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Chinese writing is not so hard. | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Writing | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Collaborative writing |  | |
| Ruan Diglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5968 days ago 95 posts - 101 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 1 of 18 17 March 2008 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think that the difficulty of Chinese writing was overweighted here.
The sentence "Every word is represented by a different character and there is no link between the character and the sound." is obviously wrong. Most of the characters are made of logical compounds ( 學learning = "study" + "fruit of" ) or semanto-phonetical compounds ( 慍angry = 忄heart + sound of the character "wen" ). Just a few characters are logograms ( 子,曰,不 ) and, as they are used frequently and their meanings are simple, they are easier to memorize. Simplified Characters were not built from scratch - In most of the times, you are capable to read and write the Simplified character if you know the Traditional one, and vice versa. The review also forgot that almost every Chinese language use the same script, so to learn a new dialect you just got to learn new pronunciations of Hanzi. And this is very useful, because some dialects are mutually unintelligible. Edited by Ruan on 17 March 2008 at 1:26pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| rob Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5952 days ago 287 posts - 288 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 2 of 18 17 March 2008 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I agree with the title of this thread, but unfortunately not much else.
Whilst it's true that learning a different alphabet might take anywhere from a day to a few weeks, whereas learning Chinese characters may take a number of years, I agree that it's not "hard", per se, but rather very time consuming. If someone tells themself that characters are too hard, there is the danger that you can psych yourself out of learning them.
It is actually correct. If you see a character you don't know, the chances are you won't have a clue how to pronounce it. Would you care to elaborate on why you think this is wrong? Though certain radicals do have frequently used pronunciations, this by no means is a sure thing.
This may be the case to some degree for Traditional to Simplified, but not wholly, and I don't believe it's the case at all for Simplified to Traditional. Especially not for the learner, but also not for the Chinese. A good example would be this: (Simplified/Traditional) 体/體. Similarly, whilst it may be true to some extent of reading it's certainly not the case for writing, again, not for Chinese people and especially not for learners.
This is widely true, but some dialects use somewhat different grammar which don't lend themselves precisely to written Mandarin. There is also the issue of Traditional and Simplified characters which I've already mentioned. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ruan Diglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5968 days ago 95 posts - 101 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 3 of 18 17 March 2008 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Wikipedia - Ideogram "An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek ἰδέα idea "idea" + γράφω grafo "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea, rather than a group of letters arranged according to the phonemes of a spoken language, as is done in alphabetic languages, or a strictly representational picture of a subject as may be done in illustration or photography. Examples of ideograms include wayfinding signs, such as in airports and other environments where many people may not be familiar with the language of the place they are in, as well as Arabic numerals and mathematical notation, which are used worldwide regardless of how they are pronounced in different languages. The term "ideogram" is commonly used to describe logographic writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters. However, graphemes in logographic systems generally represent words or morphemes rather than pure ideas. "
You may be right about this - once you can read Tradicional characters, you can recognize ( but not write ) Simplified ones.
Every dialect can be written using Standard Mandarin characters and grammar rules, but they will sound too formal and clumsy to their speakers. Of course there are phonetical and grammatical differences, but you would not be starting from scratch if you already know Hanzi. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| GoddessCarlie Newbie Australia goddesscarlie.com Joined 6124 days ago 21 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 18 18 March 2008 at 2:18am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I actually just finished reading a dissertation on the role of sound in reading and writing Kanji. While the tests were carried out in Japan with Japanese, Chinese was mentioned a lot and I assume the idea is transferable. Basically it refuted the idea that Kanji (or Hanzi) are simply ideographs and that Japanese people at least find meaning though sounds rather than through the inherent meaning in what the kanji represent.
edited to add: It was called "The Role Of Sound In Reading and Writing Kanji" (strangely enough) and was by Richard Alan Horodeck, written in 1987. Edited by GoddessCarlie on 18 March 2008 at 2:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6337 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 18 18 March 2008 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Sorry, but this is bugging me. There seems to be some confusion regarding the definition word, hanzi and compound. Here are rough definitions; feel free to correct me:
word - a meaningful sound or combination of sounds that is a unit of language or its representation in a text (not necessarily a single hanzi; could be more) hanzi - chinese character(s) compound - a word made up of 2 or more hanzi (not a single character made up of two or more hanzi) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| NeedArabicHelp NewbieRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5942 days ago 11 posts - 5 votes Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 18 18 March 2008 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hey I want to learn Chinese but even Arabic is taking me forever!
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ruan Diglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5968 days ago 95 posts - 101 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 7 of 18 19 March 2008 at 7:02am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Compound is a character made up of two or more hanzi, see Wikipedia article "Chinese characters". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6337 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 8 of 18 20 March 2008 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
see Wikipedia article "Compound (linguistics)" 1 person has voted this message useful |
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