Each monosyllabic single character has 5 tones in mandarin (mā, má, mǎ, mà, ma), and even 7 in Cantonese, each character of same tone also has some homonymic words (such as tā above), most of all, each characters often need to combine another or more characters to be a vocabulary, only at that time, the combination of 2 (at least) or more characters can be called vocabulary, if everybody used Latin or other alphabet in China, such as "鼓励、骨力、古历、谷粒、股利", unfortunately, they all have the same pronunciation and same tone. Can you tell them apart immediately, without any hesitation based on contexts? even if you can do that, it takes more time and energy to do the same thing which can successfully be done well in shorter time and in less energy. Why do Chinese people have to choose a difficult way and abandon the easiest one? We don't think Characters very hard to learn, except for those stupid native Chinese who haven't wanted to learn anything, and just liked to be a lazybone all their lives. Arabic, the most difficult languages, hasn't changed its writing system for those foreign learners, it uses Arabic Script, and special writing direction (from right to left), but arabic is, and will be always arabic, foreign learners (beginners) have still had to learn original arabic texts.
Why are Chinese characters still used?
You didn't comment on the English word "set", which has 44+ meanings all of which are easily distinguishable by context. We COULD invent 44+ characters to distinguish them apart, all with the same pronunciation, but that would make it more difficult, not less difficult.
Seriously though, I'm not saying that Chinese SHOULD ditch characters, I'm just saying that it COULD without any problems. Characters are nice in themselves, but the language would still work without them, just like English would still work after a spelling reform.
Seriously though, I'm not saying that Chinese SHOULD ditch characters, I'm just saying that it COULD without any problems. Characters are nice in themselves, but the language would still work without them, just like English would still work after a spelling reform.
To: J.C.
《Why would Persian be difficult? Are you afraid of learning the Arabic alphabet? Other than that it couldn't be difficult since it's an indo-european language.》
Re: I feel that, arabic alphabet system has more similarities than differences, when you read arabic or persian websites, some foreigners said that Chinese characters appear the same and hard to distinguish, but I don't think so, the hardest system might be the arabic script which only has a little differences among those 28 (arabic) or 32 (persian) alphabet. If the font isn't beautiful or the size isn't large enough, it'll be a bad headache for foreign learners to tell them apart very quickly. Anyway, persian still belongs to Indo-European language group, it's a good news for me, and also for other Chinese learners. Unfortunately, there're only a few textbooks (with mp3) in China's bookshops. And actually I like Brazilian Portuguese more than Spanish.
《Can Ubuntu be used in any language like the mac-OS? Also, does it have fonts for writing in all languages? (My mac is set up to write in Chinese |traditional and simplified|, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Greek, Spanish and Russian) without having to go to all the trouble downloading fonts and learning keyboard positions (I write in Korean and Russian using a romanized system)》
Re: If you buy Win Vista of English edition, you can only use English operating system, and if Brazilian edition, only Brazilian Por. can be used, but Ubuntu is very different, once you finish installing one language, you can choose any language as your system language, for example, at the beginning, I installed English edtion, but now I've changed it into Traditional edition without any problems. And Ubuntu OS almost support all kinds of languages in the world, if you want to input Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, or any other languages, just install the related language package, as long as you finish it, there's no messy codes any longer. In my humble opinion, Ubuntu is the best Linux OS so far, maybe better than Windows 7, too. The only shortcoming might be that, everything is not so easy just like Windows system.
《Why would Persian be difficult? Are you afraid of learning the Arabic alphabet? Other than that it couldn't be difficult since it's an indo-european language.》
Re: I feel that, arabic alphabet system has more similarities than differences, when you read arabic or persian websites, some foreigners said that Chinese characters appear the same and hard to distinguish, but I don't think so, the hardest system might be the arabic script which only has a little differences among those 28 (arabic) or 32 (persian) alphabet. If the font isn't beautiful or the size isn't large enough, it'll be a bad headache for foreign learners to tell them apart very quickly. Anyway, persian still belongs to Indo-European language group, it's a good news for me, and also for other Chinese learners. Unfortunately, there're only a few textbooks (with mp3) in China's bookshops. And actually I like Brazilian Portuguese more than Spanish.
《Can Ubuntu be used in any language like the mac-OS? Also, does it have fonts for writing in all languages? (My mac is set up to write in Chinese |traditional and simplified|, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Greek, Spanish and Russian) without having to go to all the trouble downloading fonts and learning keyboard positions (I write in Korean and Russian using a romanized system)》
Re: If you buy Win Vista of English edition, you can only use English operating system, and if Brazilian edition, only Brazilian Por. can be used, but Ubuntu is very different, once you finish installing one language, you can choose any language as your system language, for example, at the beginning, I installed English edtion, but now I've changed it into Traditional edition without any problems. And Ubuntu OS almost support all kinds of languages in the world, if you want to input Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, or any other languages, just install the related language package, as long as you finish it, there's no messy codes any longer. In my humble opinion, Ubuntu is the best Linux OS so far, maybe better than Windows 7, too. The only shortcoming might be that, everything is not so easy just like Windows system.
After reading many postings here I've seen that the main point here is tradition/beauty vs practicability.
Before being bashed by any Chinese I'd like to say that I LOVE Chinese characters and studied them while learning Japanese and reinforced my knowledge of characters when I started learning Chinese with Taiwanese teachers back in Brazil and then started studying Chinese again in Japan with simplified characters.
Well, my view about any writing system is that it can be used as anybody pleases and could be motivated by many reasons such:
Religion: Urdu, Farsi and Hausa (also written in alphabet) use the Arabic alphabet due to the countries where these languages are spoken are muslims (I'm not sure about the people who speak Hausa) but these languages have NOTHING to do with Arabic. Urdu could use the devanagari system if it wanted.
Politics: Mongolian uses the Russian alphabet now because of its relationship with Russia but used to have its own alphabet (looks like Arabic to me).
Language contact (cultural exchange?): Korea, Japan and Vietnam adopted the Chinese writing system to their languages, which are TOTALLY (I'm not sure about Vietnamese, though) different from Chinese.
I'm not familiar with how Chinese characters were used in Korean but in Japanese the kanjis/hanzi were used phonetically at first and known as the 万葉仮名 (man'yougana): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27yōgana
However, this system was very impractical and difficult, which I think led the Japanese to create their own writing system, i.e, Hiragana and Katakana. In my opinion this system is ENOUGH to express Japanese properly and doesn't need kanjis to complement it. As a matter of fact it's the KANJIS that need hiragana or katakana to complete them.
For example, the kanjis can express meanings but let's take for example the character for "to eat", which in Japanese is 食.
This character alone isn't enough because it cannot express tense or aspect and so it needs certain endings to express present/future「食べる」、past 「食べた」, conditional 「食べたら」、「食べると」、「食べれば」、will 「食べたい」, will+conditional 「食べたかったら」(If you want to eat), compound verbs 「食べ終わった」(finished eating), obligation 「食べなければなりません」(I have to eat). However, ALL these forms are totally acceptable and understandable with hiragana only. They can also be written in romaji without any problems, too.
I totally disagree that Japanese can't survive without kanjis and one reason for that is that even Vietnamese, with is closer to Chinese TOTALLY abandoned the characters and adapted the language to the alphabet and it could have used the hangul letters, arabic alphabet and whatever letter they wished.
I think I have already given the following examples that try to "prove" that Japanese needs kanjis in order to avoid misunderstandings. When I was in college I was presented the following sentences:
すもももももももものうち。
にわにはにわにわとりがいる。
My teacher told me that these sentences could be more easily understood if written in the following way:
李も桃も桃のうち。
庭には二羽鶏がいる。
I agree and disagree with this statement because the kanjis only work in the written language and even if the person listening to this sentence doesn't know kanji, the CONTEXT says it all.
I don't need to know the kanjis 箸(chopsticks. This uses 筷子 in Chinese and shows again that it isn't totally compatible with Japanese)、橋 (bridge) and 端 (edge), which are all read like "hashi" (they have different accents, though) to understand when a guy is going to eat he won't use "bridges" neither "edges" to eat. Nobody crosses a "chopstick" either. I could even force saying "hashi no hashi de taberu" (箸の端で食べる) to say that I will "eat with the edges of the chopsticks" and KNOW that nobody will think 「I am eating with the bridges of the chopstick」
Also, saying that hiragana and katakana is still kanji would be as arrogant as the Hebrew people or the Greek saying that the alphabet belongs to them since the alphabet name came from α and β, which are said to have come from א (aleph) and ב (beit). hiragana and katakana DID COME from kanjis but work totally differently from kanjis and can express Japanese PERFECTLY without depending on characters. That's the same case with the hangul script, which allowed me to learn basic Korean without having to learn thousand of letters to do it. 감사합니다!
I Love the Chinese language but can't imagine it as an international language because not everybody has the guts to master thousands of characters to understand a language when English or any other western language can be learned right away!!
Cheers!!
Before being bashed by any Chinese I'd like to say that I LOVE Chinese characters and studied them while learning Japanese and reinforced my knowledge of characters when I started learning Chinese with Taiwanese teachers back in Brazil and then started studying Chinese again in Japan with simplified characters.
Well, my view about any writing system is that it can be used as anybody pleases and could be motivated by many reasons such:
Religion: Urdu, Farsi and Hausa (also written in alphabet) use the Arabic alphabet due to the countries where these languages are spoken are muslims (I'm not sure about the people who speak Hausa) but these languages have NOTHING to do with Arabic. Urdu could use the devanagari system if it wanted.
Politics: Mongolian uses the Russian alphabet now because of its relationship with Russia but used to have its own alphabet (looks like Arabic to me).
Language contact (cultural exchange?): Korea, Japan and Vietnam adopted the Chinese writing system to their languages, which are TOTALLY (I'm not sure about Vietnamese, though) different from Chinese.
I'm not familiar with how Chinese characters were used in Korean but in Japanese the kanjis/hanzi were used phonetically at first and known as the 万葉仮名 (man'yougana): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27yōgana
However, this system was very impractical and difficult, which I think led the Japanese to create their own writing system, i.e, Hiragana and Katakana. In my opinion this system is ENOUGH to express Japanese properly and doesn't need kanjis to complement it. As a matter of fact it's the KANJIS that need hiragana or katakana to complete them.
For example, the kanjis can express meanings but let's take for example the character for "to eat", which in Japanese is 食.
This character alone isn't enough because it cannot express tense or aspect and so it needs certain endings to express present/future「食べる」、past 「食べた」, conditional 「食べたら」、「食べると」、「食べれば」、will 「食べたい」, will+conditional 「食べたかったら」(If you want to eat), compound verbs 「食べ終わった」(finished eating), obligation 「食べなければなりません」(I have to eat). However, ALL these forms are totally acceptable and understandable with hiragana only. They can also be written in romaji without any problems, too.
I totally disagree that Japanese can't survive without kanjis and one reason for that is that even Vietnamese, with is closer to Chinese TOTALLY abandoned the characters and adapted the language to the alphabet and it could have used the hangul letters, arabic alphabet and whatever letter they wished.
I think I have already given the following examples that try to "prove" that Japanese needs kanjis in order to avoid misunderstandings. When I was in college I was presented the following sentences:
すもももももももものうち。
にわにはにわにわとりがいる。
My teacher told me that these sentences could be more easily understood if written in the following way:
李も桃も桃のうち。
庭には二羽鶏がいる。
I agree and disagree with this statement because the kanjis only work in the written language and even if the person listening to this sentence doesn't know kanji, the CONTEXT says it all.
I don't need to know the kanjis 箸(chopsticks. This uses 筷子 in Chinese and shows again that it isn't totally compatible with Japanese)、橋 (bridge) and 端 (edge), which are all read like "hashi" (they have different accents, though) to understand when a guy is going to eat he won't use "bridges" neither "edges" to eat. Nobody crosses a "chopstick" either. I could even force saying "hashi no hashi de taberu" (箸の端で食べる) to say that I will "eat with the edges of the chopsticks" and KNOW that nobody will think 「I am eating with the bridges of the chopstick」
Also, saying that hiragana and katakana is still kanji would be as arrogant as the Hebrew people or the Greek saying that the alphabet belongs to them since the alphabet name came from α and β, which are said to have come from א (aleph) and ב (beit). hiragana and katakana DID COME from kanjis but work totally differently from kanjis and can express Japanese PERFECTLY without depending on characters. That's the same case with the hangul script, which allowed me to learn basic Korean without having to learn thousand of letters to do it. 감사합니다!
I Love the Chinese language but can't imagine it as an international language because not everybody has the guts to master thousands of characters to understand a language when English or any other western language can be learned right away!!
Cheers!!
Chinese started out as hieroglyphs, with each character representing a meaning. This was how the primitive set of characters were formed. Later on, when characters were needed for more conceptual ideas, new characters were invented by combining the characters of primitive sets. Sounds were later assigned to the glyphs for the purpose of oral communication. This is probably the reason there are so many homophones in Chinese; the number of sounds within a language is limited, but since there is no practical limitation on the number of characters that could exist, it is more efficient to assign the same sound to different characters. Otherwise, the sound system in Chinese will be totally unmanageable.
Because of this origin of the language, it is not easy (not to say that it is impossible) to totally phase out the characters and replaced them by letters capturing the sounds. The main problem is that the "sound" of a word carries no meaning in Chinese; for example, the characters 機/基 sound the same, but when we talk about airplanes, we have to use the former character because it carries the meaning of a machine (飛機, flying machines), and using 飛基 would be very awkward since it would mean "flying base or flying foundation."
So, if the word plane were to be written as "feiji", there would no longer be any clue from the written word that the "fei" part had to do with "flying" and the "ji" part with "machine." Worse, "feiji" in a different tone could become "fat chicken 肥雞" or "Fiji 斐濟". The understanding of words will become more difficult, unless the tones are marked and the person reads out the sentence.
I am a Cantonese speaker, and often when reading quotes in Cantonese in newspapers, I have to read out the words to get the meaning, since written Chinese should always be in Baihuawen 白話文. I won't be surprised that if Chinese were written using romanized spelling, it will actually takes folks longer to read.
My understanding is that Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese all borrowed Chinese characters to represent the *sounds* of their respective languages. A number of Chinese words, together with their meanings, were imported as is into these languages. But, since these languages started with sounds, it is more feasible for them to "drop" the use of hanzi because the characters themselves represent no meaning in the local languages. But if enough hanzi and their meaning were imported (like in the case of Japanese), the language is also "stuck" with the characters so that the meaning can be clearly conveyed.
Because of this origin of the language, it is not easy (not to say that it is impossible) to totally phase out the characters and replaced them by letters capturing the sounds. The main problem is that the "sound" of a word carries no meaning in Chinese; for example, the characters 機/基 sound the same, but when we talk about airplanes, we have to use the former character because it carries the meaning of a machine (飛機, flying machines), and using 飛基 would be very awkward since it would mean "flying base or flying foundation."
So, if the word plane were to be written as "feiji", there would no longer be any clue from the written word that the "fei" part had to do with "flying" and the "ji" part with "machine." Worse, "feiji" in a different tone could become "fat chicken 肥雞" or "Fiji 斐濟". The understanding of words will become more difficult, unless the tones are marked and the person reads out the sentence.
I am a Cantonese speaker, and often when reading quotes in Cantonese in newspapers, I have to read out the words to get the meaning, since written Chinese should always be in Baihuawen 白話文. I won't be surprised that if Chinese were written using romanized spelling, it will actually takes folks longer to read.
My understanding is that Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese all borrowed Chinese characters to represent the *sounds* of their respective languages. A number of Chinese words, together with their meanings, were imported as is into these languages. But, since these languages started with sounds, it is more feasible for them to "drop" the use of hanzi because the characters themselves represent no meaning in the local languages. But if enough hanzi and their meaning were imported (like in the case of Japanese), the language is also "stuck" with the characters so that the meaning can be clearly conveyed.
To: J.C.
Chopsticks, 箸: ancient Chinese, also in Japanese, but 筷子: only used in modern mandarin. This is the reason why I prefer Wenyan and Traditional characters.
Chopsticks, 箸: ancient Chinese, also in Japanese, but 筷子: only used in modern mandarin. This is the reason why I prefer Wenyan and Traditional characters.
To: J.C.
OK, let me write something in Latin alphabet with related tones, can you understand?
Not Wenyan, just general Mandarin. Remarks (can't type tones, just use numbers):
1=ā,
2=á,
3=ǎ,
4=à,
5=a,
-------------------------------------------------------------------
zi4 song4 chao2 yi3 lai2, guo2 min2 jing1 ji4 gao1 du4 fa1da2, she4 hui4 ti3 zhi4 jiao3 tang2 chao2 you3 suo3 gai3 shan4, geng4 zhu3 yao4 de shi4 wen2 hua4 shang4 de hui1 huang2 can4 lan4, li4 ru2 song4 ci2, shu1 fa3, hui4 hua4, cheng2 zhu1 li3 xue2.
OK, let me write something in Latin alphabet with related tones, can you understand?
Not Wenyan, just general Mandarin. Remarks (can't type tones, just use numbers):
1=ā,
2=á,
3=ǎ,
4=à,
5=a,
-------------------------------------------------------------------
zi4 song4 chao2 yi3 lai2, guo2 min2 jing1 ji4 gao1 du4 fa1da2, she4 hui4 ti3 zhi4 jiao3 tang2 chao2 you3 suo3 gai3 shan4, geng4 zhu3 yao4 de shi4 wen2 hua4 shang4 de hui1 huang2 can4 lan4, li4 ru2 song4 ci2, shu1 fa3, hui4 hua4, cheng2 zhu1 li3 xue2.
"Later on, when characters were needed for more conceptual ideas, new characters were invented by combining the characters of primitive sets. Sounds were later assigned to the glyphs for the purpose of oral communication."
This is nonsense. Spoken words came first, then characters were made. This is evident from the many words of Chinese where two characters with similar meanings are used to express a concept or words where the individual characters are not used alone. An example would be 蜘蛛 (spider). These characters are not used on their own... Whoever made these characters realized that since the word for spider was polysyllabic, it would need two characters. He then took 虫 for meaning and used 知 and 朱 to represent sound.
This is nonsense. Spoken words came first, then characters were made. This is evident from the many words of Chinese where two characters with similar meanings are used to express a concept or words where the individual characters are not used alone. An example would be 蜘蛛 (spider). These characters are not used on their own... Whoever made these characters realized that since the word for spider was polysyllabic, it would need two characters. He then took 虫 for meaning and used 知 and 朱 to represent sound.
Chinese Character Classification (liùshū) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification
We hope it won't be too hard for foreigners to comprehend what liùshū says.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification
We hope it won't be too hard for foreigners to comprehend what liùshū says.
"OK, let me write something in Latin alphabet with related tones, can you understand?
Not Wenyan, just general Mandarin. Remarks (can't type tones, just use numbers): "
@Tionghoa: I didn't understand the whole text but not because it would be impossible to do it rather because my Chinese is poor and I cannot understand complex sentences. Don't get me wrong but I don't want the Chinese to abolish using the 汉字. What I meant is that it isn't impossible to write ANY LANGUAGE using ANY WRITING SYSTEM. One proof of that is that you wrote Chinese using alphabet and adapted it to represent the tones.
For instance, I could write "namaste" as नमसते, намасте, ืฟทฟหะำ (not sure about this), 那马上特, ナマステ、나마수테,ναμαστε and still נמסתֶ and it would still mean the same thing.
Maybe if you write in 漢字 I can understand better since I recognized the words 社会，文化，会话，国民，更，主要的事，书法，力学，例如，辉煌，灿烂. I might be wrong in some of these but the fact is that when one speaks what's important is the SOUNDS and CONTEXT. However, since I have difficulties hearing the tones in Chinese I still have to depend on 漢字、reason why I haven't made much progress.
车儿时！(Cheers)
Not Wenyan, just general Mandarin. Remarks (can't type tones, just use numbers): "
@Tionghoa: I didn't understand the whole text but not because it would be impossible to do it rather because my Chinese is poor and I cannot understand complex sentences. Don't get me wrong but I don't want the Chinese to abolish using the 汉字. What I meant is that it isn't impossible to write ANY LANGUAGE using ANY WRITING SYSTEM. One proof of that is that you wrote Chinese using alphabet and adapted it to represent the tones.
For instance, I could write "namaste" as नमसते, намасте, ืฟทฟหะำ (not sure about this), 那马上特, ナマステ、나마수테,ναμαστε and still נמסתֶ and it would still mean the same thing.
Maybe if you write in 漢字 I can understand better since I recognized the words 社会，文化，会话，国民，更，主要的事，书法，力学，例如，辉煌，灿烂. I might be wrong in some of these but the fact is that when one speaks what's important is the SOUNDS and CONTEXT. However, since I have difficulties hearing the tones in Chinese I still have to depend on 漢字、reason why I haven't made much progress.
车儿时！(Cheers)
for example: 电=electronic
1, computer: 电脑(electronic head)
2, elevator(lift): 电梯(electronic ladder)
3, television: 电视(electronic vision)
4, refrigerator(fridge): 电冰箱(electronic icebox)
5, hairdryer: 电吹风(electronic wind-blower )
1, computer: 电脑(electronic head)
2, elevator(lift): 电梯(electronic ladder)
3, television: 电视(electronic vision)
4, refrigerator(fridge): 电冰箱(electronic icebox)
5, hairdryer: 电吹风(electronic wind-blower )
Please let me tell you why Chinese Latinisation still has been popular in China. From Chūnqiū Shídài (Spring & Autumn Period) to Sòng Cháo (Song Dynasty), approximately between 770 BC and 1279 AD, China was almost the strongest empire in the world, as it had a long lead on civilization, characters, mathematics (π=3.1415926), geometry (together with ancient Egypt), technical skills, arts and crafts, moral and living philosophy, over European and other Asian countries. Four Inventions (sì dà fā míng) of ancient China also made a profound and far-ranging impact on the world history. Especially during Song Dynasty, our national economy had exceeded nearly all other countries in GDP & per capita GDP before its downfall, good time doesn't last long, and brutality always conquers civilization, no doubt both Mongolian Yuan Dynasty (Yuán Cháo) and Manchulian Qing Dynasty (Qīng Cháo) were indeed 2 disastrous and declining periods of Dark Ages of China. Particularly, after Opium Wars, China suddenly became a piece of delicious Pizza which was divided up at random by powerful countries. From then on, a series of battles came one after another, overthrowing the Qing government, fighting against Japanese invaders, Chinese Civil War between Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (GCD), then Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution launched crazily by CCP. As a result of inferiority complex, some Chinese turned to adore excessively everything about Occident, and meanwhile, began to belittle the achievements of China. Objectively speaking, the nature of language and character can't be compared with science and technology, we can’t say that, Latin alphabet really fits in with Chinese written form more advanced or more effective than characters system. The problems caused by deficiencies in science & technology development, or anything else, are absolutely not the reasons that Chinese has to be Latinised as possible as it can. And I think it’s worth mentioning that, China has got a rich cultural heritage, an abundant useful books which were completely written in regular script characters, they’re rather more important (at least, as important as) than those which were usually published from a perspective of Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, or Deng Xiaoping Theory after 1949, so, once Chinese characters were reluctantly Latinised, the date that people started using Latin alphabet, would be a dividing line between real China and latinised China, and when the time comes, that day would cut off China’s civilization and history, then replace them to create a brand new beginning with something doesn’t belong to China, despite the fact that latinisation might cause people (not only native Chinese, but also foreign learners) a lot of trouble in the long run. BTW, if you need any help with Mandarin study, please feel free to let me know.