10-14-2009, 06:11 PM | #166 |
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10-14-2009, 06:36 PM | #167 | |
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Just for your info, the other Chinese languages are more difficult to learn than Mandarin. The main reason they did pick Mandarin as the standard is because it is easy to learn. |
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10-14-2009, 07:26 PM | #168 | |
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The reason I brought it up is because it doesn't jive with me that (1) you say that the written stuff has different (basically arbitrary) pronunciation depending on the reader's native language/dialect, but (2) you also suggest that it would be problematic to have the arbitrary sounds be the Hanzi characters' English meanings. Do you just feel so because of the existing set of associations those English words would have (that wouldn't always be compatible with the semantic cover of the Chinese concepts) or am I missing something bigger than that? (Or am I altogether misinterpreting what you wrote in one or another message?) - Ahi |
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10-14-2009, 07:59 PM | #169 | |
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So, to sum it up. All Chinese languages are structurally almost the same and well suited for using Chinese characters, that is why you have the situation as explained. Japanese is not, and that is why they have Hiragana to write what cannot be expressed by the characters (usually because of the totally different Japanese grammar). It is not possible to write English in Chinese characters, but as a purely academic excercise, yes, it is possible to learn Chinese writing without learning spoken Chinese. It just makes no sense at all to do so. To learn writing and understand the meaning of the whole sentence, you have to be totally immersed in the language. You pointed out some scholars who did this, they could read Chinese but could not speak it. My guess is that they actually could speak it, but that their pronunciation was very bad and people didn't understand them -- so that they were embarrassed to use the spoken language. And they also weren't able to pick up the tones and other matters to be able to understand a native speaker. So it must have been a matter of knowing the spoken language but not having mastered a good enough pronunciation to be able to communicate in verbal form. Pronunciation is a much greater obstacle in Sinotibetan languages than in European ones! And people tend to laugh at foreigners who get it wrong. The scholars probably didn't want to subject themselves to such ridicule and therefore pretended they couldn't speak at all. |
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10-14-2009, 08:04 PM | #170 | |
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You have disabused me of some more of my Sinitic misconceptions. - Ahi |
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10-14-2009, 08:08 PM | #171 |
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My suggestion for you is, learn an oriental language. It will be a very enlightening experience. Language is culture, and it will teach you a whole new way of thinking.
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10-14-2009, 10:59 PM | #172 |
Publishers are evil!
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10-14-2009, 11:29 PM | #173 |
Maratus speciosus butt
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These recent posts are making me think of the Chinese Room:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room Not that I'm claiming that you don't all pass the Turing test... |
10-15-2009, 12:18 AM | #174 | |
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10-20-2009, 09:46 AM | #175 | ||||
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Just had a few more thoughts, Hans...
--- write Quote:
will write Quote:
you write he/she/it writes we write you (all) write they write I did write you did write he/she/it did write we did write you (all) did write they did write I will write you will write he/she/it will write we will write you (all) will write they will write If one is not obliged to be 100% grammatically correct and/or elegant, English isn't necessarily wildly different from what you describe. Quote:
--- Without meaning to suggest that it would be a sensible idea to do, I increasingly think that Hanzi could be learned reasonably by assigning (context-dependent) English meaning(s) to characters, without Chinese language pronunciation. The result would not be fine Shakespearean (or even modern) English, but a sort of very un-English-like English that speakers of western languages would probably perceive pidgin-like... but it does seem to me it ought to be comprehensible enough. The task ought to be even easier in other languages whose grammatical structure is more similar (as you yourself alluded). Also, you wrote earlier: Quote:
你 - "you" 好 - "good" 媽 - "mother" 你媽好 - "you-mother good" (Your mother is well.) Take the first two characters to form a unit, and it's perfectly clear. 媽,你好 - "mother, you good" (Mother, hello.) This is not all that bewildering a colloquialism. If you added a question mark, it would practically be English slang. 你好,媽? - "you good, mother?" (Are you ok, mother?) This *is* English slang. Or even the more proper form you noted: 你好不好,媽? - "you good not good, mother?" But for the lack of an "or" that is implied well enough, this is also something entirely intuitive. The biggest problem I foresee to trying to remain non-Chinese-phonetic is with names. Names that you are supposed to recognize, that is. Hard to turn "卡尔扎伊" into "Karzai" without knowing the Mandarin pronunciation of the first three characters... albeit, without additional context, I suspect it is difficult to turn it into "Karzai" even if you do know the pronunciation. But it wouldn't be a problem with names you did not need to immediately associate with a western name... assuming you could accept that Hanzi written names are weird in their own unique way. Anyways... like I said, I find this interesting mostly as a thought experiment in what is possible. - Ahi |
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10-21-2009, 05:03 AM | #176 | |
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If not, I think there should be. Regards, Alex |
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10-21-2009, 12:05 PM | #177 |
Beepbeep n beebeep, yeah!
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That would be the Off Topic Thread, which is mostly topic drift.
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10-21-2009, 05:41 PM | #178 |
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10-21-2009, 05:51 PM | #179 |
Beepbeep n beebeep, yeah!
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That's true.
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10-21-2009, 05:54 PM | #180 |
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