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Chinese cannot be Latinised !

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
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minus273
Triglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5765 days ago
288 posts - 346 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan

 
 Message 49 of 77
16 July 2009 at 3:29am | IP Logged 
Pyx wrote:
minus273 wrote:

You strike fewer keys with a character input method, than inputting any of the current Romanization schemes.

Since cordelia isn't as acquainted with Chinese I'll add a bit of information here that may help: The most popular input method in the mainland is to write pinyin, the official romanization method for Chinese here, and then the software does it's best to predict what you want to write. Occasionally you have to choose which of the character(s) you wanted.
What minus is hinting at here is that there are other methods too, that work along different lines. For example describing the form of a character (as in: left is a metal radical, right is a mouth radical, and so on). This requires more effort to learn but is faster once you know it. However, the standard is pinyin input.

Thanks :)
Actually, in a lot of pinyin IM's. You can type long pre-made words/phrases with only the initials. zhy for 这样, or zhhrmghg for 中华人民共和国 are generally understood.
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minus273
Triglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5765 days ago
288 posts - 346 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan

 
 Message 50 of 77
16 July 2009 at 3:31am | IP Logged 
Pyx wrote:
And to answer your question: Nowadays characters pose no problem for IT. Sometimes people are to stupid to program ("your name has to be longer than 4 characters".. sort of sucks if you're Chinese. Or the other way around for Chinese websites). The character/alphabet debate has no background in IT :)

No! I love char* and strlen()! You can't steal 'em from me!

PS: I wish to write a story, like "How Did Meiji Common Japanese Come Into Prominence, Transform Chinese, and Get Dethroned in Japan"
PS PSi: Open any Japanese book on philosophy or international politics, though, you will find the ghost of Meiji Common Japanese redressed in a modern grammar.

Edited by minus273 on 16 July 2009 at 3:38am
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cordelia0507
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5838 days ago
1473 posts - 2176 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*
Studies: German, Russian

 
 Message 51 of 77
16 July 2009 at 4:14am | IP Logged 
Thanks GAAGAA, MINUS, PYX for explaining!

--One of the most impressing things about China is the language and the signs!
--Just think of how its influenced countries in all Asia! What would they do, start writing kanji with romanisation, lol!
--It wouldn't be China without it.

I think the Chinese language would lose its soul if the signs were dropped.

Same thing as with Hebrew which could easily be written with latin script from left to right and it would save a lot of IT headaches. The vowels could be added and this would solve a lot of problems for non-natives. But losing the letters is practically a sacrilege, same as with Chinese IMHO. There is too much history and tradition associated. The Israelis wouldn't dream of changing it and it's really surprising that China does!

Although I don't speak Chinese I admire it it so much, partly thanks to the Singapore "Speak Mandarin" campaigns that they always run on TV there --- the govt is trying so hard for Spore to become fully Mandarin speaking by constantly explaining all the good things about Chinese putongwa to inspire ppl. Not sure what the success actually is though, more and more people there prefer English because it's easier. It's the McDonalds vs Michelin-starred-restaurant choice in the world of languages :-)

Just for fun! Cute inspiration for Western learners:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_eGcbQ-cKQ&NR=1
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Pyx
Diglot
Senior Member
China
Joined 5735 days ago
670 posts - 892 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 52 of 77
16 July 2009 at 5:48am | IP Logged 
minus273 wrote:

No! I love char* and strlen()! You can't steal 'em from me!

Haha, a C programmer! To my heart, my friend! :D

Two other points: You're right with the initials pinyin input, but I'm having enough problems getting any Chinese together with standard pinyin, so I'll leave learning to type faster/more efficient for another day ;)

Also, it seems to me that you are underestimating the importance of your apparent knowledge of Chinese dialects. I showed my girlfriend, a native MSM speaker, your Soochow and Taiwanese excerpts (thanks btw, that is really interesting to me) and she was totally lost. Even with your notes she really had no clue as to what the passages are about (and that's not because of LaTeX ;) ).
So maybe for someone with your knowledge it's okay to understand what is written in Chinese dialects, much as I could probably get through an Italian text with what I still remember of French and Spanish, but for your standard educated-but-has-no-idea-about-dialects MSM speaker reading in dialect and not in MSM in a bigger problem than you make it appear :)
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Pyx
Diglot
Senior Member
China
Joined 5735 days ago
670 posts - 892 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 53 of 77
16 July 2009 at 5:59am | IP Logged 
minus273 wrote:

NB: I mean words like "postcolonialism" or "discourse" or "word-forming ability", rather than tangible objects as "television" or "tomato".


But many of these words (that you said) come from latin/french or have Germanic roots. It may be me, but I cannot help to find it silly to try to keep a language 'pure' (as the French like to do, I don't know how it is with the Chinese) when it is perfectly natural for a language to evolve by assimilating foreign vocabulary. Everybody takes from everywhere and this is how it has always been (and should be, imho).

As I understand it, 'cultural imperialism' is a label that is most often applied to the US culture. So, if all the 'new' vocabulary would be imported from English and from English only, I could sort of understand if some people would get uncomfortable (and, fair enough, in China most of the new vocab of recent years is English-inspired, afaik). However, where would be imperialism in cherry-picking words from all over the world where appropriate? In my eyes, that is just practical and a sign of productive lazyness, as in "it's not *really* necessary to reinvent the wheel, is it?!" :)
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Pyx
Diglot
Senior Member
China
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670 posts - 892 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 54 of 77
16 July 2009 at 6:20am | IP Logged 
Hencke wrote:

On the subject of different Chinese dialects, or imho more correctly, languages, a phonetic writing system would certainly allow some of these to be more precisely represented in writing, but at the same time they would become disconnected from the standard written language, increasing the communication difficulties between different areas. In short, it might easily bring more negative effects than positive ones.

minus273 had some very good points about this, and it's hard to argue with a native Chinese speaker. Nevertheless, after the little experiment with my girlfriend, I wouldn't discard what the literature says either. The dialects simply do not get written down most of the time. What *is* getting written is MSM, a second language for Chinese dialect speakers. Having that written in characters instead of in an alphabet has some big downsides. Allow me to quote from the Hannas text again. I'd love not to have to quote big text blocks, but I'm getting the impression that posting links doesn't work. So here goes:
http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/chinesewriting.html wrote:

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. They know enough vocabulary and grammar to make sense of Mandarin texts, much as I know enough French words and grammar to read that language (without being able to pronounce it convincingly, much less to speak it fluently). If Chinese characters have unified the Chinese languages, then the alphabet has unified French and English.

The characters do allow nonstandard speakers to use their own pronunciations to read Mandarin texts. So instead of acclimating to the national standard, nonstandard speakers reinforce their own speech habits and add to the vitality of their "dialect" by introducing new vocabulary from Mandarin, which they pronounce their own way by analogy. Whether alphabetic scripts should be used to provide China's non-Mandarin speakers with the means to become literate in their own language is a political question outside the scope of the present inquiry. But one thing is certain: since non-Mandarin speakers are forced anyway to learn a second language, it would make more sense from the viewpoint of those promoting unity if this bilingualism were achieved through Mandarin written in the pinyin alphabet.8 The incentive to learn the national standard, including its pronunciation, would be higher than it is today if one's ability to read depended on it. As it is now, nonstandard speakers work their way through standard texts using whatever pronunciation comes naturally, not fully learning Mandarin and not reading their own languages either.

So much for the unity provided by Chinese characters. One can argue that the characters unite China culturally. But the linguistic argument for unity is nonsense. There are -- to put it bluntly -- no absolute advantages to using a character script, not anywhere in the world, and not in China. The only utility characters offer is relief from the distortions their own use created.

Again, I can only encourage you to read the whole thing. It's really good and has some good points.

Hencke wrote:

This seems to me a very valid point. The dialect/regional-language-speakers can write in their own language, perhaps with the odd additional character, Cantonese has some of its own characters I believe, and enjoy the full flavour of their regional variant, while the same writings are largely comprehensible, as they stand, to mandarin speakers from all other areas, even if they might miss a few of the finer regional points.

In addition to the 'experiment', I remember that when I was in Hong Kong with my girlfriend she couldn't read anything written in Cantonese. And this was not because of the traditional characters either (Mandarin in traditional was okay). The Hannas article also gives some reasons as to how characters, that cannot represent dialects too well, force them into a position of 'mere dialects' that aren't recognized as languages in their own rights. By this, characters sort of kill part of the culture they are said to preserve. Provocative thesis, yes, but not without arguments.

Hencke wrote:

Finally, it is a misconception that a phonetical writing system would make it easier to transcribe western names. All such names are transcribed even today, with a specific subset of the existing characters, and, if needed, there is always the possibility to use latin alphabet abbreviations, say "DVD" in the middle of a Chinese-character text. Both of these techniques are in use today, and this is no kind of issue at all to make any difference on either side of the argument. In fact I would be very wary of webpages or books or other kinds of publications touting such patently irrelevant data to underpin their views. It would look suscpiciously much like a desperate clawing for ever thinner straws, in the absence of more substantial material to support their predetermined agenda.
     
Nice conspiracy theory, but it DOES have real life consequences. This half-phonetic transliteration stuff that the Chinese do in fact keeps them separated from the world. I don't understand who or what they are talking about ('Falankefu'? What sort of place is that?) and they cannot understand me ("Beethoven"? Never heard of that guy). I once read a good article about that but I can't find it right now, but I can tell you from personal experience that it makes conversations between Chinese and Westerners often quite awkward. I'm not sure if this topic is really belongs in this thread, but if you're really interested I can write some more, maybe in another thread. But to sum up, I personally feel the transliteration issue is not as neglible a thing as you make it appear.

Edited by Pyx on 16 July 2009 at 6:29am
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minus273
Triglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5765 days ago
288 posts - 346 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan

 
 Message 55 of 77
16 July 2009 at 6:23am | IP Logged 
Pyx wrote:
Also, it seems to me that you are underestimating the importance of your apparent knowledge of Chinese dialects. I showed my girlfriend, a native MSM speaker, your Soochow and Taiwanese excerpts (thanks btw, that is really interesting to me) and she was totally lost. Even with your notes she really had no clue as to what the passages are about (and that's not because of LaTeX ;) ).

The Taiwanese excerpt does require some exposure to read, which I had through reading Tai-bun Thong-sin. But the Soochow one seems fairly easy - dunno how come - and I did read it before knowing any Shanghainese (a closely related language).

Pyx wrote:
but for your standard educated-but-has-no-idea-about-dialects MSM speaker reading in dialect and not in MSM in a bigger problem than you make it appear :)

Ouch. I tone it down now to "due to great pronunciation difference, it's a hell easier for an MSM speaker to read a dialect in characters", which is, nothin'.
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Pyx
Diglot
Senior Member
China
Joined 5735 days ago
670 posts - 892 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 56 of 77
16 July 2009 at 6:27am | IP Logged 
minus273 wrote:
Pyx wrote:
Also, it seems to me that you are underestimating the importance of your apparent knowledge of Chinese dialects. I showed my girlfriend, a native MSM speaker, your Soochow and Taiwanese excerpts (thanks btw, that is really interesting to me) and she was totally lost. Even with your notes she really had no clue as to what the passages are about (and that's not because of LaTeX ;) ).

The Taiwanese excerpt does require some exposure to read, which I had through reading Tai-bun Thong-sin. But the Soochow one seems fairly easy - dunno how come - and I did read it before knowing any Shanghainese (a closely related language).

Maybe in Sichuan you're using vocabulary that is closer to Soochow dialect or something? It's the only thing I could imagine. My girlfriend is from 内蒙古, so here Mandarin is bound to be somewhat different from yours..


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