Maybe I
[quote=“jameswang”]I know some people truely believe Chinese can be romanized. We just need a little help from them romanize the following story.
chinapage.com/shi.gif
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Do you know anything about the author of that exercise? Your example was written by Y.R. Chao, a brilliant linguist who favored the romanization of Chinese. As a matter of fact, he invented a romanization system, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, which was the ROC’s official romanization method for half a century.
Chao “truly” believed Chinese could be romanized, but that such Classical Chinese forms as the example points to would have to be eliminated for romanization to work. Baihua and romanization together work fine.
[quote=“drambuie”]there are still serious efforts in China and in India to train people up to read the 'original ’ Sanskrit
oops!
This is the final word on this subject for me so all of you who have benefitted from my information thus far enjoy this extra special last edition( I am going to be busy again for another 6 months too busy to come here). I guess I will never become a gravel truck driver.
At this point, I want to encourage more people to share their views here. You always learn something when you have to “straighten” your own views or ideas out and write something down. I don’t know what Cranky Laowai’s real name or occupation is but eg Ironlady’s forum has almost no action. It is almost like getting free consultation from a PHD. Where can you get something free these days?
This is for those who want to know more about Sanskrit: My reasons for suggesting a pinyin type romanisation for Sanskrit was because the present “alphabet” is harder to learn for those more familiar with the English/Roman or A-Z alphabet. It is like designing an english alphabet based pinyin for Burmese which I am more familiar with as a language. Burmese also has it’s own “alphabet” but the squiggly characters take a long time for westerners to pick up. I THINK it is easier for example to learn a roman a-z based romanisation for say Japanese if you are going to learn Japanese than hiragana. ( 46 squiggles versus 26 characters you already know the sound of - you choose)
I would think that more Westerners interested in Bhuddism (and there is an ever growing number) would take to learning the language if they didn’t have to learn a whole new “alphabet” - but I am of course assuming that the Word of God needs to be read in its own language. One thing nice about Bhuddism is that it is the only doctrine/religion which seeks to be inclusive instead of exclusive. Am i right Wx99? The “100” or so number for the number of people left in this world who know Sanskrit came from the same documentary about Sanskrit and the “last” translator of Sanskrit left in China. Now how credible all this info from the documentary was I have no idea. How credible is any information you get from a site such as this?
Oh this has been fun. really… I really enjoyed all the zi liao 
put up by people here at segue.com. And it is all free. Amazing!
8) 
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The alphabet is the least hard thing about Sanskrit–it’s the grammar that will kill you. (As hard as Latin.) Sure, I guess you could learn the language entirely through Romanization if you want, but why not spend an extra week and learn the writing system too? Especially when you can apply it to Hindi and other living languages.
There does exist a characteristic Chinese way of transcribing Sanskrit sounds. For example, you’ve probably heard the mantra “Na mu a mi to fo” (Namo Amitabha) or the Chinese equivalent of “Aum Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha” (from the Heart Sutra). Its purpose is not to teach Sanskrit, but to enable Chinese speakers to pronounce (kind of) mantras and other Sanskrit words and phrases.
It’s hard to generalize about Buddhism, or any religion. While Buddhists are not known for harranguing people in the street, or waging holy war (with the possible exception of Sri Lanka), many or most of their teachers do believe that Buddhism (and their form of it) is truer than other religions. Meanwhile Christianity includes everything from Quakerism to Voodoo. And not even all the Quakers agree with each other!
I have read the entire thread, and here’s my comment:
Developing Chinese character for Minnan hua and Hakka is not necessary. It’s already there. Check out dictionary of Minnanhua and Mac Iver dictionary of Hakka-English-Hakka at Cave’s bookstore. Of course I be proud if hakka is standardized and taught in school again. It’s my native tongue.
it’s not absurd for MOE to suggest development of characters for aboriginal languages. If that works best for aboriginal in Taiwan. But of course this would be doing things the hardway. Japan did so by borrowing Hanji into their language hundreds of years ago, and as a result a very hard to learn language. Costly.
There’s a linguist in the States that try to borrow Chinese character two write English. He proposed his ideas to develop a dictionary for english words and grammar written in Chinese characters. Those characters were borrowed or either invented from the existing Chinese radicals. I remember browising into this pages 6 uears ago.
Its a radical yet interesting Idea. How I grasp it was for example if you want to write the word “Word” then you will use too sounds
“wo te”. Wo would probbaly borrow 言 + 莴 and Te might be 言 + 特.
the linguist also develop radical for each prefix and suffix.
For example if suffix -y is radicalized as 魚.
then wordy would be writen as 言+莴 + 特 + 魚, imagine the placement of the radicals yourself to create one character.
This is what I mean doing it the hard way:)
Omoshiroi. Mochironn.
segue,
anton xie