Chinese script, It's characters Options

[fujisan_8]

Ask anyone who has attempted learning Chinese and they will tell you memorising the chracters and strokes simply sucks.

The problem with Chinese removing the chracters is that it comes hand in hand with the tones. Honestly, I think tones make the Chinese language sound somewhat feminine (re: Korean, Mongolian or Japanese, heck ANY language that doesnt have tones). To me and a lot of Westerners, tones sounds like your singing and this is not very masculine.

Secondly, WHY the HELL ON EARTH IS CHINESE using a script that spans centuries back and hasnt been changed dramtically evolved in recent times? When just about every other language has an alphabet, Chinese is the only one without one (I think arabic too, not sure). Dont the Chinese here think its slightly silly and inefficient, especially INPUTTING the damn characters into the PC using this old and outdated character set??? Seriously, I think for a skilled Chinese typist to type the above words would take double the time I did (considering I am no typist either).

[caolucai]

man...those chinese nationalists are gonna come rape you; plus, your comments simply show your narrow understanding of the chinese language

This post has been edited by caolucai: Dec 16 2004, 06:08 AM

[fujisan_8]

man...those chinese nationalists are gonna come rape you; plus, your comments simply show your narrow understanding of the chinese language

I'm not talking about my understanding / depth of Chinese. It takes months and maybe years before once can properly use Chinese from scratch.

For example, English - 26 letters, although there are some words like knife that are a direct translation of its sound, most people can at least prounounce the word in English. If you're a fob, you can at least get your message across either by saying a few keywords or spelling it out on a piece of paper. It's almost impossible with Chinese.

There is simply not much LOGIC in Chinese...ya know, inflexiblity. To date, there HAS NOT BEEN AN EFFICIENT METHOD TO INPUT CHINESE. It's not an easy solution either (if so, they would have found it years ago).

Lastly, if you've ever used a English and Chinese dictionary, you'll know what I mean. With CHinese, looking up a word is MUCH more tedious, looking up pinyin string can come up with 10 different words.

[caolucai]

adopting the pinyin system is already an attempt by the PRC to make chiense easier to learn for foreigners, although i really doubt it helps that much. it can't get any "easier" (IMG:http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/embarassedlaugh.gif)

This post has been edited by caolucai: Dec 16 2004, 06:31 AM

[fujisan_8]

adopting the pinyin system is already an attempt by the PRC to make chiense easier to learn for foreigners, although i really doubt it helps that much. it can't get any more "easier" (IMG:http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/embarassedlaugh.gif)

Pinyin sucks, but thats mainly BECAUSE Chinese has tones, and well, this script really wasnt designed for tones. "ma" is a classic example of what I mean by this.

Plus another annoyance with Pinyin, some letters DO NO REPRESENT the original roman sounds. Qing for example, most Westerners pronounce it something like "Kwing" when it should really sound like "Ching", but really it sounds like CHING CHING (as in $$$). Most foreigners asked the teacher WHY dont they just write it as damn CHING, the teacher had no idea why or rather why not.

[caolucai]

hahahaha..it's cuz the CCP likes to mess things up. always like to throw away the old (e.g. KMT's ZhuYin system) and come up w/ some new stuff. yeah, besides how it's systematic, pinyin really doesn't make much sense, cuz their reasoning is, "we're only borrowing the alphabet, not its pronunciations, therefore, letters like X, Q, ZH, should be pronounced like, ㄒ,ㄑ,ㄓ respectively." i don't see how foreigners can NOT get confused

This post has been edited by caolucai: Dec 16 2004, 06:39 AM

[fujisan_8]

hahahaha..it's cuz the CCP likes to mess things up. always like to throw away the old (e.g. KMT's ZhuYin system) and come up w/ some new stuff. yeah, besides how it's systematic, pinyin really doesn't make much sense, cuz their reasoning is, "we're only borrowing the alphabet, not its pronunciations, therefore, letters like X, Q, ZH, should be pronounced like, ㄒ,ㄑ,ㄓ respectively." i don't see how foreigners can NOT get confused

Actually I heard the Zhuyin system was a b!tch too.

[caolucai]

yeah, they're all pretty difficult to master for foreigners, but at least for zhuyin, they won't confuse the pronunciations w/ english; zhuyin works like the japanese's hiragana, just a bunch of tones, memorize them, then piece them together, then you'll master the pronunciations.

This post has been edited by caolucai: Dec 16 2004, 06:58 AM

[fujisan_8]

Then I suppose Chinese is a b!tch of a language to learn that few can master to even use it in everyday life.

[caolucai]

well...they'll just have to suck it in and learn it anyway. learning chinese will soon be just as important as learning english, if not even more so; american public schools should start offering chinese as a second language. luckily, as you mentioned, chinese is a b!tch to learn, so it will still be a while before there are enough blingual speakers/writers in the job market. futhermore, we'll always have an advantage over foreigners, for even if they master the language, it would still be difficult for them to absorb the local culture and customs, which is often crucial in making vital business decisions in foreign markets

This post has been edited by caolucai: Dec 16 2004, 07:22 AM

[康师傅]

we don't wanna be another vietnamese... (IMG:http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/embarassedlaugh.gif)

you don't have to learn chinese... sir... it's ur choice..
chinese is mainly use by chinese.. not u vietnamese...
even though vietnamese makes easier to learn, but i wonder how many people are actually learning it??


i wonder why u always talking $hit about our beautiful language, why don't u ask japanese, korean and thai to abolish their writing system, since they all different from vietnamese..

This post has been edited by 康师傅: Dec 16 2004, 09:45 AM

[Shanghaibabe@Tor...]

Ah..........kids love to fight all the time. (IMG:http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/sure.gif)

This post has been edited by Shanghaibabe@Toronto: Dec 16 2004, 09:48 AM

[康师傅]

Ah..........kids love to fight all the time. (IMG:http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/sure.gif)

why don't u vote?

[Shanghaibabe@Tor...]

yes I did, but I hate to see people fighting my dear

Ah..........kids love to fight all the time. (IMG:http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/sure.gif)

why don't u vote?

[Adee]

Having said all of that there are still millions of people in China who uses Chinese everyday without any problems, although foreigners are less advantaged it's not exactly impossible for them to pick up. If it works for most people then there's no point in changing the system.

[康师傅]

Having said all of that there are still millions of people in China who uses Chinese everyday without any problems, although foreigners are less advantaged it's not exactly impossible for them to pick up. If it works for most people then there's no point in changing the system.

well english are very hard for chinese in china to pick up too..and i always wonder why don't american and spanish change their grammar the way we chinese use..

if u really into something, no matter how hard it is, you still can pick it up.

This post has been edited by 康师傅: Dec 16 2004, 11:07 AM

[Keymaker]

Ask anyone who has attempted learning Chinese and they will tell you memorising the chracters and strokes simply sucks.

The problem with Chinese removing the chracters is that it comes hand in hand with the tones. Honestly, I think tones make the Chinese language sound somewhat feminine (re: Korean, Mongolian or Japanese, heck ANY language that doesnt have tones). To me and a lot of Westerners, tones sounds like your singing and this is not very masculine.

Rote memorization of characters is a bad way to learn the language. I don't know if you're just learning the language, but students in advanced classes have a better grasp of the characters because of pattern-matching and relations. The characters tend to be combinations of existing characters, which serve to create the foundation of the main character's meaning. You probably learned character memorization the wrong way once you got past the basics.

Concerning the tones, I have misgivings as well. On the up side, there are only a limited set of sounds to deal with (not much of a consolation though).

Secondly, WHY the HELL ON EARTH IS CHINESE using a script that spans centuries back and hasnt been changed dramtically evolved in recent times? When just about every other language has an alphabet, Chinese is the only one without one (I think arabic too, not sure). Dont the Chinese here think its slightly silly and inefficient, especially INPUTTING the damn characters into the PC using this old and outdated character set??? Seriously, I think for a skilled Chinese typist to type the above words would take double the time I did (considering I am no typist either).

I agree that the script can be a pain (as I'm not a huge fan of the script as well), but some corrections are in order. I don't know how well you type in pinyin, but most westerners statistically can type faster in Chinese through pinyin than typing in English. Software programs, including the global standard that is the Microsoft IME, can accurately predict the character you're trying to use through statistical inference. If the character is incorrect, finding the next character is a cinch with modern interfaces. Chinese is by far not my first language, but I type Chinese a lot faster than English. Most people in China don't even type in pinyin, but instead use radicals, which is a lot faster typing. Contrary to what you said, typing in Chinese is faster than English. Any linguist can tell you that.

adopting the pinyin system is already an attempt by the PRC to make chiense easier to learn for foreigners, although i really doubt it helps that much. it can't get any more "easier" (IMG:http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/embarassedlaugh.gif)

Pinyin sucks, but thats mainly BECAUSE Chinese has tones, and well, this script really wasnt designed for tones. "ma" is a classic example of what I mean by this.

Plus another annoyance with Pinyin, some letters DO NO REPRESENT the original roman sounds. Qing for example, most Westerners pronounce it something like "Kwing" when it should really sound like "Ching", but really it sounds like CHING CHING (as in $$$). Most foreigners asked the teacher WHY dont they just write it as damn CHING, the teacher had no idea why or rather why not.

Sounds like a misunderstanding. You're probably confusing anglization to romanization. Pinyin was introduced as a romanization to the Chinese language, which means that English characters are overloaded to serve as a backdrop to represent certain sounds in Chinese. It was never intended to serve as a correspondence to actual English sounds despite its near-relation to it. It's a common misconception that pinyin is an anglization though.

I understand your hate of the Chinese language. It's a very difficult language as I am myself think it's frustrated in my advanced classes. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that over a billion people speak it just fine, which means I can't complain about its difficulty.

[Yuje]

Pinyin sucks, but thats mainly BECAUSE Chinese has tones, and well, this script really wasnt designed for tones. "ma" is a classic example of what I mean by this.

Plus another annoyance with Pinyin, some letters DO NO REPRESENT the original roman sounds. Qing for example, most Westerners pronounce it something like "Kwing" when it should really sound like "Ching", but really it sounds like CHING CHING (as in $$$). Most foreigners asked the teacher WHY dont they just write it as damn CHING, the teacher had no idea why or rather why not.

The letters used in English don't represent the original Roman sounds either. The original sounds of the Roman alphabet are incapable of representing the sounds in Mandarin. Ching and qing in pinyin sound different. If you actually knew any pinyin, you would know that it has a 1-1 and 100% correspondence phonetically.

You might have seen this before, it's an oldy but a good one.

Aoccrdning to rscheearch at Cmabrgde Uinervtisy it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olyn iprmoetnt  tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthwith porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef,  but the wrod as a wlohe.

Dont the Chinese here think its slightly silly and inefficient, especially INPUTTING the damn characters into the PC using this old and outdated character set??? Seriously, I think for a skilled Chinese typist to type the above words would take double the time I did (considering I am no typist either).

Not true. Someone who knows how to type using the Wubi method can easily go 160 wpm.

This post has been edited by Yuje: Dec 16 2004, 12:39 PM

[fujisan_8]

I think a lot of you missed the point. I'm not talking about some skilled person inputting the words rather, an average Joe.

Why dont I tell Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese and Thais to modify or abolish their writing system? Simply because its a mapping of the phoentic sounds of their language, an efficienct system. Whilst Chinese is a language that has a long history, it remains just that, an archiac kind of language. Btw, TONES SOUND UGLY *its a general rule that the more tones a language has, the less its pleasing to the ear*. This is why there is always a preference amongst AFers for Japanese or Korean (no tones) over Mandarin (4) and Mandarin over Cantonese or Vietnamese which has 5 to 9.

Why isnt Vietnamese popular amongst Westerners? Simply because its not as economically useful as Chinese is, hardly ANY WESTERNER was interested in Chinese say 10 years ago.

The Chinese script ISNT really logical in a sense that it doesnt represent anything that the avg Joe can use intuition to "guess" or "make sense" of the word.

PLus the tones, can anyone hear give me some valid reasons as why they would be better than a toneless language?

[caolucai]

The Chinese script ISNT really logical in a sense that it doesnt represent anything that the avg Joe can use intuition to "guess" or "make sense" of the word.

PLus the tones, can anyone hear give me some valid reasons as why they would be better than a toneless language?

the chinese language is not for the average joe. it was never meant to be easy to learn. the script does make sense and it follows a logical pattern. for example, characters w/ the 金 radical would most likely have something to do w/ money or metals for the character means "gold." the 忄radical would accompay most characters that have to deal w/ ones emotions, and the 女 radical would be found with characters that have anything to do w/ women...almost all characters follow such patterns, everything makes sense after a while...

you can't simply get rid of the tones. if so, it's like telling english users to change the spelling of all their words, nothing will make sense. there's really no point in complaining cuz that's how the language is structured, and nothing can be done to change it.

This post has been edited by caolucai: Dec 17 2004, 05:52 AM