[quote=“puiwaihin”] the details in my explanations were to give us a common starting point, and for the benefit of those following the thread who have no idea about this.
[/quote]
he’s talking about me. 
( I know not specifically me pwh) but I definitely fit the bill)
It’s difficult enough to follow anyway, but very interesting none the less. Thanks
At the risk of giving evidence of my self confessed ingnorance… 
In the main Chinese dialects is there a farily even trade off between pronunciation variation. e.g. The mandarin sound “sheng” , is it always the same equivalent in Cantonese, despite which character is used (I realise it’s probably not true in 100% of cases, but is that pretty much how it works across the dialects?
I don’t know how clear that is. If I learn the sound “sheng” in Mandarin and then learn one of the same words in Cantonese , could I then safely assume that the majority of words I know as “sheng” in Mandarin, would have the same pronunciation in Cantonese?
If so, is this true of most Chinese dialects? That’s the picture I’m getting from this thread.
I hope my meaning is clear. Sorry I can’t give any examples.
(It’s better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak up and remove all doubt. 
)
[quote]In the main Chinese dialects is there a farily even trade off between pronunciation variation. e.g. The Mandarin sound “sheng” , is it always the same equivalent in Cantonese, despite which character is used (I realise it’s probably not true in 100% of cases, but is that pretty much how it works across the dialects?
[/quote]
From my slight knowledge of Taiwanese - no - there is some correspondence, but you can’t use it as a rule.
As for differing vocabulary, I’ve heard about 15% of Cantonese character/syllables are unique to Cantonese. Also the different Chinese languages combine syllables to make words in a different way. So the actual number of ‘words’ that are different may be much higher. Finally, my impression from a couple of attempts to start learning Chiense, is that it’s often the most common words that are different. For examplem in the first lesson of one of my Taiwanese textbooks, 26 out of the 42 vocabulary words and phrases are unique to Taiwanese or use different characters.
Brian
Obiously a Taiwanese textbook will teach those things that are most different from Standard Chinese. That’s just good pedagogy. Also I do not consider syllables combining differently a completely “new” word unless it has unique dialect meaning that is either indecipherable from the characters or conflicts with existing meaning.
Even, no. Regular, more or less. There is an average of 6 corresponding sounds in Mandarin for every sound in Cantonese, and 4 corresponding sounds in Cantonese for every sound in Mandarin. But that is a little misleading.
Usually there will be 1 main pronunciation, maybe a second common pronunciation, and the other sounds go with just 1 or 2 characters. So, without even looking at a character, you can do better than 50/50 in guessing most sounds.
sheng= sing || saang || sang
But my chart doesn’t take tone differences into account. Taking tone into consideration it gets even more regular (in terms of sound):
sheng4= sing6 || sing3 || sing4
sheng3= saang2 || sing2* (sing2 may be due to 1 chacter also having the pronunciations xing3 and xian3)
sheng2= sing4 (even though some of these characters have more than 1 Mandarin)
sheng1= sang1 || sing1 || saang1 || seng1* (-eng is an oral rendering of -ing in Cantonese)
Again, you can reference my chart at:
chinawestexchange.com/Conver … ndarin.htm
There’s a SWEET online dictionary that will give you Cantonese and Mandarin output for an entire sentence of characters at:
mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=chardict
Yes. It is true for most dialects. In fact, Taiwanese and Cantonese will be 2 of the dialects that differ most from Mandarin.
It’s also important to realize that the dialects aren’t all diverging at all points in different ways. They are diverging at some points, and in ways similar to how other languages are diverging. So where there are Cantonese/Mandarin irregularities, it is likely that some other dialects will have irriegularities in the same places.
Better to speak up, get an answer, and be a fool no more. 
But lack of knowledge and lack of wisdom are not the same thing. You’ve done well, young Jedi. :bravo:
PWH,
I haven’t had enough time to read through the whole thread and to collect arguments against your idea. But I have been walking around recently trying it with everything I see, in the streets, in shops, newspapers etc. and I must say that although the idea in itself is interesting enough, I don’t actually believe that you can be serious about it.
It is obvious from your post that you have enough knowledge about Mandarin (whatever the definition may be), Cantonese and perhaps Taiwanese to know that it can’t work.
[quote=“rice_t”]PWH,
I haven’t had enough time to read through the whole thread and to collect arguments against your idea. But I have been walking around recently trying it with everything I see, in the streets, in shops, newspapers etc. and I must say that although the idea in itself is interesting enough, I don’t actually believe that you can be serious about it.
It is obvious from your post that you have enough knowledge about Mandarin (whatever the definition may be), Cantonese and perhaps Taiwanese to know that it can’t work.[/quote]
When you said “trying it with everything you see” you mean trying to use a character with a homophone in its place and still understand the meaning? Have you tried converting it into pinyin and reading just pinyin? My idea will be no more and no less comprehensible than that.
I seriously believe that it can work at least as well as, and hopefully better than using an alphabetic script in place of Chinese characters. I don’t actually espouse the idea of replacing characters with a phonetic script, I just want an alternative to what some others have proposed.
I believe pinyin and bpmf their place, but not in lieu of characters as that would destroy the power of characters to cross dialect boundaries. If there is a suggestion to get rid of characters in favor of pinyin or something equivalent, I want a better suggestion ready.
What about situations where, for example:
You have three sounds in Taiwanese, i ?, i? ?, and in
[quote=“TaiOanKok”]What about situations where, for example:
You have three sounds in Taiwanese, i ?, i? ?, and in ?.
Realistically, in Mandarin you can only reproduce two of these words’ sound, yi ? and yin ?.
How does your list of characters deal with this? Will Mandarin speakers learn i? ? as well? if so, what pronunciation would they use? Wouldn’t that be a duplicate of yi or yin? If they learn the various dialect pronunciations of some words, shouldn’t they just go ahead and learn a dozen or so readings for each of the characters included on the list?
You’re going to have a good number of these dialect specific pronunciations.[/quote]
How do they do it now? It will be the same.
Characters equate to morphemes (which is essentially the same for all dialects) and pronunciation at the syllable level (which is different for all dialects). In Mandarin the character 作 is pronounced zuo4. In Cantonese it is pronounced jok. The character 做 is also pronounced zuo4 in Mandarin, but in Cantonese it is pronouned jouh. People seeing the characters will know how to pronounce it in their own dialect as well as what it means (either specifically in their dialect or in general).
That is how characters work right now. What I’m suggesting is using one character for one sound correlation.
The problem you’re discussing does not present itself in my suggestion, but it would happen in a phonemic script.
Thanks so much for your anwers guys (assuming everyone is a guy - can’t always see too clearly down those wires 
)
[quote]But lack of knowledge and lack of wisdom are not the same thing. You’ve done well, young Jedi. [/quote] Yes, master! (oops, wrong movie)
[quote=“puiwaihin”]
When you said “trying it with everything you see” you mean trying to use a character with a homophone in its place and still understand the meaning? Have you tried converting it into pinyin and reading just pinyin? My idea will be no more and no less comprehensible than that.
I seriously believe that it can work at least as well as, and hopefully better than using an alphabetic script in place of Chinese characters. I don’t actually espouse the idea of replacing characters with a phonetic script, I just want an alternative to what some others have proposed.
I believe pinyin and bpmf their place, but not in lieu of characters as that would destroy the power of characters to cross dialect boundaries. If there is a suggestion to get rid of characters in favor of pinyin or something equivalent, I want a better suggestion ready.[/quote]
Since I don’t have the character subset readily available in my brain, I converted everything I saw to pinyin, because as you say it should be no more or no less comprehensible.
In fact, pinyin is more comprehensible (but obviously only for putonghua or guoyu) because you can group syllables together into words.
Both systems can work to certain degree, everything that can be said and understood could be also written with a phonetic script. It would be a major revolution to force people to write absolutely everything in a way that would be non-ambivalent if read out loud.
One more point that you should consider is regional differences in pronounciation and I don’t mean dialects/regional languages like Cantonese. What I mean is Daiwan Goyi. As you know Taiwanese people have difficulties differentiating between z-zh, c-ch, s-sh etc and they have trouble pronouncing f. Your system would lead to a lot of confusion (pinyin would, too) when people start writing the wrong character because of the sound. This again is especially true when it comes to language which is not so commonly used like special terminology etc.
The power of characters to cross dialect boundaries isn’t so important anymore, since putonghua and guoyu or even huayu in Singapore are ltaught in school. In the ol days educated people from different areas of China could communicate using characters, even if they spoke a different language. Nowadays educated people can communicate in “Mandarin”.
I am not advocating pinyin either. Pinyin is a tool for learning the pronounciation of characters and it also serves the purpose of getting Chinese people to learn the alphabet, before they start learning English.
That can just as easily be done with characters. 我們 是 朋友 對 不 對﹖
That isn’t how things are done, but perhaps if there was a shift to a phonetic script it may be a good idea.
That’s exactly what anyone espousing a phonetic script would have in mind. I’m not in favor of it, but if it came to that I would prefer my suggestion to pure pinyin.
Probably no more often than my step-mom is with English. When I get a letter or email the spelling errors are terrible. However, homophony would make such errors more serious. We’ll have to take that into account if we make a working prototype and start looking at feasibility.
True, maintaining cross-dialectal compatibility isn’t an important thing if you’re one of those in charge of language policy in mainland China. But I think cross-dialectal compatibility is what makes Chinese writing unique and I would argue vehemently in favor of keeping that feature. And while Mandarin is taught in schools the PRC has a long way to go before Mandarin is really a first language for Chinese in the south of China.
Right. I’m just thinking of an alternative to pinyin in the somewhat unlikely event it were promoted as a replacement for characters. I believe my suggestion no less viable than that.
Good luck, PWH.
When you start making your prototype, drop me a line. I volunteer to check it out and give you feedback.
A common script is what makes China what it is. If a phonetic script is adopted, then either dialects are lost or everyone holes up in his or her region. At current trends, I’d say the former is more likely to occur.
[quote=“rice_t”]Good luck, PWH.
When you start making your prototype, drop me a line. I volunteer to check it out and give you feedback.[/quote]
Drop me a line too and I’ll complain profusely.
I’ll even post diparaging remarks, I promise. 
Zeug, I didn’t read the whole thread either, but what PWH is suggesting is NOT a phonetic script.
I know. I’m just saying why going fully phonetic is undesirable by some measures even if all technical difficulties can be solved.
Z- You’re giving the rationale for my suggesting this alternative, right?
That’s right.
Yes. Except that Standard Written Chinese is the primary written language of all Chinese languages. When they write to each other within their own dialect (except in such things as personal letters, comic books, a few poplular magazines, or when trying to appeal to the identity of the regional language) they use SWC rather than their own dialect. [/quote]
Here in lies the confusion/problem. SWC is the primary written form of all dialects because that’s what was forced down by the government. Take a mostly illiterate population and a government trying to establish a “national language” and of course you will end up with everyone writting in SWC instead of in their dialect. But SWC is NOT their dialect, as you’ve pointed out.
If one has deep studies in ancient usages and character families’ history, then yes, one can guess the meaning of many characters written in a dialect, as the usage in the dialect usually has a historical basis. Most people do not have this (natives and non-natives alike), but anyways, this false support for the cross-dialect ability. One could also argue that if one understands Latin, one can understand a fair bit of English and Italian.
As well, being able to “guess” the meaning of a character/sentence is not a characteristic of a universal language. More later.
Sometimes? Yes, most definately, ex. the character for “I” (Wo3 in mandarin). So do some characters having meaning? Yes.
Do the vast majority (of characters) have components which suggest the meaning the characters? Yes. Is suggesting the meaning the same as implicitely expressing a concrete and clear meaning? Hardly. Ex. If the Han character set could cross language barriers and remain understandable, why can’t Japanese speakers read SWC, or vice versa (to take into account most Japanese know only a small portion of the set)? Yes, sometimes they can guess the meaning of key words, but everything else is lost (ie. grammar, mood, etc). This is not clear and succinct communication.
Arguing against the “medium transcending language” point, yes I see my error, amibiguity, now so you’re right. Characters, as a medium, can. But “characters can” is not the same as “all characters do”, or “the character set does” which was my original point. The closest it comes to the latter is “All SWC characters in the set retain their individual meanings when written in SWC” Very different point. Characters, as a set, is not some crossing-lingual language. Whether or not they are “better” at it than a phonetic based alphabet, is irrelevant.
It is also equally valid to say that paintings cross language barriers. Meaning is obtained not matter what language you speak. It is not necessarily the same meaning however. Ex. a painting of two men kissing, or a sketch by an architect. Do not conflate a transfer of some meaning with clear communication.
Which is quite different than the next dictionary anyone might bring forth.
Lastly, for a simple example to demostrate my point (and how limited my knowledge of Taiwanese is), write down the phrase “Where are you from?” in say Mandarin and Taiwanese.
Mandarin: 你從哪兒來?
Taiwanese:你對刀位來?
Aside from the first and last, I find it hard to imagine either side (if ignorant of the other language) would understand the opposing. Puiwaihin pointed out that more complex and rarely used characters are often the same (frequently due to loaner words) and it is the most common that differ most. This is exactly why one dialect reader cannot understand/communicate with another.
This has gotten long and convoluted, let my know if somethings unclear. 
And no, I’m not trying to hijack your thread, puiwaihin, think it’s a great idea.