Er, when I put "汉语可以说是一种顽固不化的语言" in the Google translate, it says: " It can be said that Chinese intransigence is a kind of language."
So, intransigence is not a language.
So, intransigence is not a language.
Chinese characters and Egyptian hieroglyphs
>>汉语可以说是一种顽固不化的语言
Who on earth says that?
I had tried to skip reading the post (because it might be quite boring for me), but... basically, it's disapproving. That reminds me of what Lu Xun said, despite the fact that many regard him as a revolutionary (and leftist) writer. Lu Xun promoted the total abolition of Hanzi in favour of the Latin script, because Hanzi were "beast writing", uncivilized, and so on.
That was history. Development of computers and input methods have made Chinese less difficult to put in an information system. When we look back, we could see how idealist people had been, and how catastrophic it would have been if Hanzi were abolished once and for all (I think of the Vietnamese and Korean traditional writing).
Instead of being unnecessarily complex, IMO as a native, Hanzi have enabled us to convey meanings more easily without having to worry about inflectional forms (to remember a word with all possible variations depending on meanings or grammatical functions) and can start telegraph talk in no time, rather than writing long words (the Latin letter ones). If I could become well-versed in several languages, I'd still write more Hanzi on my personal short-notes, not because that I'm native, but because it saves so much space on a piece of paper... (where, sorry, highly inflectional languages would be prompting me to write, exactly, unnecessarily long - this text must be shorter if I don't put it in English).
Who on earth says that?
I had tried to skip reading the post (because it might be quite boring for me), but... basically, it's disapproving. That reminds me of what Lu Xun said, despite the fact that many regard him as a revolutionary (and leftist) writer. Lu Xun promoted the total abolition of Hanzi in favour of the Latin script, because Hanzi were "beast writing", uncivilized, and so on.
That was history. Development of computers and input methods have made Chinese less difficult to put in an information system. When we look back, we could see how idealist people had been, and how catastrophic it would have been if Hanzi were abolished once and for all (I think of the Vietnamese and Korean traditional writing).
Instead of being unnecessarily complex, IMO as a native, Hanzi have enabled us to convey meanings more easily without having to worry about inflectional forms (to remember a word with all possible variations depending on meanings or grammatical functions) and can start telegraph talk in no time, rather than writing long words (the Latin letter ones). If I could become well-versed in several languages, I'd still write more Hanzi on my personal short-notes, not because that I'm native, but because it saves so much space on a piece of paper... (where, sorry, highly inflectional languages would be prompting me to write, exactly, unnecessarily long - this text must be shorter if I don't put it in English).
>>汉语可以说是一种顽固不化的语言
Who on earth says that?
I had tried to skip reading the post (because it might be quite boring for me), but... basically, it's disapproving. That reminds me of what Lu Xun said, despite the fact that many regard him as a revolutionary (and leftist) writer. Lu Xun promoted the total abolition of Hanzi in favour of the Latin script, because Hanzi were "beast writing", uncivilized, and so on.
That was history. Development of computers and input methods have made Chinese less difficult to put in an information system. When we look back, we could see how idealist people had been, and how catastrophic it would have been if Hanzi were abolished once and for all (I think of the Vietnamese and Korean traditional writing).
Instead of being unnecessarily complex, IMO as a native, Hanzi have enabled us to convey meanings more easily without having to worry about inflectional forms (to remember a word with all possible variations depending on meanings or grammatical functions) and can start telegraph talk in no time, rather than writing long words (the Latin letter ones). If I could become well-versed in several languages, I'd still write more Hanzi on my personal short-notes, not because that I'm native, but because it saves so much space on a piece of paper... (where, sorry, highly inflectional languages would be prompting me to write, exactly, unnecessarily long - this text must be shorter if I don't put it in English).
Who on earth says that?
I had tried to skip reading the post (because it might be quite boring for me), but... basically, it's disapproving. That reminds me of what Lu Xun said, despite the fact that many regard him as a revolutionary (and leftist) writer. Lu Xun promoted the total abolition of Hanzi in favour of the Latin script, because Hanzi were "beast writing", uncivilized, and so on.
That was history. Development of computers and input methods have made Chinese less difficult to put in an information system. When we look back, we could see how idealist people had been, and how catastrophic it would have been if Hanzi were abolished once and for all (I think of the Vietnamese and Korean traditional writing).
Instead of being unnecessarily complex, IMO as a native, Hanzi have enabled us to convey meanings more easily without having to worry about inflectional forms (to remember a word with all possible variations depending on meanings or grammatical functions) and can start telegraph talk in no time, rather than writing long words (the Latin letter ones). If I could become well-versed in several languages, I'd still write more Hanzi on my personal short-notes, not because that I'm native, but because it saves so much space on a piece of paper... (where, sorry, highly inflectional languages would be prompting me to write, exactly, unnecessarily long - this text must be shorter if I don't put it in English).
I think more mature students tend to adopt more subtle shorthand writing, to the extent that... some notes can only be read by the writer him/herself. But since our education is so much dominated by English, I've since seen much less such notes. If I do, that would be learning languages (i.e. translations), where, except Japanese, Chinese translations would be so easily noticeable from words in other scripts.
Just like reading calligraphy works and order lists of Dai pai dongs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dai_pai_dong) (without training one can't read them), everyone would have his/her own human OCR, so... writing notes wouldn't work only if one is too lazy and skip too many of the strokes.
Just like reading calligraphy works and order lists of Dai pai dongs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dai_pai_dong) (without training one can't read them), everyone would have his/her own human OCR, so... writing notes wouldn't work only if one is too lazy and skip too many of the strokes.
If you wrote Chinese in pinyin, there still wouldn't be any inflection. Inflection has nothing to do with what writing system you're using.
>> Lu Xun promoted the total abolition of Hanzi in favour of the Latin script, because Hanzi were "beast writing", uncivilized, and so on.
The Chinese Writings can exist in 2 kinds of writing systems at the same time; 1. Sinogram script, 2. Latin script.
The Sinogram script can keep us the traditionary wisdoms, and the Latin script help the peoples to learn a language in its native style because the Mandarinization makes the other Chinese Languages lost its native language background. The Latin script also help the people works in computer world easily.
Before 1950s, there were many kinds of Chinese Languages in the Latin script, such like the Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hakkanese, Foochownese and etc. The population of these Latin writing systems more than two hundred thousands.
The Chinese Writings can exist in 2 kinds of writing systems at the same time; 1. Sinogram script, 2. Latin script.
The Sinogram script can keep us the traditionary wisdoms, and the Latin script help the peoples to learn a language in its native style because the Mandarinization makes the other Chinese Languages lost its native language background. The Latin script also help the people works in computer world easily.
Before 1950s, there were many kinds of Chinese Languages in the Latin script, such like the Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hakkanese, Foochownese and etc. The population of these Latin writing systems more than two hundred thousands.
Josh,
I don't know about Chinese, but some Japanese people (secretly) do NOT write in the correct stroke order. Some aren't even SURE about the stroke order. I know better than to ask any Japanese person (even those who "teach" Japanese), because I don't want them to lose face or become annoyed when I ask and they don't know.
One Japanese told me that she would write her characters in secret and show them to her mother who PRAISED her. The characters "looked" good, so that was enough.
I always tried to follow the rules when I taught myself Kanji. I am not bragging. I don't know any adult who had the luxury of being taught stroke by stroke by a teacher. Who has time? There are books and even some electronic dictionaries which WRITE the characters for you in case you forget how to "spell" them. I'm not kidding.
I don't know about Chinese, but some Japanese people (secretly) do NOT write in the correct stroke order. Some aren't even SURE about the stroke order. I know better than to ask any Japanese person (even those who "teach" Japanese), because I don't want them to lose face or become annoyed when I ask and they don't know.
One Japanese told me that she would write her characters in secret and show them to her mother who PRAISED her. The characters "looked" good, so that was enough.
I always tried to follow the rules when I taught myself Kanji. I am not bragging. I don't know any adult who had the luxury of being taught stroke by stroke by a teacher. Who has time? There are books and even some electronic dictionaries which WRITE the characters for you in case you forget how to "spell" them. I'm not kidding.
I always force myself to use the correct stroke order and mark an incorrect order as wrong in my flash card repetitions, but I'm usually so sure of the order that I seldom bother to check. Luckily the rules become easy after you learn a few hundred characters, although you'll always find a character that surprises you. I imagine even if you know the stroke order of all the Jōyō kanji, you might not be able to guess with 100% certainty the stroke order of some other characters you come across.
I remember my frustration a month or two ago when I found out that I was drawing the 衤 radical wrong. I drew the tiny rightmost stroke last, when it should have been second-to-last, and I'd been doing it wrong for months. But it was such a shock that I'll probably never forget the correct order now. ^^;
- Kef
I remember my frustration a month or two ago when I found out that I was drawing the 衤 radical wrong. I drew the tiny rightmost stroke last, when it should have been second-to-last, and I'd been doing it wrong for months. But it was such a shock that I'll probably never forget the correct order now. ^^;
- Kef
>>The Sinogram script can keep us the traditionary wisdoms, and the Latin script help the peoples to learn a language in its native style because the Mandarinization makes the other Chinese Languages lost its native language background. The Latin script also help the people works in computer world easily.
I guess you come from my country. Thanks, but I of course know that. So far, pinyin could only be auxiliary, and from a perspective of efficiency, Chinese would be just similar to Japanese, because whereas beginner and intermediate learners have to rely on furigana, they would have to rely on pinyin before taking off. But well, nothing is perfect in the world. European languages are all written in one script (or two) only, all being phonetic, but not all alphabets are perfectly phonetic. Perfectly phonetic alphabets aren't free from having diacritics that not every computer can recognize without doing some config. So, that's the reality.
>>I don't know about Chinese, but some Japanese people (secretly) do NOT write in the correct stroke order. Some aren't even SURE about the stroke order.
LOL, I sometimes write wrongly, too. That natives don't know all the words of their dictionary is similar to that I don't know how to write every character and may even wrong some of them in the wrong order. I may have been taught to write properly in elementary school, but I've forgotten everything since then. Only some months ago did I pick up a book about stroke order for the first time, and thus figured out stroke order for 90% of the characters. Natives of my age... without reading a book like that, would still be writing wrongly every day.
This reminds me of something funny about Chinese learning Japanese. Guess what? Just like Americans/Europeans who learn European languages badly for all kinds of reasons, those who love Japanese stuff out of some cultural fad (well, or anything, whatever) would naturally pick up the language. Then, chances are that they become typical learners who do not end up getting fluent - trying to figure out Kanji using Hanzi in their mind, trying to read Kanji, when in doubt (because of a lack of knowledge), in the Hanzi way, trying to write Kanji, in the ??may-be-wrong Hanzi way and, above all, dreaming of a career and good grades in JLPT in no time.
That might happen in many beginner's classes, where, well, like if you know English first, you try to read Latin letters of other languages in the English way, and with a terrible accent. As I see it, while there can be plenty of reasons of picking up a new language, in most cases, it is necessarily a literary challenge (i.e. to become a great reader), and in other cases when you are dealing with unwritten languages, it is even more academic... and for Chinese, it might be some of the greatest challenges for its demanding scripts.
I guess you come from my country. Thanks, but I of course know that. So far, pinyin could only be auxiliary, and from a perspective of efficiency, Chinese would be just similar to Japanese, because whereas beginner and intermediate learners have to rely on furigana, they would have to rely on pinyin before taking off. But well, nothing is perfect in the world. European languages are all written in one script (or two) only, all being phonetic, but not all alphabets are perfectly phonetic. Perfectly phonetic alphabets aren't free from having diacritics that not every computer can recognize without doing some config. So, that's the reality.
>>I don't know about Chinese, but some Japanese people (secretly) do NOT write in the correct stroke order. Some aren't even SURE about the stroke order.
LOL, I sometimes write wrongly, too. That natives don't know all the words of their dictionary is similar to that I don't know how to write every character and may even wrong some of them in the wrong order. I may have been taught to write properly in elementary school, but I've forgotten everything since then. Only some months ago did I pick up a book about stroke order for the first time, and thus figured out stroke order for 90% of the characters. Natives of my age... without reading a book like that, would still be writing wrongly every day.
This reminds me of something funny about Chinese learning Japanese. Guess what? Just like Americans/Europeans who learn European languages badly for all kinds of reasons, those who love Japanese stuff out of some cultural fad (well, or anything, whatever) would naturally pick up the language. Then, chances are that they become typical learners who do not end up getting fluent - trying to figure out Kanji using Hanzi in their mind, trying to read Kanji, when in doubt (because of a lack of knowledge), in the Hanzi way, trying to write Kanji, in the ??may-be-wrong Hanzi way and, above all, dreaming of a career and good grades in JLPT in no time.
That might happen in many beginner's classes, where, well, like if you know English first, you try to read Latin letters of other languages in the English way, and with a terrible accent. As I see it, while there can be plenty of reasons of picking up a new language, in most cases, it is necessarily a literary challenge (i.e. to become a great reader), and in other cases when you are dealing with unwritten languages, it is even more academic... and for Chinese, it might be some of the greatest challenges for its demanding scripts.
If I learn, let's say 8000 Hanzi (enough to be able to read a newspaper, allegedly), could I have a conversation (in writing) with a Chinese even if I speak no C. language?
You need far fewer than 8000 hanzi for either of those tasks. 3000 should do the job, though you might need to consult a dictionary now and then. Of course, this is assuming you learn vocabulary and grammar, too, not just hanzi.
- Kef
- Kef
But my point is: if I know Hanzi, I do not need to learn vocabulary. When writing, I can think in my language and you can read the Hanzi I wrote in yours. There's no need to learn the languages. Or is there?
Does it work that way? And how much grammar do you need, since Chinese doesn't have that much of it anyway (so I gather)?
Does it work that way? And how much grammar do you need, since Chinese doesn't have that much of it anyway (so I gather)?
<< But my point is: if I know Hanzi, I do not need to learn vocabulary. >>
Unfortunately, that is incorrect. Hanzi are characters, not words. Modern Chinese is mostly polysyllabic, with most words containing two characters, and a word is often more than the sum of its parts. This applies especially to foreign loanwords, which often make a compromise between preserving pronunciation and preserving meaning (and, admittedly, often doing a bad job of both in the process), or might even be an entirely phonetic transcription written with characters that are otherwise nonsense.
Then there are compounds that make sense, but they still need to be memorized as independent vocabulary items. For example, take the word "computer". One word for it is 電腦 -- "electricity-brain". The phrase "electric brain" would not immediately suggest computer to me, and even if it did, it would only be a guess. It could just as easily mean "microprocessor", for example. And, conversely, if I wanted to say "computer" and didn't know the word offhand, there's no way I could even guess that "electric brain" is what I'm looking for.
There's another word for "computer", too: 計算機, or, basically, "plot-calculate-mechanism". Obviously, it suffers the same problems. Both of these words make some kind of sense, but you can only make a vague guess of the meaning if you don't already know the word, and it is impossible to produce the words unless you already know them.
<< And how much grammar do you need, since Chinese doesn't have that much of it anyway (so I gather)? >>
There's no such thing as a language with little grammar. Although Chinese has no inflection the way we usually know it, its rules of syntax get pretty complicated, from what I understand, but I don't actually know Chinese so I cannot provide details. Languages develop complicated grammar for a reason; Chinese is no exception.
- Kef
Unfortunately, that is incorrect. Hanzi are characters, not words. Modern Chinese is mostly polysyllabic, with most words containing two characters, and a word is often more than the sum of its parts. This applies especially to foreign loanwords, which often make a compromise between preserving pronunciation and preserving meaning (and, admittedly, often doing a bad job of both in the process), or might even be an entirely phonetic transcription written with characters that are otherwise nonsense.
Then there are compounds that make sense, but they still need to be memorized as independent vocabulary items. For example, take the word "computer". One word for it is 電腦 -- "electricity-brain". The phrase "electric brain" would not immediately suggest computer to me, and even if it did, it would only be a guess. It could just as easily mean "microprocessor", for example. And, conversely, if I wanted to say "computer" and didn't know the word offhand, there's no way I could even guess that "electric brain" is what I'm looking for.
There's another word for "computer", too: 計算機, or, basically, "plot-calculate-mechanism". Obviously, it suffers the same problems. Both of these words make some kind of sense, but you can only make a vague guess of the meaning if you don't already know the word, and it is impossible to produce the words unless you already know them.
<< And how much grammar do you need, since Chinese doesn't have that much of it anyway (so I gather)? >>
There's no such thing as a language with little grammar. Although Chinese has no inflection the way we usually know it, its rules of syntax get pretty complicated, from what I understand, but I don't actually know Chinese so I cannot provide details. Languages develop complicated grammar for a reason; Chinese is no exception.
- Kef
>>Modern Chinese is mostly polysyllabic
Knowing characters helps even less with Classical texts. Basically, Classical Chinese is a not really a "language"; it's the predecessor that changed slowly through 2000 years with lots of obscure characters (often very compact in meaning) and lots of obscure stories - and the worst thing is the presence of huge numbers of elisions. The Chinese scholars in those days tended to be very frugal about words... it's okay for natives nowadays to be able to read a bit of it, but for me, well, it cannot already serve as something like Latin for European language speakers. This economical trend continues today - sometimes it's polysyllabic, sometimes it is not.
My current observation is that, thanks to the general tabloid and very colloquial trend of Hong Kong newspapers, electronic media and films, Mandarin has borrowed a lot of monosyllabic stuff as neologisms, which means even more idioms & expressions to learn. At least in generic Chinese, knowing characters won't help much in reading, and, anyway, a great many characters are simply limited to certain expressions or literary contexts, such that the ??Pareto ratio?? would hold.
So, here, I must be biased, but I'd question the use of the Heisig's method; I wouldn't want to learn idioms from an idiom dictionary with 1,000 entries from the first to the last, without a lot of contexts (scattered in example sentences), and learn characters almost like in isolation.
Knowing characters helps even less with Classical texts. Basically, Classical Chinese is a not really a "language"; it's the predecessor that changed slowly through 2000 years with lots of obscure characters (often very compact in meaning) and lots of obscure stories - and the worst thing is the presence of huge numbers of elisions. The Chinese scholars in those days tended to be very frugal about words... it's okay for natives nowadays to be able to read a bit of it, but for me, well, it cannot already serve as something like Latin for European language speakers. This economical trend continues today - sometimes it's polysyllabic, sometimes it is not.
My current observation is that, thanks to the general tabloid and very colloquial trend of Hong Kong newspapers, electronic media and films, Mandarin has borrowed a lot of monosyllabic stuff as neologisms, which means even more idioms & expressions to learn. At least in generic Chinese, knowing characters won't help much in reading, and, anyway, a great many characters are simply limited to certain expressions or literary contexts, such that the ??Pareto ratio?? would hold.
So, here, I must be biased, but I'd question the use of the Heisig's method; I wouldn't want to learn idioms from an idiom dictionary with 1,000 entries from the first to the last, without a lot of contexts (scattered in example sentences), and learn characters almost like in isolation.
Xie, what did you mean when you said that you like hanzi because they help you avoid inflections? How would writing in pinyin cause the Chinese grammar to change?