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Chinese cannot be Latinised ! | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5765 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 57 of 77 16 July 2009 at 6:33am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Or maybe the syntax (the "exactly MSM" areas I bolded may just apply to the MSM in my province). People in the South speak and write MSM in a different grammar than Beijing. Inner Mongolia! Wow. It's a diverse place with three or four Chinese dialects spoken, plus all of the Mongolian dialects save Qalq. Does she speak a kind of Mandarin or Jin? 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 58 of 77 16 July 2009 at 6:44am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It can be Greek/Latin/pan-European cultural imperialism. Some kind of collective memory thing from the ancient cultural glory and modern humiliation, maybe - that's the underlying assumption of most modern Chinese discourse. The Chinese intelligentsia isn't too fond of the idea of adopting vocabulary literally from the "West". Anyway, personally, I'd be much better calling Dasein Dasein rather than inventing the 1001st name for it. (Ah, but for the infinitive "to be", we must find a translation - we can't end up saying "einai"... Maybe "essere" sounds better?) Edited by minus273 on 16 July 2009 at 6:50am 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 59 of 77 16 July 2009 at 6:51am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
They do? Interesting. Yeah, I suppose that would help/hinder to understand :)
She speaks a pretty standard Mandarin with a tinge of 儿话 ;) No Chinese dialects nor any Mongolian. I've been told that at least in this area (赤峰市）hardly anybody speaks any Mongolian at all anymore.
Amen 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 60 of 77 16 July 2009 at 6:59am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Standard Mandarin speaker! I thought she speaks a linguistically Mandarin dialect... Y'know, for people in the Middle South (not Fujian, where people throw out their mother tongue and adopt MSM) a MSM native speaker is either from Beijing/Hebei, or a mythical creature. 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 61 of 77 16 July 2009 at 7:24am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Hehe :) Nevertheless, as far as I can tell her Mandarin is absolutely standard. She studied at 清华 in Beijing, so one might think that helped a bit. But her parents speak standard too - again, as far as I can tell, which doesn't necessarily mean anything. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| gaa1gaa1 Newbie China Joined 5614 days ago 30 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 62 of 77 16 July 2009 at 9:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You're all right. Thank you. Please allow me to tell you why Chinese Latinisation still has been popular in China. From Chūnqiū Shídài (Spring & Autumn Period) to Sòng Cháo (Song Dynasty), approximately between 770 BC and 1279 AD, China was almost the strongest empire in the world, as it had a long lead on civilization, characters, mathematics (π=3.1415926), geometry (together with ancient Egypt), technical skills, arts and crafts, moral and living philosophy, over European and other Asian countries. Four Inventions (sì dà fā míng) of ancient China also made a profound and far-ranging impact on the world history. Especially during Song Dynasty, our national economy had exceeded nearly all other countries in GDP & per capita GDP before its downfall, good time doesn't last long, and brutality always conquers civilization, no doubt both Mongolian Yuan Dynasty (Yuán Cháo) and Manchulian Qing Dynasty (Qīng Cháo) were indeed 2 disastrous and declining periods of Dark Ages of China. Particularly, after Opium Wars, China suddenly became a piece of delicious Pizza which was divided up at random by powerful countries. From then on, a series of battles came one after another, overthrowing the Qing government, fighting against Japanese invaders, Chinese Civil War between Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (GCD), then Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution launched crazily by CCP. As a result of inferiority complex, some Chinese turned to adore excessively everything about Occident, and meanwhile, began to belittle the achievements of China. Objectively speaking, the nature of language and character can't be compared with science and technology, we can’t say that, Latin alphabet really fits in with Chinese written form more advanced or more effective than characters system. The problems caused by deficiencies in science & technology development, or anything else, are absolutely not the reasons that Chinese has to be Latinised as possible as it can. And I think it’s worth mentioning that, China has got a rich cultural heritage, an abundant useful books which were completely written in regular script characters, they’re rather more important (at least, as important as) than those which were usually published from a perspective of Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, or Deng Xiaoping Theory after 1949, so, once Chinese characters were reluctantly Latinised, the date that people started using Latin alphabet, would be a dividing line between real China and latinised China, and when the time comes, that day would cut off China’s civilization and history, then replace them to create a brand new beginning with something doesn’t belong to China, despite the fact that latinisation might cause people (not only native Chinese, but also foreign learners) a lot of trouble in the long run. BTW, if you need any help with your Mandarin study, please feel free to let me know. Edited by gaa1gaa1 on 16 July 2009 at 10:29am 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 63 of 77 16 July 2009 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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cordelia, despite what gaa1gaa1 writes there are some very good reasons for an alphabet (not necessarily the latin one) to write the Chinese language. If you're interested in this, read the whole thread if you haven't yet -- I've posted a couple of links to analyses on what those good reasons might be and what actually speaks against characters for Chinese. Keep in mind here, that the people that wrote them are not the "those stupid Asians can't even get a writing system that makes sense" type (neither am I, btw :P ), but are in fact sinologists that do know their characters and just present the facts on the other side of the Hanzi schism ;)
For a healthy discussion it is very important to acknowledge the arguments of the other side too, and not just agree with one another that "characters are oh-so-beautiful and oh-so-cultural and oh-so-whatever" ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| gaa1gaa1 Newbie China Joined 5614 days ago 30 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 64 of 77 16 July 2009 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Ms. Cordelia,
hej, I would like to recommend you a book written by Cecilia Lindqvist (Swedish), the name is <China: Empire of Living Symbols>, I was surprised that she (as a foreigner) had reached to an advanced level, before he wrote this professional book for advanced Chinese learners, though I think perhaps it's not the best one for introducing and explaining Chinese characters, and it would be of some help for European or American learners to read it through carefully. http://www.amazon.co.uk/China-Empire-Symbols-Cecilia-Lindqvi st/dp/0306816091/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247748175&s r=1-1 1 person has voted this message useful |
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