They wouldn’t understand if they saw the word in Pinyin?[/quote]
Mate, they can’t even make the connection between things like Nicolas Cage and 尼克拉斯凱吉, how the f*** do you expect them to understand a Chinese word in pinyin? I have students who can write upper intermediate level English asking me things like, “How do I write 台中 in English (pinyin)?” after I’ve introduced them to pinyin and how to use it…
Not sure whether it’s cultural (blame it one Confucius if you like) or the education system, but making logical leaps between romanized words and the original characters (or as in my example, phonetically similar sounding words in Chinese or English) seems a big ask in the 'Wan (and I’m willing to guess throughout Far East Asia you’ll find similarities). My adult students are completely puzzled that I can read simplified characters without having learnt them (obviously only learning traditional characters), but although they look vaguely similar, when they don’t I’m making a guess as to what the character should be. For some reason they’re not willing to make that guess. Face, maybe?
Perhaps the PRC is onto something teaching kids pinyin from grade one, instead of Zhuyin.
Well, why not? [color=#FF0000]Before I came to Taiwan and taught English I barely knew what an adjective was, let alone what the tenses were called or the rules by which they were used. [/color]And yet I was fluent and literate and well-read.
I think we as students tend to have unreasonable expectations. We need rules and explanations and mnemonics but that isn’t the way a native speaker thinks about their own language.
I don’t think it’s in any way unique to Taiwan or to Chinese.[/quote]
Well, why not? Before I came to Taiwan and taught English I barely knew what an adjective was, let alone what the tenses were called or the rules by which they were used. And yet I was fluent and literate and well-read.
I think we as students tend to have unreasonable expectations. We need rules and explanations and mnemonics but that isn’t the way a native speaker thinks about their own language.
I don’t think it’s in any way unique to Taiwan or to Chinese.[/quote]
No, what is unique is the argument that a preposterously difficult writing system be maintained in order that the meaning of a word be maintained. You can’t argue that and at the same time acknowledge that most people don’t know how the elements of a character add up to meaning.
Because many Taipei residents don’t understand it.
I was in Carnegies Wednesday afternoon with the VP of the Shangri La group, the GM of the Shanghri La and some other people. One of the ladies present started asking in Taiwanese where the foreigner sitting next to her ( me ) came from, and where my wife came from.
I replied in Taiwanese, that firstly I’m not a foreigner, and that if she wishes to asks she should do so in English so that everybody present could understand the conversation, as the GM and the VP of the Shangrila don’t speak Taiwanese.
She was a bit stunned that I spoke Taiwanese, and explained she spoke Taiwanese as she many foreigners could speak Chinese, believing that no white people in Taiwan speak understand or speak Taiwanese.
Of course she challenged me ( in English now ) about me not being a foreigner and asked me to prove I was Taiwanese by showing an ID card. So I whipped it out ( My ID card that is ). Oh shit, she says… I’ve never seen a foreigner with a Taiwan ID card.
I repiled neither have I, as only Taiwan Citizens have ID cards. Yes she agreed, thats also true.
The rest of the group pissed themselves laughing. It was pretty entertaining.
Chinese is not that far off from English on this point. It’s easy for you to guess the pronunciation of unknown English works because you’re a native speaker. Chinese gives you a huge number of clues once you are confident with a few hundred basic radicals. I can guess the pronunciation and meaning of around 2/3 the unknown characters I see based on the radicals - a native Taiwanese would be closer to 100%. There are a few hundred radicals required vs 26 English letters but then Chinese doesn’t have any tense or special exceptions to worry about.[/quote]
Agreed, I’d rather read Chinese characters than Pinyin any day. For me, it’s less guessing and one less “filter” that I need to run in my head to understand it.[/quote]
I agree as well. Although my English far exceeds my Chinese abilities, my reading speed in Chinese (characters) of everyday stuff far far exceeds my reading speed in English or in pinyin.
I have learned lots of vocabulary by reading and deriving meaning from characters on a page that I would have had no chance if it was in pinyin or spoken. In fact, I learned 反相器 today in an e-mail from a colleague in China. I’ve never seen the word before but based on the topic being discussed (electronics) and the individual characters, I was able to figure out what he was referring to. If he were to use fǎnxiàngqì, I’d not only have to look it up, I’ll also have to make sure that it isn’t 反向器, which is something completely different. I’ve also managed to properly guess at the pronunciation of many unfamiliar characters with a good rate of success, but of course, far lower than the 100% it would be with Pinyin. And herein lies the trade-off – pronunciation versus meaning when coming across the unfamiliar on a page. To the beginner, both are important and Pinyin at least provides half of the puzzle in allowing him to say it out loud. To the advanced, words that he’s unfamiliar with are probably only restricted to those that are written down; thus, guessing at meaning is more important than pronunciation since he will never likely use that word in regular speech. Hence, characters hold the advantage here.
The thing is that Chinese people don’t write as they speak. The written and spoken forms differ quite a lot more than western languages. This is the point that occhimarroni was making when s/he wrote that Chinese would lose its existing literary forms if the writing were to switch to an alphabet system. The common written vocabulary is quite a bit larger than the common spoken vocabulary so much so that if one were to use a word that is commonly written but rarely spoken, you’ll often be asked to clarify, at which point, the conversation will diverge into a discussion on what characters make up the unfamiliar word until the listener clicks in and the main conversation can continue.
Try taking the very very popular works of Jin Yong (金庸) and read it out loud. It won’t be too long before the native Chinese speaker will want to rip the book from your hands and see the printed characters for himself.
Of course, one can always abandon the existing writing style and the use of high literary forms of the language and simplify it to concentrate purely on the vernacular, for which pinyin is an excellent fit. In my opinion, that would be a great loss.
The options doesn’t have to be either/or. The Japanese have chosen the middle way and adopted a mixed orthography.
:bravo: You rock, I thoroughly enjoy reading your informative, well versed, nothing but the facts ma’am posts. Were you in the debate club in high school?
[quote=“Satellite TV”]I was in Carnegies Wednesday afternoon with the VP of the Shangri La group, the GM of the Shanghri La and some other people. One of the ladies present started asking in Taiwanese where the foreigner sitting next to her ( me ) came from, and where my wife came from.
I replied in Taiwanese, that firstly I’m not a foreigner, and that if she wishes to asks she should do so in English so that everybody present could understand the conversation, as the GM and the VP of the Shangrila don’t speak Taiwanese.
She was a bit stunned that I spoke Taiwanese, and explained she spoke Taiwanese as she many foreigners could speak Chinese, believing that no white people in Taiwan speak understand or speak Taiwanese.
Of course she challenged me ( in English now ) about me not being a foreigner and asked me to prove I was Taiwanese by showing an ID card. So I whipped it out ( My ID card that is ). Oh shit, she says… I’ve never seen a foreigner with a Taiwan ID card.
I repiled neither have I, as only Taiwan Citizens have ID cards. Yes she agreed, thats also true.
The rest of the group pissed themselves laughing. It was pretty entertaining.[/quote]
You owe me a new keyboard. Actually, on second thought, just video call me the next time some nitwit like that starts another one of those conversation so I can watch you take them down 3 or 4 notches. At least she had the courage to agree at the end :bravo:
Because many Taipei residents don’t understand it.
I was in Carnegies Wednesday afternoon with the VP of the Shangri La group, the GM of the Shanghri La and some other people. One of the ladies present started asking in Taiwanese where the foreigner sitting next to her ( me ) came from, and where my wife came from.
I replied in Taiwanese, that firstly I’m not a foreigner, and that if she wishes to asks she should do so in English so that everybody present could understand the conversation, as the GM and the VP of the Shangrila don’t speak Taiwanese.
She was a bit stunned that I spoke Taiwanese, and explained she spoke Taiwanese as she many foreigners could speak Chinese, believing that no white people in Taiwan speak understand or speak Taiwanese.
Of course she challenged me ( in English now ) about me not being a foreigner and asked me to prove I was Taiwanese by showing an ID card. So I whipped it out ( My ID card that is ). Oh shit, she says… I’ve never seen a foreigner with a Taiwan ID card.
I repiled neither have I, as only Taiwan Citizens have ID cards. Yes she agreed, thats also true.
The rest of the group pissed themselves laughing. It was pretty entertaining.[/quote]
Hmmm, now I’m curious. Are you half-Asian? Or what’s your situation.
I don’t believe the situation would arise. But ‘academics’ tend to be a lot more casual about changes to English than the man on the street.
Quite.
Captain.
I have the opposite experience. The fact that a huge number of Chinese characters have no relation to their meaning is part of the reason for this. Some characters, such as 電 are easy enough, since you know the compound word using it is going to have something to do with electricity or electronics (at least nine times out of ten). But many aren’t.
In other words, once you’ve spent all the time required learning the writing system the fact that the writing system is difficult to learn doesn’t matter. Well yes. But the fact that the writing system is difficult to learn does matter at the most important part of the process, the part at which you’re starting to learn the language.
This doesn’t have anything to do with the characters. As you’ve pointed out it’s a problem which already takes place, because Chinese has so many redundant homophones.
Again, it doesn’t matter if I’m reading them in pinyin or characters, this is going to happen.
How would the use of pinyin be an abandonment of ‘high literary forms’? Did English abandon ‘high literary forms’ when it departed from the Anglo Saxon used to write ‘Beowulf’?
The Chinese have a mixed orthography also, it’s just not used systematically. The Japanese have simply added three different alphabets to an existing character system, which is depressingly redundant and increases the learning burden even more. It’s difficult to see this as an advantage. There’s a reason why so many Japanese are writing in romaji and kanji usage is declining. I don’t see Korea having any problems as a result of switching to an alphabet. The Chinese could do the same. The only opposition is cultural.
Brendon: It’s pretty crazy that you didn’t know what an adjective was before you came to Taiwan. It’s crazier that I met English majors who didn’t know what a preposition was. Some of us, however, do/did know these things.
Precisely! I get sick of the constant fallback of “5000 years of culture…blah blah…5000 years of culture…blah blah” and then I ask someone what Zhongli means and they tell me it’s just a name. I’ve asked ordinary people and professional teachers (most of whom live in Taoyuan) what Zhongli means, and so far, the only person who has been able to tell me is my current girlfriend (whose explanation was that li is some kind of plateau – can anyone confirm this?). Not only that, but all these other people have looked at me like I’ve just asked for their firstborn or something, as though it’s such an unreasonable concept to think that if zhong means middle in other words, it probably means middle something in Zhongli too. Then there’s the unfathomable leap of logic that if Zhongli means middle something, Neili must mean…wait for it…inside something.
[quote=“Brendon”]Sure, because it’s not like we memorize the individual crazy spellings of tens of thousands of English words, or anything …
Don’t mind me, I’m drunk and trolling[/quote]
Okay, maybe you’re trolling, but I’ll bite.
Of course, English isn’t as precise as some other European languages, but it’s not like you couldn’t take a good stab at a word with a long e sound in it. Likewise, there are certain combinations of letters that are quite peculiar to each language, so have you ever tried to spell any English word with jx?
This seems to be a major problem then, and even more of an argument for why the written language should be overhauled. There’s a major inefficiency if two people have to go through some elaborate re-configuration between what one is dictating and what another is writing. On the other hand, any of the posters here could speak or write all of this and people would understand what they were on about. I have experienced this process by which Chinese have to stop their conversation and go into an elaborate discussion about which character they mean, and there’s much imaginary writing in the air. Unless we’re throwing around some technical terms, most university-educated people from the West are not going to have to stop mid-sentence and go into an elaborate linguistics lesson. That right there means there’s something wrong with the Chinese language. A language is meant to be about effective communication.
Again, I can’t speak any languages other than English, but I could pronounce half a dozen, at least, and it’s really not that hard to keep track of what’s doing what in which language. I can tell you that in Hungarian, an s makes a sh sound in English, and you’re off and running and saying Budapesht not Budapest, just like a local. Next thing you know, you’re pronouncing every street sign and you’re reading a word out to a local over a telephone and getting an intelligible response. Here in Taiwan, you may as well have dropped me in the middle of some alien world or handed me a child’s finger-painting project.
This doesn’t have anything to do with the characters. As you’ve pointed out it’s a problem which already takes place, because Chinese has so many redundant homophones.[/quote]
It absolutely has everything to do with characters. The reason the written vocabulary is much larger is because that vocabulary exists mainly in writing, where pronunciation and homophones do not matter. Switching wholesale to pinyin will cause the abandonment of many existing vocabulary of which there isn’t an appropriate replacement in the vernacular. Replacements can be built over time, of course, but that vocabulary isn’t something that is there right from the start.
Again, it doesn’t matter if I’m reading them in Pinyin or characters, this is going to happen.[/quote]
Then you’re missing my point. Much of Jin Yong’s work or any other serious literature is incomprehensible to a large degree when read out loud. That is the problem with writing in pinyin as it will necessarily focus on the vernacular and thus, the abandonment of existing high literary styles. Chengyu, a major component of Chinese writing, will be one of the first ones to be marginalized. Given time, other high vernacular literary styles may emerge, but this does not come without a high cost in the interim.
How would the use of Pinyin be an abandonment of ‘high literary forms’? Did English abandon ‘high literary forms’ when it departed from the Anglo Saxon used to write ‘Beowulf’?[/quote]
That move was evolutionary. Switching to pinyin wholesale would be revolutionary as it would throw away a large chunk of the existing written language and would make much of the existing text either incomprehensible or quite difficult. If Chinese writing styles were to evolve closer and closer to the vernacular to the point where what’s spoken and what’s written are as close as western languages, then choosing pinyin over characters would not be a great loss.
I’ve given you reasons beside cultural ones. The opposition is not only cultural.
:eh: This is a joke, right? Just for shits and giggles, I asked some Taiwanese people about the etymology behind some random/common characters. None of them could answer the question. One of them even said, “It’s not important.”. Seriously, you were joking, right?
:eh: This is a joke, right? Just for shits and giggles, I asked some Taiwanese people about the etymology behind some random/common characters. None of them could answer the question. One of them even said, “It’s not important.”. Seriously, you were joking, right?[/quote]
Quite. I was recently in the checkout line in Marks & Spencer in Inverness and I asked a few people about the etymology of a few common English words. Can you believe it? Not ONE had any idea, and one even tried to stab me and steal my wallet.
:eh: This is a joke, right? Just for shits and giggles, I asked some Taiwanese people about the etymology behind some random/common characters. None of them could answer the question. One of them even said, “It’s not important.”. Seriously, you were joking, right?[/quote]
Quite. I was recently in the checkout line in Marks & Spencer in Inverness and I asked a few people about the etymology of a few common English words. Can you believe it? Not ONE had any idea, and one even tried to stab me and steal my wallet.[/quote]
I don’t believe the situation would arise. But ‘academics’ tend to be a lot more casual about changes to English than the man on the street.
Quite.
Captain.
I have the opposite experience. The fact that a huge number of Chinese characters have no relation to their meaning is part of the reason for this. Some characters, such as 電 are easy enough, since you know the compound word using it is going to have something to do with electricity or electronics (at least nine times out of ten). But many aren’t.
In other words, once you’ve spent all the time required learning the writing system the fact that the writing system is difficult to learn doesn’t matter. Well yes. But the fact that the writing system is difficult to learn does matter at the most important part of the process, the part at which you’re starting to learn the language.
This doesn’t have anything to do with the characters. As you’ve pointed out it’s a problem which already takes place, because Chinese has so many redundant homophones.
Again, it doesn’t matter if I’m reading them in Pinyin or characters, this is going to happen.
How would the use of Pinyin be an abandonment of ‘high literary forms’? Did English abandon ‘high literary forms’ when it departed from the Anglo Saxon used to write ‘Beowulf’?
The Chinese have a mixed orthography also, it’s just not used systematically. The Japanese have simply added three different alphabets to an existing character system, which is depressingly redundant and increases the learning burden even more. It’s difficult to see this as an advantage. There’s a reason why so many Japanese are writing in romaji and kanji usage is declining. I don’t see Korea having any problems as a result of switching to an alphabet. The Chinese could do the same. The only opposition is cultural.[/quote]
I think you are missing the main argument that sjcma and I were making. The evolution of the Chinese has always been attached to the Chinese character as opposed to other languages attached to the vernacular. The English language was so quick to abandon Anglo-Saxon precisely because the spoken language had already changed. Shakespeare was written in the vernacular of the vulgar low class in the 15th century, but has come to symbolize a higher/literary form of English in modern times, However, in Chinese history the only thing that united all the tribes together was the writing system. Classical Chinese is much like latin in that it’s emphasis was much more on maintaining the writing system rather adhering and evolving with changes in the vernacular.
Hence, Chinese has numerous homophones since characters are all only one syllable and you can have only so many one syllable words. That is why the vast majority of Chinese nouns are two syllables and now in modern times have become three syllables (i.e. 提款機) in order to avoid confusion. This may work in conversation, however, in the literary language characters are still very important.
As I said before, authors in Chinese have the ability to invent their own terms to attain a higher level specificity. All they have to do is combine two characters that put together would indicate a unique meaning. Now if we converted this to pinyin and assumed that one had no previous knowledge of characters, then how could the possibly guess as to what the author is trying to convey? First of all, it would be much more difficult to learn Chinese in the long run. Instead of memorizing the meanings of individual characters one would have to memorize the numerous meanings that a one syllable word could have. For example the word shi4 with no character could mean:
soldier, scholar
family name
city
world
show, indicate, signify
6.serve the government
pattern, type
business, event
wait upon, serve
be; yes, right
room
wipe, rub
look at, regard as
(literary) die, pass (of time)
power, momentum
test, try, examination
ornament, decorate
delight in, relish, be addicted to
pledge, vow, swear
suitable, fitting, comfortable, go, follow
know, recognize, remember, work
explain, set free
Now without the character to help distinguish meanings, seems like this would be much more a headache for foreigners in the advance stages of learning as well as for native speakers.
:eh: This is a joke, right? Just for shits and giggles, I asked some Taiwanese people about the etymology behind some random/common characters. None of them could answer the question. One of them even said, “It’s not important.”. Seriously, you were joking, right?[/quote]
Quite. I was recently in the checkout line in Marks & Spencer in Inverness and I asked a few people about the etymology of a few common English words. Can you believe it? Not ONE had any idea, and one even tried to stab me and steal my wallet.[/quote]
The difference is probably that there’d be a lot more people in English speaking countries who would be open to the idea of reforming English to simplify spelling and grammar to make it more user friendly. We don’t fall back on some notion of thousands of years of history as to why we can’t and won’t.
I’m not missing it, I just don’t see how it’s relevant.
I don’t understand how pointing out all the problems caused by a clumsy system of thousands of redundant characters supports your case that this system should be preserved.
You mean if I put the pinyin ‘dian’ and ‘hua’ together, no one without a previous understanding of characters would understand that ‘dianhua’ means ‘telephone’? Is that what you’re claiming?
[quote]First of all, it would be much more difficult to learn Chinese in the long run. Instead of memorizing the meanings of individual characters one would have to memorize the numerous meanings that a one syllable word could have. For example the word shi4 with no character could mean:
[…]
Now without the character to help distinguish meanings, seems like this would be much more a headache for foreigners in the advance stages of learning as well as for native speakers.[/quote]
Millions of native speakers manage this perfectly well every year. I would like to introduce you to Zhuyin.
This is what I keep coming back to. On the one hand foreigners telling me that the Chinese character system is just too mystical/literary/culturally important/historically significant to be changed, and that if the language is written phonetically then no one will understand it, it will be more difficult to learn, and it’s impossible to convey the same meaning anyway.
On the other hand, millions of Chinese have been writing their language using an alphabet for decades, and all the empirical evidence demonstrates not only that it can be done, but that far from being detrimental to language learning the benefits render it a far superior method than learning characters.
To put it simply, I remain unconvinced by foreigners telling me Chinese can’t be learned or written properly using an alphabet, when the Chinese themselves have been doing this for close to 100 years.
Yes she agreed, thats also true.