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Putong-What? - A Mandarin Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5953 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 33 of 41 15 December 2010 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Loipon den einai shmantiko na mporoume na diabasoyme kai to ellhniko alfabhto? Ua htan poly dyskolo na diabaseiw, ma den ua eprepe na mauoyme to "dyskolotato kai axrhsto" alfabhto thw ellhnikhw glvssaw. Alla mporoyme na xrhsimopoihsoyme mia mhxanh poy mporei na maw bohuhsei, alla den ua htan pragmatika ellhnika. Edited by ellasevia on 16 December 2010 at 4:52am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6281 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 34 of 41 15 December 2010 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Polyglot_gr, your post is inappropriate on a language forum and even more so in the
personal log of someone who is working hard to master the language of Confucius. If someone is longing for sushi, it does not matter how many more portions of French fries he could get for the money. Besides, Pinyin is not the answer. Due to homophones, it is actually a lot harder to understand a text written in Pinyin rather than one written in characters, and this is the more true the further you go into actual literature. And I'd like to see you copy- paste a restaurant sign, a registration form, a warning label or even a daily newspaper... being illiterate is neither fun nor practical. Edited by Sprachprofi on 15 December 2010 at 7:36pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4984 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 35 of 41 15 December 2010 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
One man's meat is another man's poison. Just because you don't have the interest, passion or gumption to learn Chinese doesn't mean that you should deride another person's efforts to do so. In my opinion, part of the allure of the Chinese language lies in its unique writing system. Strip it away and you've lost the essence of the language. If we're just going to romanize everything, there'll be no point in learning alternate writing systems anymore. Culture, history and etymology be damned. Besides, why stop at just Romanization? If you have to rely on a computer to decode text for you, you might as well just go all out and have it translate the text for you in the first place. There'll be no need to study the language in the first place. And here I thought the whole point of learning languages was so that we didn't have to rely on computers to do the deciphering. Edited by strikingstar on 15 December 2010 at 7:56pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Whitefish Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5063 days ago 49 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 36 of 41 16 December 2010 at 1:20am | IP Logged | |||||
Strikingstar and Sprachprofi already addressed the main issues, but I'd like to add my two cents as well. Firstly, it's not practical to rely on pinyin. If I were ever to go to China, I wouldn't be able to (as Sprachprofi has mentioned) be able to read the newspaper or, perhaps more importantly, read any of the signs on the street. Reading anything in print would be impossible, which, because my library has a large Chinese collection, will be where the majority of my reading would be done. Also, as Sprachprofi has mentioned, Chinese has many homophones - I'm 500 characters or so into my book and the pinyin shi4 has already been used for several different characters. Secondly, you don't seem to understand why I learn languages. A language for me is the gateway into the culture. Learning Chinese characters will enable me to read the Dao De Jing and classical poetry as well as the groundbreaking literature of leftist revolutionaries - whereas if you tried to read Beowulf and then Howl , it would take years of studying the differences between Old English and modern. It opens up a whole new world which I could easily spend a lifetime exploring. Languages, to me, are not a race to reach proficiency and then abandon in search of new frontiers or some kind of puzzle to be solved. If that's what you enjoy, by all means, knock yourself out. But I would expect that you at least show a modicum of courtesy before waltzing into my log and telling me to "wake up". Edited by Whitefish on 16 December 2010 at 1:21am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Polyglot_gr Super Polyglot Newbie Greece Joined 4906 days ago 29 posts - 64 votes Speaks: Greek*, FrenchC2, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Italian, SpanishC2, DutchC1, Swedish, PortugueseC1, Romanian, Polish, Catalan, Russian, Hungarian | Message 37 of 41 16 December 2010 at 11:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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Being new in this forum, I was not aware that this was a private log. From now on I'll shut up! Good luck. Edited by Polyglot_gr on 16 December 2010 at 11:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 4959 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 38 of 41 18 December 2010 at 10:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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Whitefish, congratulations on your consistency! At first I just wanted to understand what the heck these chinese characters meant...so I studied a few chinese characters. Really, that was all i was interested in: learning about a dozen or so characters just so that i could know what they meant. (i used to be around many chinese caligraphies...long story.)
and the next thing i knew: i was learning Mandarin!!! hope you enjoy it as much as i am, and good luck :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 4959 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 39 of 41 18 December 2010 at 10:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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...and I also did not understand polyglot's "wake-up" call. apparently i missed something... :)
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Whitefish Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5063 days ago 49 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 40 of 41 19 December 2010 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hey polyglot. There's no need to apologize (or shut up, for that matter). You just be careful on how you make your opinion known. I would have had no problem with you suggesting studying pinyin (I would have disagreed), but making it seem like I'm stupid for studying characters is a little annoying. No hard feelings though!
Similar story to me, huh? It's such a fascinating language, and learning Chinese has inspired me to learn more about Chinese history and art as well. It's becoming a little bit of an obsession, I'm afraid. Thank you for your wellwishes, and I wish you luck as well. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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