I got forwarded the below by email, made me wonder about all those times that I ‘guess’ the chinese character and get caught out b/c of wrong radical etc (esp in doing the transition from simplified to complex)…
[color=green]"How’s this- if you aren’t a good speller, who craes
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was
rdanieg THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID Aoccdrnig to a
rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr
the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist
and
lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and
you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid
deos
not raed ervey lteter by itself, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig
huh?"[/color]
Anyone else with any thoughts on this? Differences b/w Chinese and English in this respect?? (althoug maybe this should be in the teaching english post??)
Speaking about spelling, my English spelling skills have atrophed since I came here to study. I think us native English speakers must grow a spelling muscle when we’re little and learning to read and seeing as though Chinese doesn’t require one of those, I just haven’t been using that part of my brain. Has anyone else noticed this? I used to be a spelling whiz too!
It’s not just spelling - if you don’t use English (or whatever language you may speak) regularly when in a foreign-language environment, your language skills deteriorate.
[quote=“salt”] I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was
rdanieg THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID Aoccdrnig to a
rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
Anyone else with any thoughts on this? Differences b/w Chinese and English in this respect??[/quote]
Yeah, I can think of a few differences. How about (a) capitalization, and (b) spaces, which incidentally give us words. Capitalization allows your brain to instantly recognise proper nouns like the name of a university and title of a book. Spaces let us recognise common recurring words like “the” and “is”, based on size and frequency, even if some or all of the letters are not in the right position. These are two monumental advancements in the evolution of human languages, which (along with phonetic alphabets) somehow haven’t percolated into Chinese script yet.
The scary reality is that Chinese script today is on the same evolutionary rung with Egyptian hieroglyphics (without the color).
Try the above passage without capitals and spaces:
This happens (for me) in Chinese as well - I regularly recognise a character as being one character of a 2 character word, and then have serious trouble remembering which one. For example - I know the chinese for pressure is 壓力 (ya li), but I went through a phase when, if I saw 力 (li), I would have to think really hard: is that ‘ya’ or ‘li’?
I’ve managed to learn the word without really learning the separate characters. Does that happen to everyone, or am I just weird?
Edit: Just realised that was my 100th post, so I should mention that the same has happened to me with 啤酒 as well
[quote=“david”]This happens (for me) in Chinese as well - I regularly recognise a character as being one character of a 2 character word, and then have serious trouble remembering which one. For example - I know the Chinese for pressure is 壓力 (ya li), but I went through a phase when, if I saw 力 (li), I would have to think really hard: is that ‘ya’ or ‘li’?
I’ve managed to learn the word without really learning the separate characters. Does that happen to everyone, or am I just weird?
[/quote]
This happens to me, too, and sometimes with very common characters. I always have to think a bit to remember which character it is when I see one of the characters in “yinggai” in a different context. Other characters I only recognize in certain words. for eg., “piaoliang”: I only recognize the second character in that context. When I see it anywhere else I have to look it up.
