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| Message 17 of 17 06 May 2011 at 3:00pm | IP Logged |
Hampie wrote:
I read something this yesterday that said that due to Chinese evolution (the simplification of the phonetic system)
has made the language polysyllabic. Once words were made up from one syllable, but when the phonetic system
made several of them into homophones it became an impossible solution (thus: i can represent 67 words, and
even if you split them up in the 4 tones it’s still many…). So, the chinese people in their spoken language put
together synonymes, thereby explaining which of, say, all the 12 i’s with the same tone they ment. So the i was
but together with the synonyme shü into i-shü. The same evolution caused the need for noun
classifiers/counters, so, the listener can by the counter get a grasp of which word is ment. Also, due to this
evolution an educated Chinese can read and understand classical Chinese, but, if s/he read it aloud to someone
as educated, s/he would not be able to understand it unless s/he be looking at the text at the same time.
(source http://chineseideographs.com/soundsymbolinchi00karluoft.pdf) It might be old, however, it says the
same thing as the article about old Old Chinese in the book ‹The Ancient languages of Asia and the Americas› by
Wodard and what wa said by the professor in sinology who lectured about ancient Chinese in my course - so it’s
not something I’ve made up :P |
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..putting two synonyms next to each other to clarify the meaning.. nice! this is exactly which bothers me right now when I learn Mandarin. Most of the words are composed of two sylables, which are the same bloody word twice. Thanks for clarifying, man
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