June 2011 at 7:19am | IP Logged | |||||
Such a system has existed for close to 100 years already and uses nowhere near 500 symbols -- probably 50 max. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin_table However, no Chinese speaker in their right mind would ever want to replace the character based system with that or any other phonetic system. Why must a system of writing be phonetic? There are benefits to a writing system being non-phonetic, for instance the support of a myriad of distinct dialects. In the case of Chinese, making it phonetic would be applying a Mandarin dialect bias and most likely kill off all the other Chinese dialects. That's a non-starter. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fiveonefive Diglot Groupie Japan Joined 5694 days ago 69 posts - 88 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Swedish | Message 18 of 25 02 July 2011 at 4:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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But written Chinese is already phonetic. Well phono-semantic if you want to get technical.
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| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6585 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese | Message 19 of 25 02 July 2011 at 4:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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And if you want to be really precise, it's morphemographic :)
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| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5084 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 20 of 25 02 July 2011 at 10:58am | IP Logged | |||||
It's already doing this. Written Mandarin (also known as "Written Standard Chinese") is totally distinct from the written forms of the other Chinese languages. It's easier to understand for Mandarin-speakers than the spoken forms for sure, but this is also true for Romance languages. Written Mandarin is already pushing out other Chinese "dialects"; Written Cantonese is for example pretty much limited just to comic books and the like. There was a time when the written language favoured no vernacular, but this was when Classical Chinese was still in use. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 21 of 25 07 July 2011 at 5:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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To the original question, take a look at FSI, CLO and Assimil. These materials will not take you into advanced, though they can take you pretty far. After a while you can reevaluate when to tackle characters. Good luck!
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 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6380 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 25 07 July 2011 at 5:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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The old Colloquial Chinese and DeFrancis's textbooks are all pinyin.
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| xiongshi7 Newbie United States Joined 4942 days ago 21 posts - 25 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 23 of 25 13 July 2011 at 4:09am | IP Logged | |||||
Although I have only been studying Mandarin for a year, I think you're making a tremendous mistake by abandoning hanzi at this stage of learning. I too purchased Fluenz, and although I have yet to complete the program, it contains nothing in the way of hanzi, which is tremendously important. Do you remember when you were a kid learning how to read? I bet your teacher wrote the/a word on the blackboard and you copied that word into your notebook and then you would read from your primary reading book and see the word you just copied into your notebook. Then the association with the word in its proper context would take place for you. Learning hanzi is pretty much the same, at least for me, in the process of learning Mandarin. I am now able to watch SinoVision TV (news, dramas) and read the hanzi subtitles on the screen. This further helps me with my listening skills as well. Granted I only know about 350 characters, but most movies or tv shows don't use many polysyllabic words/hanzi characters, so it's not to difficult to get the drift of the conversation. Furthermore, it's kind of fun. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 24 of 25 14 July 2011 at 3:52am | IP Logged | |||||
Close. But I believe something like 5% of the characters have more than one pronunciation, so I have to disagree. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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