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Chinese characters - inefficient? | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| YoshiYoshi Senior Member China Joined 5340 days ago 143 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 57 of 132 28 October 2009 at 10:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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IMHO, I really find the homophones of Chinese more harmful to semantic analysis than those of the others, for example, Indo-European languages, due to the fact every character is a monosyllabic and solitary symbol which usually implies 1, 2, or even more meanings, while the structure of English are mostly some polysyllabic, constant and long vocabularies or phrases. In brief, on many occasions, a lot of so-called Chinese vocabularies, phrases, idioms are actually created based on free combinations of 2 or more individual characters, of course, the combinations should stick to the rules of Chinese grammar as far as possible.
Edited by YoshiYoshi on 29 October 2009 at 3:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| knadolny Diglot Newbie United States capturingchinese.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5323 days ago 11 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese | Message 58 of 132 28 October 2009 at 11:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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People get Chinese tattoos because they are plain cool. I remember seeing a famous basketball player in an advertisement. He had a tattoo that looked like 中心 which would make an awfully boring tattoo. It means "center" so I thought maybe he was played center on the team. Looking at it a bit more I realized he meant the character, 忠, which means "loyal, devoted, and honest".
People mess up their Chinese tattoos all the time. He's just one example. People get Chinese tattoos not really for what they mean and all that, but just because they are cool and look awesome. While Chinese toddlers might struggle with the characters more so than their English speaking counterparts, the power of the characters is going to make sure they stick around for another 5000 years. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Raчraч Ŋuɲa Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5627 days ago 154 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Bikol languages*, Tagalog, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, Russian, Japanese | Message 59 of 132 28 October 2009 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Well, I am not saying the current practice of reading hanzi is by using a reconstructed pronunciation, although I will advocate something of this sort later in this reply. I agree its read in any of the Chinese topolects. The logic is simple. Written Chinese is an instance of code-mixing or code switching between two diachronic varieties of Chinese. One is Classical Chinese and the other is Modern Chinese (any topolect). Its not so difficult to detect where the boundaries are, as Classical Chinese and Modern Chinese differs in grammar and choice of words (hanzi). A truly unmixed written Chinese would be like a written version of the vernacular spoken Chinese. This "stylistic" difference is mainly attributable to this code-mixing, in the higher registers. So, when I said that pinyin does not represent the sounds of the (written) language, I mean that some parts of written Chinese if read in pinyin are only approximations, since these parts are in fact not Modern Chinese but Classical Chinese. So they are not faithful representation of Classical Chinese sounds as no one has a record of how they are pronounced and what we have are purported reconstructions of how they are spoken. So in fact, homophones can be reduced by using reconstructed pronunciations. Remember that hanzis are logographic and to argue that the only correct way of reading these logograms is by any of the modern topolects is incorrect. Isn't this not obvious? If this point is not obvious, then we better tell the Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese to pronounce it like a real Chinese would, if there is any one true Chinese pronunciation of hanzis.
No, I'm not confusing them. I am not talking about modern written vernacular Chinese which as you said is similar to spoken Chinese. For in this written form, there are fewer homophones so lesser arguments NOT to romanize. There you've got it. The more scholarly written Chinese, which others call the higher registers, is the one that we are more interested in. The fact that its only found in scholarly written Chinese is already a give-away. Reconstructed pronunciations are quite relevant, because that is what I have been saying as the key to unlocking the romanization of Chinese.
Of course, same rule applies as in English: context is important. Do you write scholarly English without context? Can you write scholarly hanzi without context? Those homophones in Chinese will not be spelled the same way. Homophones in Modern Chinese are not necessarily homophones in Classical Chinese. I already mentioned above that they will be written and spelled in their reconstructed Classical Chinese pronunciation. This situation is like a hypothetical case of written Spanish interpersed with Latin words, phrases, clauses or even whole sentences. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5330 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 60 of 132 28 October 2009 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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It is true that Modern Standard Chinese has more homophones than Classical Chinese, so one way to disambiguate homophony could be to revise pinyin based on reconstructed pronunciations. For example, the final stops have been lost in all Mandarin dialects but one, which has led to several classical syllables coinciding in one Modern. If they were to be rendered with different pinyin with the understanding that they are to be pronounced in the same way, you could indeed reduce homography (which is the relevant thing here). The problem with this approach is of course that it is much more difficult to relate different WORDS to different SPELLINGS of the same SOUND, rather than to different characters as is the case now. Also, it would be very hard to explain to your average Henan farmer why the sound SHI all of a sudden can be spelled in eight different ways. You have to remember that Chinese are used to one-to-one phonetic writing.
However, even if it would work, your reason for proposing it seems to be based on a misunderstanding. We are not talking about Wenyan here, we are talking about Baihua, which is essentially spoken Mandarin written down. (Wenyan is more or less Chinese Latin, but Wenyan is beside the point. And no-one would be interested in reading romanised Wenyan anyway, it goes agains the whole concept.) In summary. 1. 99% of Chinese written today is Baihua, baically a written form of the spoken language, not a mix between Classical and Modern. 2. There are more homophones in the written language only because there are more words, just like in any other language, not because the grammar is different or something like that. 3. It would be very hard to explain to the man on the street why he has to learn lots of new spellings for the exact same sound. 4. In the end, in order to disambiguate fully, you would need just as many different pinyin spellings of a certain syllable, as you need characters now. Hence even if you did manage introduce to this harebrained scheme, the only thing you would gain is that you don't have to use characters, there would still be the same NUMBER of different written syllables to keep track of, which, as I said, is probably much harder. I have promised myself not to bite the hook and explain this over and over again, I hope I can keep that promise after this! Edited by Gusutafu on 28 October 2009 at 4:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Me has to learn Groupie Germany Joined 5366 days ago 64 posts - 75 votes Speaks: German* | Message 61 of 132 28 October 2009 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Sorry for the late reply. I've just rediscovered the thread. Unfortunately I don't understand you. My perception of the Chinese language is that for instance the characters mentioned above, 中心, has always had the meaning 'center'. Only the spoken word changed. If there were characters in the English language since Old English you would have fewer trouble understanding a written Old English text. Since 'feasceaft' or 'fewshiped' had the same character as 'helpless' you would instantly understand. Edit: Quotation tags fixed. Edited by Me has to learn on 29 October 2009 at 11:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Tupiniquim Senior Member Brazil Joined 5892 days ago 184 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, Russian | Message 62 of 132 28 October 2009 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
There's a nice blog about it, many funny mistakes: Hanzi Smatter 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5330 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 63 of 132 28 October 2009 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Well, I know, I was joking. But I don't think alphabetic tattos are unheard of either, there is an almost infinite number of t-shirts and logos in "Engrish" so I am sure there is someone out there with a tattoo saying purple monkey dishwasher or something. Just because English is cool, you know. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Saraneth Newbie United States Joined 5328 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese | Message 64 of 132 29 October 2009 at 3:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Me has to learn: I think you messed up the quote in your message. Raчraч Ŋuɲa said that, not me!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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