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Chinese cannot be Latinised ! | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| gaa1gaa1 Newbie China Joined 5614 days ago 30 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 33 of 77 15 July 2009 at 10:47am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Oh~What a pity that above book you recommended hasn't been sold yet in Amazon China. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5765 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 34 of 77 15 July 2009 at 11:36am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Chinese characters can be said to represent dialects better - you can write in real dialect, and still remain comprehensible to a larger pan-Chinese audience. (cf. 《海上花列传》, a classical novel written in 19th century Soochowese, and modern Taiwanese Hanji-Lomaji writings)
Then, as for the writing language reform, how can the Sinophone world coin its new terminologies, once deprived of the Chinese characters? Word-stacking? Clumsy. Borrowing international vocabulary? Please, that's the kind of cultural imperialism I guess many Chinese are sensitive about. Edited by minus273 on 15 July 2009 at 11:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5735 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 35 of 77 15 July 2009 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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gaa1gaa1, it's hardly about 'yet'. The book has been first published in 1984. It seems to me that this book is simply unavailable in China. Odd. I'm sorry, you will have to order it from abroad. It's partly available on google books though, so you can read a little more to see if it's worth it for you. ( -> http://books.google.com/books?id=gQF8kvWmFJkC&pg=PP1&dq=defr ancis+fact+fantasy&hl=cn )
minus273, I was referring to the phonetic aspect of the dialects. The spoken form. The "What Chinese Characters can't do" has some interesting examples on dialect representation for English, for example. As a Chinese, you will obviously know more about the whole issue first-hand than me, so I can only argue with what I've read elsewhere. Hannas (How Asian Ortographie..) for example states: -- "Since Cantonese, Shanghainese, and other nonstandard varieties differ from Mandarin not just in sound but also in vocabulary and grammar, the characters cannot bridge this gap by themselves, even with their relative neutrality toward sound.7 Much of the core vocabulary of non-Mandarin Chinese has no counterpart in Mandarin and no recognized character representation. Conversely, many Mandarin terms for which characters do exist are foreign to non-Mandarin speakers. The fact that nonstandard speakers can read a text in the standard language simply means that these speakers are bilingual. They have learned written Mandarin as a second language. " -- I can't comment on the examples given by you.. if you can set them in context to what I quoted, and ideally the other things that Hannas writes, I'd be very thankful. As to the terminology.. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but how would word-stacking differ from what is done nowadays? Also, in German we can live just fine with very long words ;P And I don't know if that touched a nerve or something, but how would borrowing int'l vocabulary be 'cultural imperialism'? Edited by Pyx on 15 July 2009 at 12:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| gaa1gaa1 Newbie China Joined 5614 days ago 30 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 36 of 77 15 July 2009 at 12:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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It reminds me of something, my grandfather had been a famous christian priest (protestant), before he passed away around 8 years ago, he ever gave me a Bible written in both English and Chinese as my birthday's gift, sometimes I would read some chapters through, and I found the Chinese parts were badly translated, just like foreign priest had to applied western grammar or usages mechanically while translating the Bible of European languages into Chinese.
Edited by gaa1gaa1 on 15 July 2009 at 12:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5765 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 37 of 77 15 July 2009 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
The characters point out cognates.
Correct. If the "core vocabulary" means "I" and "you" and "man" and "woman". They do differ county by county, but they are easy to pick up in reading.
They are foreign to me, also, as a SW Mandarin speaker whose core vocabulary differs every bit to Standard Chinese as a Shanghainese. Conventional written Mandarin uses mainly Late Literary Chinese and translationese as the vocabulary base, the vocabulary functions as the high variant in the Mandarin-speaking and other Chinese language areas equally.
Correct. But only half a second language, comprising only graphic forms for the function words, and pan-Chinese high vocabulary, many of which already familiar orally. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5765 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 38 of 77 15 July 2009 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Like, the choice of high vocabulary / word-coining abilities is usually associated with cultural allegiance. (Personally, though, I write in the glorious Rekhta mixing English/Std Mandarin/Classical Chinese/Dialect words freely.) NB: I mean words like "postcolonialism" or "discourse" or "word-forming ability", rather than tangible objects as "television" or "tomato". Edited by minus273 on 15 July 2009 at 1:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5765 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 39 of 77 15 July 2009 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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A little color-coding...
pan-Chinese vocabulary (high or colloquial) / not pan-Chinese, but coincides with MSM (modern standard mandarin) not the same as MSM, but understandable on basis of characters easily learnable character substitution to accommodate local etymon vocabulary unintelligible to a MSM reader Written 19th-century Soochow dialogue
Classification of underlined (not immediately understandable) vocabulary 仔: perfective marker, MSM 了 or 起 耐: 2nd person singular, MSM 你 浪: Soochow lenition of the word 上. In Soochow zån6->lån6. In Mandarin shàng->làng. 阿: Phrase-initial question marker, absent in MSM. (MSM uses -吗) 嗄: Sentence-final particle, pronounced a in Soochow. 个: Attribute marker, usually equivalent to MSM 的 末: Alternative orthography to 么, MSM 么 Edited by minus273 on 15 July 2009 at 1:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5765 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 40 of 77 15 July 2009 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Modern written Taiwanese.
tio̍h:（着） False friend Taiwanese-MSM. Taiwanese: intensifier. MSM: verb duration. ē-tàng: Written in Chinese characters as 会当, then comprehensible to a monolingual Mandarin reader. 彼: Personally I would write hit-ê. It's better orthography as hit isn't cognate with Classical Chinese 彼. 逐家: tak-ka. Interestingly, written in Chinese characters, but not comprehensible to monolingual MSM reader. (MSM word is 大家) àn-chóaⁿ: Written in characters as 安怎, comprehensible to MSM reader. Edited by minus273 on 15 July 2009 at 1:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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