[quote=“Fortigurn”]So explain again what’s missing when classical Chinese is written phonetically?[/quote]Meaning.
How is this any different if characters are used? I don’t see the issue. As I’ve already pointed out, if you show me the characters I still won’t have any idea what it means, so how are the characters supposed to be helping?[/quote]
The characters won’t help you because as you said, you can barely read 500. But characters will help anyone that has a junior high education in Chinese. Isn’t that what you’re asking with this question: Are you trying to tell me that no one else would have any idea either, no matter how much Chinese they knew?
Here’s the sentence again: Wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2.
Phonetic writing makes this simple short setence totally unreadable. Characters makes this simple short setence clear and concise.
EDIT: If you were to look up mang2 in the dictionary using solely the phonetics, let’s say in the ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary, you still won’t understand the sentence. But if I were to give you the characters for you to look up in the dictionary, you’ll be able to understand. That’s how it would help.
Ok, can you be more specific? What meaning is lost? If I read ‘horse’ in classical Chinese, and ‘horse’ in pinyin, what do I lose when I write it in pinyin?
How about when it’s written in simplified characters? Is the meaning lost in them as well?
[quote]The characters won’t help you because as you said, you can barely read 500. But characters will help any one that has a junior high education in Chinese. Isn’t that what you’re asking with this question: Are you trying to tell me that no one else would have any idea either, no matter how much Chinese they knew?
Here’s the sentence again: Wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2.
Phonetic writing makes this simple short setence totally unreadable. Characters makes this simple short setence clear and concise.[/quote]
Ok, you haven’t actually explained why phonetic writing makes this sentence totally unreadable, and characters make it clear and concise. Nor have you explained how this is an argument for retaining Chinese characters. How about simplified characters? Do they make the meaning ‘clear and concise’,or ‘totally unreadable’?
Edit: How about if I say ‘wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2’? Can anyone understand that?
I might be able to understand if you showed me the characters to look up, but I still might not. I would have no idea if I’m to read it literally, figuratively, or idiomatically. Given that it’s completely out of context, this is hardly surprising.
Chinese characters clearly cause plenty more problems than they solve, which is why Chinese speakers repeatedly have to resort to saying things like ‘東西的 『東』’, and frantically scribbling air characters, and why the language has been repeatedly overhauled through the introduction of phonetic alphabets and simplified characters. There are major problems here which native Chinese speakers are clearly able to identify, and foreigners clearly aren’t.
As I said before, and not in jest, I’m sure those oracle bone Chinese writers were bemoaning the unutterable degradation of the language when bronze script was introduced, saying the meaning of the characters would be lost, no one would be able to read or write anything, and that it was the end of civilization as they knew it. Taiwanese say the same about simplified characters, and very clearly it simply isn’t true.
Ok, can you be more specific? What meaning is lost? If I read ‘horse’ in classical Chinese, and ‘horse’ in Pinyin, what do I lose when I write it in Pinyin?[/quote]
If you read 馬, you know it’s a horse. If you read ma3, are you sure it’s a horse and not any number of other characters with the same pronunciation?
For the most part, simplified characters have not affected meaning.
Simplified characters, in the vast majority of cases, cause no confusion when compared against traditional characters. In the example I gave, “Wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2” is written 我忙,我茫,我盲 (I’m busy, I’m confused, I’m blind). However, the author could have ended the story with 我忙,我忙,我忙 (I’m busy, I’m busy, I’m busy) and it’ll still make sense in the context of the story. The fact is, both sentences are pronounced exactly the same, but give a very different feel to the ending.
I’d say that most will gather that you are very busy, very busy, and very busy. They will most likely not gather that you’re busy, confused and blind. In speech, people don’t use 茫 for confused nor do they use 盲 for blind. Both are fairly common in writing, however, esp. 盲.
I agree, but the debate isn’t about simplified characters.
Here’s the sentence again: Wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2.
Phonetic writing makes this simple short setence totally unreadable. Characters makes this simple short setence clear and concise.
[/quote]
I’ll take a stab just for fun: “I’m busy, blind, and befuddled” (i.e. feeling like a “chicken running around with its head cut off”).
Whether this guess is what you had in mind or not, it obviously would be a much easier and surer thing to read the characters in this example.[/quote]
You’re close. The order of blind and befuddled is reversed. Of course, the author could have ended the story in the order you’ve presented and it’ll still make sense, albeit with a slight difference in effect. As you’ve indicated, it would be a surer thing to read the characters in this example.
No. I don’t know it’s a horse. It could be a surname. When it’s with 上 it definitely doesn’t mean ‘horse’.
Context. Same as when I hear it.
Is there a reason for this? Some of them are pretty, well, simplified.
Ok, so how is this impossible to derive from writing it phonetically?
What I’m getting from this is that there’s a way to write it in a phonetic alphabet which avoids the confusion of ‘wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2’. You just write the same way you speak. I could write ‘wǒfánhuá,wǒhútu,wǒdǎng’ (or any combination of many other synonyms). So there isn’t in fact a problem. It isn’t impossible after all. I can write the same thing in pinyin as I can in characters, to express the same meaning.
That’s ridiculous. Does an English speaking person get confused when they hear “there”? Maybe it was “their” or “they’re”… It’s all about context.[/quote]
Roll up, roll up! The amazing non-analogous analogy!
That’s ridiculous. Does an English speaking person get confused when they hear “there”? Maybe it was “their” or “they’re”… It’s all about context.[/quote]
Roll up, roll up! The amazing non-analogous analogy! [/quote]
Do you have anything constructive to add? Do you believe it is all about context?
I’d love to see some stats on how many people from the West have learned to read and/or write traditional Chinese characters. I don’t know if anyone has a link or would venture a guess, but I’d like to know approximately how many have spent the time to get to a high school grad level or say an IELTS 7.0 equivalent.
There was a thread here some years ago about making sure your child had a language of eloquence. Do you remember that? There is so much effort involved to learn to read and write Chinese well, I hope my little girls can get to a stage in English and Chinese where they can appreciate the classics.
It’s funny how even with high school English, you can get a lot out of a play by Shakespeare. Then, you find a good copy of one of Shakespeare’s plays with all the notes in the margins, and you see how much you missed.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]occhimarroni: I think you’re missing the point Fortigurn and I are making. Essentially, a large number of people are saying Chinese can’t (and won’t) be reformed. Instead, Chinese learners will grind on wasting what must amount to tens of thousands of hours. In so doing, this completely hobbles both the culture and the language from being those of scientific innovation and international commerce.
As to the point about high literature being unreadable, that seems like a fairly big trade off for efficiency. How often does your average Taiwanese person, especially of the bin lang chewing variety, ever read such stuff? Yet he has this huge millstone around his neck just to learn how to fill out a withdrawal slip at the bank. It’s like encumbering English speakers with labouring through any pre-modern English, Ancient Greek or Latin, just so we could read our classics or high literature. Most of us exist quite fine without such abilities, or if we must, we use a secondary text. Actually, take high literature in any language (including modern English) and half the subtleties – injokes and obscure cultural references – will be lost on a large part of the population. So what? This whole thing is like cramming music notation down the throat of some guy who just wants to find a tab to play a three chord Bob Dylan song.[/quote]
So you’ve decided that this high cultural language is no longer worthy of preservation. You think English speakers would be so open to reform if it meant that future generations could no longer have access or be able to comprehend Shakespeare? I’m sure many would be in opposition, Change in a language is organic and forcing change on something can produce questionable results. There are alot of dumb rednecks in the states that doesn’t mean I’m going to sacrifice my literature so that every redneck can read something written for the lowest common denominator.
Surely, you can communicate in pinyin, but you have to take into account there are differing levels of communication. You are not addressing the fact that Chinese has a literary form that is incomprehensible when spoken which makes me think you either have no knowledge of advanced Chinese or are purposefully ignoring it. Like when you use the word 電話 as an example of something that could be understood in pinyin. That is an everyday word and has no relation to what I’m talking about.
Also, you failed to address how authors can create their own terms by combining characters from other compounds to make new words. These words would be incomprehensible in spoken language sense by nature they are new and not part of the vernacular. Yet upon reading them the reader would understand them readily. The absence of characters would make this impossible.
Seems to me you are overcomplicating Chinese. Perhaps, for you it is more difficult to learn because of where you come from as a westerner. It is certainly easier for Vietnamese, Koreans, and Japanese. Even if they don’t use characters they still have cognates that we don’t. There is no “the most difficult/complicated” language in the world. It’s all just a matter of perspective.
Furthermore, to imply that the nature of a language somehow heeds a culture’s ability to technologically innovate seems not only ignorant, but ethnocentric. I don’t care what scholar said that, it’s a crock of shit to assume that Chinese spend too much time learning their language and because of it can’t innovate. How much did you spend learning how to spell? For some it comes naturally and they learn faster. Others need more time. Yet as of now it is still important for English speakers. However, by the time we get out of middle school we are able to spell things and read efficiently just like Chinese speakers. Out of middle school they can read the newspaper, novels, comic books or whatever. Certainly they will come across new characters, but that’s the process of learning. Languages evolve through the need for efficiency. I don’t understand how anyone can say a culture somehow lacks that trait.
No. I don’t know it’s a horse. It could be a surname. When it’s with 上 it definitely doesn’t mean ‘horse’.[/quote]
If you’re talking about ma3shang4 as “right away”, it wouldn’t be used in classical Chinese, so your point is irrelevant. Also, coupling it with shang4 doesn’t necessarily mean that ma3 does not mean horse. It still can.
Context. Same as when I hear it.[/quote]
Classical Chinese is purely a written language and has no close equivalent in any modern spoken variants of Chinese. Thus, you won’t be able to tell from context because everyone has difficulty when classical Chinese is read out loud.
We are still talking about classical Chinese right? I’m assuming yes since you wrote: If I read ‘horse’ in classical Chinese, and ‘horse’ in Pinyin, what do I lose when I write it in Pinyin?
Or do you have your own definition of classical Chinese that I’m not aware of?
Is there a reason for this? Some of them are pretty, well, simplified.[/quote]
Are you kidding? Or is this a rhetorical question?
Ok, so how is this impossible to derive from writing it phonetically?[/quote]
So at the end of the story, there are two possible endings, one says “I’m busy”, the other says “I’m blind”. Both sound exactly the same. Show me how it could be derived phonetically to ensure no confusion.
What I’m getting from this is that there’s a way to write it in a phonetic alphabet which avoids the confusion of ‘wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2’. You just write the same way you speak. I could write ‘wǒfánhuá,wǒhútu,wǒdǎng’ (or any combination of many other synonyms). So there isn’t in fact a problem. It isn’t impossible after all. I can write the same thing in Pinyin as I can in characters, to express the same meaning.[/quote]
So you’re back to saying that the vernacular can be written down phonetically. I’ve already agreed with you on this point pages ago. Why bother rehashing this when it’s not a point of contention? The topic of recent discussion is about modern written Chinese, the role of classical Chinese in it, and the difficulties encountered when romanizing such writings. Isn’t it? It isn’t about the paraphrasing of written Chinese with vernacular Chinese.
That’s ridiculous. Does an English speaking person get confused when they hear “there”? Maybe it was “their” or “they’re”… It’s all about context.[/quote]
Perhaps you didn’t notice we were talking about classical Chinese.
[quote=“occhimarroni”][quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]occhimarroni: I think you’re missing the point Fortigurn and I are making. Essentially, a large number of people are saying Chinese can’t (and won’t) be reformed. Instead, Chinese learners will grind on wasting what must amount to tens of thousands of hours. In so doing, this completely hobbles both the culture and the language from being those of scientific innovation and international commerce.
As to the point about high literature being unreadable, that seems like a fairly big trade off for efficiency. How often does your average Taiwanese person, especially of the bin lang chewing variety, ever read such stuff? Yet he has this huge millstone around his neck just to learn how to fill out a withdrawal slip at the bank. It’s like encumbering English speakers with labouring through any pre-modern English, Ancient Greek or Latin, just so we could read our classics or high literature. Most of us exist quite fine without such abilities, or if we must, we use a secondary text. Actually, take high literature in any language (including modern English) and half the subtleties – injokes and obscure cultural references – will be lost on a large part of the population. So what? This whole thing is like cramming music notation down the throat of some guy who just wants to find a tab to play a three chord Bob Dylan song.[/quote]
So you’ve decided that this high cultural language is no longer worthy of preservation. You think English speakers would be so open to reform if it meant that future generations could no longer have access or be able to comprehend Shakespeare? I’m sure many would be in opposition, Change in a language is organic and forcing change on something can produce questionable results. There are alot of dumb rednecks in the states that doesn’t mean I’m going to sacrifice my literature so that every redneck can read something written for the lowest common denominator.[/quote]
What are you talking about? The English language now is not the same as it was two hundred years ago (hence why most people scratch their heads at the line “our land is girt by sea” and the minority who do know its meaning laugh at the term), let alone in Shakespeare’s day. Maybe you’re equally as fluent in the English of all epochs, but the vast majority of us aren’t. Shakespeare doesn’t just roll off the tongue and make immediate sense to most of us. Instead, we have to wade through it with about the same success (i.e. a lot of prodding from teachers who are barely one step ahead in many cases) as your average kid in a year nine French class would some French tabloid. It has nothing to do with having to sacrifice your literature. It’s a different language. In two hundred years, kids are going to be having trouble with Norman Mailer. Big deal.
I’m not an expert on Chinese literature, but so what? Again, you’re completely missing the point that a language must have utility, when clearly Chinese doesn’t. You’re putting the cart before the horse and saying that because it has high literature, and some people can/do read it, that that’s a sensible way to conduct business. Again, let’s cram Latin, Ancient Greek and Anglo-Saxon (not to mention various other forms of pre-modern English) down every kid’s throat just so you can read your Sophocles in the original language. Or, instead of learning how to multiply by three, learn every possible multiple of three. Sure, kids would have to do an extra 47 hours of mathematics per week at school, but they’d eventually arrive at the same place as the rest of us.
Why would one not be able to understand a term readily simply because it was spoken? Why would one instantly, and miraculously understand if written down? This is neither necessarily true nor untrue in any language, surely? For instance, the first time I watched Office Space, I instantly understood (and appreciated) the term assclown, even though I’d never heard it before. Conversely, there’s plenty of jargon composed of basic words that I’ve read that I haven’t had the faintest clue about. Are you saying this process is completely different in Chinese?
If true, perhaps this mental block speaks more about the pedagogy of a culture and how it forces people to become visual learners, even if they’re not naturally so. That certainly seems to be the case here. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has encountered the seeming inability of anyone in this country to understand that if you’re in a coffee shop and you’re asking for some soup to put in your coffee, you probably mean sugar, but have just used the wrong tone, and no matter how many different ways you try to say it, no one seems to have any idea what you’re on about. Perhaps though, we should all be squiggling air characters as so many Taiwanese do. Better yet, if their classical literature conveys so much more meaning than the vernacular, why don’t they all become mute and use sign language?
This has nothing to do with cognates. Throw me in a Korean class and a Chinese class and tell me which one I will progress in faster in terms of reading. Seriously. In fact, throw me in a Korean class, a Georgian class and an Arabic class and I’d probably still progress quicker in all combined than Chinese purely in terms of being able to read.
It’s because of the entire pedagogy that grows up around that. With something like Russian, you’ve learnt the pronunciation rules by recess on the first day and then it’s up to you whether you’re out drinking vodka from a plastic cup with your grandfather or reading Dostoyevsky. English is a bit more of a pain in that there are more complicated spelling rules, there’s often more than a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters, or vice versa, and there are a ton of stupid exceptions. Still, the point is made. While Vlad and Billy are out kicking a soccer ball around in the yard, Belching Tiger is still hitting his head on a wall trying to remember how to read his teacher’s name, except he isn’t because he’s using bopomofo (an alphabet) as a short cut. Chinese is a “sit down, shut the fuck up, and do as you’re told because we’ve got way too much stuff we have to hammer into you” way of writing, and that flows into everything else they do. It’s why they’re able to play every note on a page, but can’t improvise for crap, and why they can play Eric Clapton with even less soul than Eric Clapton. It’s why they’re all able to spell every word in the English dictionary, plus its kk, plus tell you whether it’s a conjunction or an adverb, but can’t actually use any of them in a real sentence. It’s why they consistently rank lower than a whole bunch of poorer Asian nations on all those English language proficiency tests. Alphabets are “we’ve got better things to do” kinds of writing.
Call it ethnocentric (or, as the rest of us call it: distinguishing between being arse-backwards and having your shit together) if you like, but what’s your explanation of why Taiwanese kids have absolutely no critical thinking ability and why China’s invented three fifths of five eighths of bugger all in the past several centuries? Look around you. How much of what you see what invented by Chinese people? When was the last time the U.N. sent in a bunch of feng shui experts or acupuncturalists to some cholera outbreak in Africa? No, they send in Western doctors who practise Western medicine which was made possible because amongst other things, alphabets allowed a completely different overarching philosophy to creativity and inquiry. Are you honestly telling me that none of this is related to their cumbersome writing versus our easy writing?
You’re also being somewhat disingenuous when you say that out of school both cultures are equally literate. Taiwanese kids spend about 37 hours in school every day, plus another 11 in cram schools after school, and then do about 5 days of homework on the weekend.
[quote=“sjcma”][quote=“Fortigurn”]Classical Chinese is purely a written language and has no close equivalent in any modern spoken variants of Chinese. Thus, you won’t be able to tell from context because everyone has difficulty when classical Chinese is read out loud.
[/quote][/quote]
Which, if I may say, is the entire point. When people write a diary entry, when people write an email to a friend, when people write a business contract, when people write almost any form of communication BESIDES literature, they are not writing Classical Chinese as that is a different language. I don’t write using Old English unless I’m trying to be an prissy ass or make a fool of myself.
Arguing that characters must remain in the language as they’re vital to preserve another language is not logical.
I might use “a la carte” when I’m at a restaurant but it’s not necessary, so it would make no sense to force every primary student to study French pronunciation just so everyone could get the in joke.
I highly doubt there is a 1-2-3 causal relation between characters and lack of Chinese patents. You might want to consider other things like recent economic history, cultural norms, etc, before oversimplifying the problem into a generalization that has a hint of something no one here wants to see. It destroys any valid points you may have had.
A valid observation from your point that could be made is I believe there is a relationship between characters and why all technical discussions I’ve been involved in (a very large number) and patents/applications I’ve seen from Taiwan/China all make very liberal use of English technical terms. It is so hard to create new efficient and useful names in Mandarin (thanks to being from the mold created by characters) that most people simply do not use them. Oh they get created eventually, but most Taiwanese/Chinese will just resort to the English/German/Japanese/what have you name first. Trying writing a thesis on quarks in Mandarin. Or a speech on plastic surgery.
That’s ridiculous. Does an English speaking person get confused when they hear “there”? Maybe it was “their” or “they’re”… It’s all about context.