Why are Chinese characters still used?
Razve ne tak? Sat Jul 11, 2009 3:34 am GMT
China should follow the Example of Vietnam!
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Please take 5 years to learn Chinese (Mandarin & Ancient Chinese "Wenyan"), then you'll be able to understand clearly why Chinese can't be written in Latin alphabet.
3, (~miles/kilometers) apart from somewhere,
Correction: 3, (~miles/kilometers) "away" from somewhere.
Explain to me why Vietnamese can be written in Latin alphabet and yet Chinese cannot?
It's all in your head!
To: Razve ne tak?
Actually, as I ever mentioned, I know nothing about Vietnamese, it's a pity.
But I'm a native Chinese, do you think you might have a better level about Chinese language than me? No, unless you know much about Chinese, you'll Never know the soul (Key Point) of the relation between Chinese language and writing system.
<<Explain to me why Vietnamese can be written in Latin alphabet and yet Chinese cannot?>>
Chinese characters were made to write Chinese, not Vietname, you fool. Obviously, the Vietnamese realized this and thus stopped using them.
<<Chinese characters were made to write Chinese, not Vietname, you fool. Obviously, the Vietnamese realized this and thus stopped using them. >>
That doesn't mean you can't replace the old with the new and efficient. If that weren't possible then we would be writing in runes right now.
TO：Razve ne tak?
Can you understand Chinese characters? Can you speak Chinese language?
If you can, I'll write something in Latin alphabet without showing Characters, and please tell me what it means. OK? if you do it successfully, then your opinion is right.
Wow, sorry for my mistake, this thread IS alive. I'll just try to give my thoughts on Korean-Hanja issues...
TO: Chinese Malaysian
"Is it true that Hanjas are being revived in South Korea?"
Well, about half a century ago, North and South Korea decided to not to teach Hanja at ALL. I guess they thought they were being patriotic and culturally independent and all. Actually, at some point nearly all Sinophere hated Hanja. Japan tried to romanize their words, Vietnam succeeded at that, Korea used their own letters, and even Chinese hated it as well.
And Koreans started to think that using words not affiliated to Hanja was more patriotic. Such as,
의미(意味) -> 뜻
저(著) -> 씀, 지음
은하(銀河) -> 미리내
원(願)하다 -> 바라다
They called these "pure" Korean words 순(純)우리말(lit. Pure Our Language.) As you can easily see, the hilarious part is that this very term is "impure" as well.
Anyway, the result of not teaching Hanja in public schools was disastrous. And now they realize they need to teach it again, to better understand the Korean language. but not many say that we should begin "writing" in Hanja. We don't really need to, and Koreans love their Hangul waaaaay too much. Make a Korean your lifelong archenemy by saying Hangul sucks. Heck, we even have a holiday for its invention. I think the general feeling in Korea is that we should learn Hanja well, but write in Hangul.
South Korean,
Thanks for your informative and educational reply.
"Explain to me why Vietnamese can be written in Latin alphabet and yet Chinese cannot?"
Do you like the way Vietnamese is written with accent marks? What if it had its own beautiful script?
>> ), bu there are so many words that sound alike and it's helpful to see the characters <<
If the language is so ambiguous, how can people communicate at all in the spoken language?
>> If the language is so ambiguous, how can people communicate at all in the spoken language?
this is a good question!
in mainland china most people should know about pinyin(chinese written in alphabetic by its pronunciation) but people only use it for a input method. i guess for the same content of a newpaper, pinyin will cost over 5 times the paper than using chinese characters.
i actually think chinese characters are handy nowaday with computers. the only real problem is if you don't know pinyin(i am from hongkong and we don't even teach pinyin at school) you need to learn it before you can input chinese into your computer.
We imput with roman letters in order to get Japanese as well.
Languages like Japanese and Indonesian are fairly easy to romanize, while Chinese and some other Asian language are almost impossible to romanize without extra accent marks.
I believe one reason for this is that Japanese and Indonesian orthography is, quite simple and in a way, similar to Italian (where romanization originated), in the number of vowels and such. Chinese have pin-yin but they need to make pitch distinction and it's such a nuisance that you have to add this accent mark over almost every single vowel.
Koreans have tried to romanize their language as well, but it doesn't seem as logical and simple in roman characters.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Why not just do it like English does--not quite phonetic, but pretty close? Use vowel combinations like "ea" "oe", etc. for tones. Add distinctions like "night" vs. "knight". There you have it. A system that is as easy to learn as English, but that clears up ambiguity a bit, and doesn't use diachretical markings.
Example:
How are you: Nie haow mah?
So, how about it?