Why are Chinese characters still used?

Little Tadpole   Tue Oct 20, 2009 4:54 pm GMT
Take a look at Seediq Bale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ka6PeFqMts

This film is starting to shoot next month. When this movie is finished, you will start to see hundreds, and I mean hundreds copy-cat movies being made in China, and you will see how She 畲, Zhuang 壯, Miao 苗 ethnic groups will all come to life. China has a richness of thousands of ethnic stories to tell. And then, and only then, will people wake up and question themselves: so, this was how our roots looked like!

Learn to treasure cultural diversity.

Everyone is descendant of fish. That has been my position all along, if you check www.pkucn.com, that's been my consistent message. I don't just stop at Eastern Africa. Understand that, and maybe you will learn to reduce your hate and treat everyone as family. (把大家都当成鱼的后代,纠纷会少点儿) No matter whether you are yellow, white, black, green or purple, we are on this planet together.

http://www.pkucn.com/viewthread.php?tid=243474&page=1#pid1218571389
Anglophone   Tue Oct 20, 2009 5:04 pm GMT
Why don't they speak English instead?
Little Tadpole   Tue Oct 20, 2009 5:06 pm GMT
Seediq Bale pre-production trailer with English subtitle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS8Ojljcy7A

This film is being made in Taiwan, but I am sure hundreds of Chinese movies will follow. This is the kind of China that you never knew.
K. T. (not a 鱼   Tue Oct 20, 2009 5:10 pm GMT
"Everyone is descendant of fish"

Based on the character 鱼, I see that you must have learned Chinese in China, not Taiwan or in the US.

I don't like to eat many types of fish...but I don't think it's because I'm afraid of being a cannibal.
K. T. (not a fish)   Tue Oct 20, 2009 5:13 pm GMT
鱼=鱼 (or fish in the PRC way of writing it.) This is the simplified character for fish, not the one used by Japanese people or people from Taiwan. I don't know what they use in HK.

What kinds of characters do they use in HK? Simplified or traditional?
K. T.   Tue Oct 20, 2009 5:15 pm GMT
魚 versus 鱼
Little Tadpole   Tue Oct 20, 2009 5:21 pm GMT
Believe it or not, a minority of Chinese intellectuals do propose to widen significantly the usage of English. Throughout the years, I have seen the number of these intellectuals grow, slowly but steadily.

To tell you the truth, the Chinese government has two rich jewels in their hands, but they don't even know it. If they had internationalized the universities in Urumqi and Lhasa, thousands of international students would have flooded these two places, and more over, they would have stayed to work, live, and raise their families in China, adding to the richness of the Chinese society. You can't achieve the same thing easily in Beijing or Shanghai, where foreigners come and go, but usually don't stay.
not dragon   Tue Oct 20, 2009 5:31 pm GMT
At least May 4th movement was interested in benefitting Chinese people, as can be seen from your comments, you have other motives. We're all descendants of bacteria and microbes ultimately. Next time you have a throat infection, don't take antibiotics. Just die naturally; otherwise you might be killing one of your ancestors.
Little Tadpole   Wed Oct 21, 2009 2:45 am GMT
K. T. (not a fish): "What kinds of characters do they use in HK? Simplified or traditional?"

Traditional characters in HK, just like in Taiwan. However, Singapore uses simplified characters.

Each locale uses slightly different character set and rendition. Chinese characters in Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Japan and Vietnam all have subtle differences, even just for the traditional characters. There is the Ideographic Rapporteur Group (IRG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideographic_Rapporteur_Group) that holds regular meetings to resolve issues on Chinese characters in this computer era.
Guest   Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:39 am GMT
c'est vrai que tu m'as dit ? quelle est la taille de ta bite ?
a newt   Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:39 am GMT
I don't know if "everyone is a descendant of fish"
but I know that a tadpole is definitely not a fish and a fish is definitely not a tadpole.
K. T.   Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:23 pm GMT
Thank-you for your comments on the characters, Little tadpole. Good to know.

As to the mini-discussion as to whether we are all descendents of fish-I've never seen any credible evidence for that.
K. T.   Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:24 pm GMT
That should be "descendants"...
Little Tadpole   Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:59 am GMT
It's just a provocative way to make people think. It's along the same theme as "We are all children of God": it's not there for people to discuss whether you agree with the statement or not. It's just to remind people that, instead of hate, give each other love. That's all.
salamander   Sun Oct 25, 2009 2:45 am GMT
> not dragon Tue Oct 20, 2009 6:47 am GMT
Chinese characters have unified the Chinese people (native speakers of hundreds of different dialects) for over five thousand years. <

The chinese character is about 3,000 years only, not as you said "over 5,000 years".

The ethnic chinese groups (native speakers of hundreds of different ethnic spoken languages) were unified by the emperors of dynasties for over 2,000 years. That because of the geographical factors of china and tonnes of traditional wisdom about the strategies of culture, politics and military.