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Common perception of Chinese characters | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5206 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 1 of 12 18 May 2011 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | ||
I came across this post in an old thread, and I was wondering how common this impression of the Chinese writing system is:
Do many people really think that Chinese characters are thousands upon thousands of individual, unique little drawings? I know he was probably exaggerating, but sometimes I get the impression that other people who haven't studied a language that uses Chinese characters feel the same way. I don't think it was on this forum, but I have seen posts saying that they are just a really complicated way to write phonetically and don't carry any more meaning than Latin characters do. I know that many forum members focus mainly on European languages, but for some reason I thought most language enthusiasts would be curious enough about the Chinese writing system to read the Wikipedia article about it, even if they have no interest in the language itself. Kind of like I enjoyed reading books about hieroglyphics as a kid even though I had no interest in learning Ancient Egyptian. PS: I don't want to start yet another argument here about how efficient/inefficient Chinese characters are, or whether or not they should/could be romanized. I just want to hear what the general impression of the system is from the point of view of people who have never studied it. Is what you know mainly picked up from popular culture, or from friends complaining about how hard it is to learn? When you look at Chinese text, do you just see a bunch of squiggles, or do you see any patterns? Would it be useful to know that a learner actually only has to learn a few hundred individual symbols, and the rest is just learning the various patterns they are arranged in? So you don't have to be that impressed by people who manage to learn how to read it. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 12 18 May 2011 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find that most people have very little conception of Chinese characters. They know it looks difficult and complicated. Some people know that it's not just an alphabet, maybe thinking it's something like "one character - one word" (I used to believe that).
Or at least that was true some years ago. Now that people have had more encounters with Chinese people, they seem to all know how many characters it takes to be able to read a newspaper (usually 3,000 to 5,000 according to most people). Very few have more in-depth knowledge, such as the fact that there are traditional and simplified characters. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6049 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 3 of 12 18 May 2011 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that people are just bewildered by them. Simple as that.
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| Sanghee Groupie United States Joined 5067 days ago 60 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 5 of 12 18 May 2011 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I was younger I always thought Chinese characters were thousands of unique characters and one character = one word so I pretty much wrote any language that uses Chinese characters off my list of potential languages. It wasn't until I gained an interest in Mandarin that I realized I was wrong. This view seems pretty common amongst people who aren't interested in learning languages.
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| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6918 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 12 18 May 2011 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | ||
This was posted by another user, but I can't remember where or who:
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| indiana83 Groupie United States ipracticecanto.wordp Joined 5489 days ago 92 posts - 121 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese, Italian | Message 7 of 12 19 May 2011 at 8:07am | IP Logged | ||
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To the comment that everything looks like squiggles, I had the same thought when I first started learning to read Chinese, I could stare at a newspaper and pick out 一，二，人，and a few others ... but anything with more than 3 strokes were unmemorizable. As soon as I saw them I forgot them, and I had trouble finding any features that differentiate them from each other.
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| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5093 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 8 of 12 20 May 2011 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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@paranday, I have noticed the same thing, and I agree about processing characters as a whole, fully formed. For instance, in my Japanese studies, I have noticed I have great difficulty reading Japanese written in romaji for this reason. Its as if my eyes want to glide over the text as a unit, but the shapes don't match. It doesn't "look" like Japanese. Whereas, words written in the Japanese script are immediately recognized. It would seem there is a very strong visual connection in my memory to the shape of the written word as a whole, and not just it's broken down pronunciation. I'm a very visual learner though, when it comes to new vocabulary.
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