Differences of vocabulary learning

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Vocabulary learning seems to be rather central in learning a language. Grammar and vocabulary are two constituent parts of the learning process, and having a good knowledge of grammar wouldn't be "useful" if you know too few words.

Of course, if you are to learn, you would probably learn through a holistic approach - with more or less equal emphasis on both vocab. and grammar, and learn whichever words you come across, regardless of what _types_ of words they are (nouns, verbs or adjectives). Then, how important do you think verbs are? And how, compared to other words?

It is said that
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8027&PN=1
verbs are rather central in western languages.

Among the traditional parts of speech, adjectives, nouns and verbs are some of the more prominent _open_ parts of speech, i.e. this vocabulary can be expanded.

My view is: when I consider Chinese, I can see that Chinese has *in some way* much less (commonly used, or whatever they are) verbs than English (western) for grammatical reasons. Chinese (sinitic) doesn't have heavy borrowings from Latin (rather, inheriting from its own predecessors), and the way of expanding the vocabulary is rather different. It coins new words using characters, and there is NO problem of spelling. With a large amount of 4-character idioms, sometimes natives don't even feel the need to put their ideas in "longer" discourse (pretty unlike how English often is).

The result is:
1) Less verbs. More subtle meanings can be conveyed by expanding the sentence or adding idioms.
2) While English borrowings are still quite obvious, Japanese borrowings are often thought to be native (Chinese) vocabulary.
3) Most importantly, Chinese texts tend to be VERY short. You can read almost any textual material and find the Chinese translations to be rather short visually, given the same space. Chinese seems to be rather "thrifty" with words, esp. when every single character can already convey multiple meanings.

Then, my wild guess is: it seems like, while the student of western language has to acquire a large amount of vocabulary along with a profound knowledge of Latinate vocabulary and morphology (where English is no exception), that of Chinese would have to learn more characters. If the vocabulary of a western language is its own MEAT, then characters might be the MEAT of Chinese. If you know enough characters, then many new words you would come across everyday are simply new combinations of characters; but even if you know a large amount of vocabulary, there must be some more unknown, brand-new vocabulary that you must learn through some ways.

I wonder: why, then, does a western language, like English, seem to have a large amount of Verbs (and maybe some other words)? There must be cultural differences, yes, but some (older) western languages might also have borrowed heavily from ancient languages like how Chinese retained some of its ancient vocabulary. This is what I think to be rather natural literary development regardless of civilization. The difference, though, is centered around what a word means.

Like some learners of my people, I find it *rather* troublesome to have to learn a large amount of, for example, English verbs, adjectives and nouns, when it's very usual that multiple English words often correspond to just one Chinese equivalent, and when English texts seem to be excessively long (but well long enough to convey every subtle meaning) with loads of seemingly flowery vocabulary. However, I don't mean to criticize English per se. Chinese texts could also be "excessively long" in some ways, but just like the verb positions (English vs. German, German vs. French, or even English vs. Chinese) in many languages, the complex parts of a foreign language are often different from those of your native language (for me, English vs. Chinese). I might be troubled by Latinate vocabulary; foreign learners might be troubled by 4-character idioms (and many other subtle "phrases").

You can not compare Chinese characters with English words,they are somewhat similar but not the same concept.

you theory might applicable to Classical Chinese where monosyllabic words(aka characters) are abundant,but as for modern Chinese,while a character gives a BASIC meaning,coined up words(compounds) always add subtle differences to the character

for example:

the character 饵(bait/lure) and its derivations,good luck translating them into English...

诱饵饺饵饼饵芳饵鱼饵丹饵饵钓饵诱粉饵服饵果饵死饵药饵表饵饵雷饵膳甘饵五饵弦饵饴饵饵柏饵术饵药饵子禄饵麦饵以狸饵鼠以貍饵鼠饵敌饵糕酒饵食饵香饵饵兵饵丹饵毒饵烹饵霞饵治肴饵宝饵餐饵饵蠒饵块饵人饵石格饵桂饵骄饵金饵乐饵利饵糗饵齅饵垂饵垂饵虎口饵线犗饵毒饵饵餻饵结饵食饵松餰饵针饵重饵钓饵钩饵

"when it's very usual that multiple English words often correspond to just one Chinese equivalent"

vice versa.

Chinese is among one of the BIGGEST Languages in the Worlds in terms of vocabularies...

just for fun:

the word 'wife' can be translated to 爱人、配偶、妻子、太太、夫人、老婆、媳妇、女人、婆娘、婆姨、那口子、孩他妈、屋里的、内掌柜、内人、内子、拙荆、中馈、发妻、贤妻、山妻、贤内助、贱内、浑家、浑人、马子、贱荆、糟糠、河东狮、达令（darling)、小君、细君、娘子 etc.in Chinese

My reasoning is based on my (partial; and it must be) experiences with English.

(esp. for Chinese users/[advanced] Chinese learners) while I must be a native (and I'm going to be highly educated), I have to admit I don't even know 10% of the above expressions. I'd wonder if, given the same variety of English "equivalents", or English words that do exist in a similar fashion in the Anglo-Saxon language, the average highly educated Anglophone would know as many English words as I know Chinese ones.

I'd say my supposition is more based on my (essentially Chinese) perspective that higher register words in English tend to be more subtle to the Chinese eyes and, like Anglophones themselves, learners have to learn thoroughly. Get, buy and purchase are similar to "to buy", but obviously you only use purchase, which might not even be of Germanic origin, in more formal situations.

I don't mean natives and learners alike can learn Chinese counterparts WITHOUT effort, but the way how Chinese words are formed, how they are pronounced (as they are) and how Chinese grammar is seems to make Chinese words easier to learn for foreign learners. They would probably have few cognates to rely on, but some features of Chinese sort of reduces the difficulty

1) telegraph-talk: even technical vocabulary in Chinese tend to be rather transparent since characters already have intrinsic meaning; natives still have to learn well enough subtle word roots to grasp the English counterparts

2) no spelling problems (but the same for some others)

I won't say for collocations, though, before idiomatic usage seems to be subtle in EVERY language, and I don't think I know enough idioms of my native language.

==

>>verbs are rather central in western languages.

I'd also say it also seems like a result of "tradition". For those who may not know: Chinese lacks modals, tenses, participles, and many verb concepts like those. That, to me, contributes to the image that Chinese verbs tend to be simpler.

There are many "verb cluster combinations" in English which, when rendered into Chinese, would be quite simple - where the "tense" words would be put elsewhere and no conjugation would occur. Some natives have, thus, argued that this language is not *logical* enough, because it doesn't conjugate a verb as "precise" as English does, while in fact it's all a result of politics...

"Get, buy and purchase are similar to "to buy"

buy=买（通用词)

purchase=购（正式一点的词)

购可以组成购买购置购取和选购等词，都表示purchase，但在含义上有细微差别

单字加上一些表示状态的词，可以代替英语里的分词形式，如：

买下(bought)

购入(purchased)

所以汉语的动词也不是很简单的，只是因为她是我们的母语，用起来熟练一些罢了。

再看看名词，汉语中一个普通名词虽然没有单复数形式，但可能有以下几种形式：

简体形式/繁体形式

大陆形式/台湾形式/港台形式/其它方言形式，这些都是其它语言中所不可想象的

所以说汉语的词汇也是不简单的

Xie,if you are interested in word counting,pls visit my thread:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9204&PN=1

>>再看看名词，汉语中一个普通名词虽然没有单复数形式，但可能有以下几种形式：

简体形式/繁体形式

大陆形式/台湾形式/港台形式/其它方言形式，这些都是其它语言中所不可想象的

"While nouns do not have plural forms in Hanyu, there might be different variants depending on whether the script is simplified and where it is used - the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere."

But this doesn't take into account the fact that you aren't really considering just one language. Your Hanyu consists of at least 4 - the PRC-style Chinese, the ROC-style Chinese, Hong Kong (Cantonese) Chinese and that of elsewhere. This might be similar to the differences of US, UK and Australian English, but then those differences are often quite trivial. For me, vocabulary is just the same. I can import any synonyms, which are used elsewhere, to enrich my own Hong Kong "Chinese" dialect (more obvious in writing than speech).

My focus has actually been centered around the fact that English is spelt, while Chinese is not. The multitude of word roots and word forms (purchase for different persons, numbers, tenses and lexical categories) of English could be as intricate as Chinese radicals/characters in the foreign eyes.

Chinese is difficult to read, especially in small fonts (8-10).
Sometimes, you need a magnifying glass to decode the ''drawing''.

Doesn't the use of an alphabet (especially the latin one) just make more sense in the modern world? Of course Asian countries like China and Japan use their character system, but at the same time, the latin alphabet is used quite a bit in those countries and you can see it almost everywhere. And its presence will likely continue to increase in the future. Why is that? I know it's debatable and I respect the traditions, but isn't an alphabet system just more practical nowadays over pictures?

<< but isn't an alphabet system just more practical nowadays over pictures? >>

Isn't an alphabet better for manual input (keyboard) into a computer? For output, I suppose it doesn't matter.

Also, it's easier to look up spelled words in a dictionary, than the Chinese characters (especially since they don't seem to believe in spaces between the words). It's especially bad if you don't know any Chinese at all and have to decode something.

<< Isn't an alphabet better for manual input (keyboard) into a computer? For output, I suppose it doesn't matter. >>

Not only that but it's practically necessary. All computers in asia have the alphabet on the keyboard. Japan has hiragana also but the alphabet letters are there too. I say when it comes to anything with technology, especially computers, the alphabet just makes more sense.

<< Also, it's easier to look up spelled words in a dictionary, than the Chinese characters (especially since they don't seem to believe in spaces between the words). It's especially bad if you don't know any Chinese at all and have to decode something. >>

Not sure how it is for Chinese natives, but for non-natives, yes it's much easier or necessary to have the alphabet form of the words. One thing I don't like about Chinese and Japanese is that they don't use spaces within a sentence. That makes it even harder IMO.

>>>Not sure how it is for Chinese natives, but for non-natives, yes it's much easier or necessary to have the alphabet form of the words. One thing I don't like about Chinese and Japanese is that they don't use spaces within a sentence. That makes it even harder IMO.<<<

I told some of you so. Since this supposedly difficult script is my native script, while I'm very comfortable with writing notes only in English (since almost every subject is taught in English, and it wouldn't make sense to try to translate; all I need is to jot down notes), I can always put thoughts in the Chinese script on the paper just as easily (and even more so, considering that I *should* be sort of more comfortable with my native language for ANY thoughts). In the academic sense, I'd consider myself bilingual and thus equally comfortable with both to express the same thoughts, though I'm probably not in daily life.

>>>Doesn't the use of an alphabet (especially the latin one) just make more sense in the modern world? Of course Asian countries like China and Japan use their character system, but at the same time, the latin alphabet is used quite a bit in those countries and you can see it almost everywhere. And its presence will likely continue to increase in the future. Why is that? I know it's debatable and I respect the traditions, but isn't an alphabet system just more practical nowadays over pictures?<<<

It's difficult not to quote the whole chunk, sorry.

You'd better ask the British, French and Spanish colonists about why 1) alphabet makes more sense, 2) you can see it almost everywhere, 3) its presence will likely to increase, and the Chinese emperors why they didn't colonize areas beyond the Sinosphere.

Using a supposedly complex script didn't and doesn't stop the Chinese from thinking about very complex things. I'd be glad to take c'est du chinois as a compliment.

It must be difficult to imagine, but - if you WERE native, you would understand how it makes sense to be able to use the Chinese script natively and, all the better, to be able to use BOTH the Latin and Chinese scripts like second nature.

The Latin might never be my native script, because, though I like this "simpler" script and even the morphology associated with it, the multitude of mute letters, digraphs, trigraphs, ligatures, etc, does make me question the sanity of the ancient whatchamacallit for creating so much confusion about, especially, the Latin letters, when they have always been supposed to represent just one phoneme each.

I think I might have been simply arguing about something that isn't a problem. It might be the (natural) untranslatability that makes me wonder why "English words" tend to be as long as "chicken guts", as some of my people are used to call them pejoratively.

It MIGHT be that I still tend to treat every individual letter as a "character". In that sense, every sentence of every foreign language must be longer than any Chinese sentence I can think of (including even Japanese with all those syllabaries). Obviously, a spelt word is formed by multiple letters, and every letter is meaningless when divided.

So, likewise, you would think Chinese characters are VERY complex because you might think every stroke is a "letter", and so every Chinese sentence must be longer than every sentence you can think of in your native language. (You see the trick, don't you? :P)

But, after all, I'm still arguing that Chinese, despite all its complexity comparable to any other language (but probably in incomparable areas), is formed by vocabulary like baby talk / telegraph talk and doesn't have loads of "meaningless" word roots, like the Latinate ones, just for forming meanings. Before you learn it, bi-, dual-, double- (things like that) are all meaningless stuff. Chinese isn't all that Esperanto (which, imo, would be rather bad or, no, UNGOOD), but we have loads of stroke combinations that could convey meanings when they are standalone, such as 二.

When you spell a word, you spell S-P-E-L-L. When I tell a (advanced) foreign learner to write 串*, I tell him/her to write two 中's (central), one above and one below, together.

*We don't have the word for "to spell" because we never spell; but this is a close equivalent - and this is also part of our telegraph talk. 串 can also be "to link (like put the beads together to form a necklace)". Do you see the two square beads being held together? The Chinese don't play with word roots or spelling bees; they play with characters - they love them, they are crazy for them and claim them exclusively as their own.

>>>the morphology associated with it, the multitude of mute letters, digraphs, trigraphs, ligatures<<<
the Latin script was designed for Classical Latin and, let's say, worked fine with it (there was maybe a confusion about v-u and the long vowels weren't marked).
You forgot to mention the diacritical signs, absent in English.
I'm curious about the number of ideograms known by an average user of Chinese. I don't believe you could understand every sign you see.
In Japanese exist two syllabic script systems that could replace the kanji someday. Didn't it happen in Korean?

<< The Chinese don't play with word roots or spelling bees; they play with characters - they love them, they are crazy for them and claim them exclusively as their own. >>

Exclusive???

My understanding is that there are other character sets, for example Egyptain Hieroglyphs (about 5000 characters) , Anatolian Hieroglphs, Cretan Hieroglyphs, Maya Hieroglphs and others. Where I live, one can readily buy books on Egyptain Hieroglyphs.

I really think it borders on rude to suggest that Chinese switch to the latin alphabet. Japanese could switch to the syllabaries, but they'd lose some richness and there many several words which sound alike. Sometimes there seems to be a difference in accent, but the syllabaries give no clue to that.

Rob Chinese of its characters and you have...vietnamese...almost! A tonal language with the latin alphabet and other markings.

Chinese is beautiful, I'm sorry you don't get it.

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