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It may be obvious to some, less to others, but the Chinese writing system is not based on an alphabet.
An alphabet consists of a small number of letters. Letters represent sounds.
They spell out how words should be pronounced. Letters don't have any meaning by themselves.A Chinese character on the other hand is a more complex unit. It contains an indication of pronunciation as well as an indication of meaning. There are more than 100,000 different Chinese characters. It is actually impossible to count them precisely! There are infinite variants. The number of useful characters, for a literate person however, is “only” between 3,000 and 6,000. That is still a huge number compared to the 26 letters of our alphabet. But you can't compare apples and oranges!
For those who are curious, who are language geeks, or who are updating their skill set to learn how to say, "Yes, boss," in Mandarin...it's a bit too cursory on the subject of radicals, which are the heart of Chinese characters and how you look stuff up in the dictionary, but a reasonable introduction into the writing system.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Thursday December 17 2015, @02:33AM
More interestingly for me, is that there are over a dozen ways to pronounce a single word or letter, all with different meaning. My problem is that it's impossible for me to tell. Had a Chinese-American girl in college literally lose her mind trying to get me to speak Chinese. Not only could I not pronounce words differently enough, I couldn't even tell the difference when she was saying them to me.
You need excellent hearing, and an almost musical brain to speak and hear Chinese. For me, it's all Greek as the saying goes with "flat" hearing.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday December 17 2015, @03:09AM
Ugh, that describes me...I'm missing about 60dB in each ear and am badly tone-deaf. My girlfriend is trying to get me to learn Mandarin (she's Cantonese but speaks both fluently). I honestly cannot hear the different tones unless the speaker is speaking very slowly, and for some reason i can't reliably produce them either.
Plus, when you're used to Japanese, you look at the characters and say them *in* Japanese. To make matters more complicated, some Japanese readings of characters, the on'yomi, are similar to but not exactly like the Mandarin reading (JP "sui"/ ZN "shui," where the second one is closer to "shu'ei" than the "shu'i" i'd natively expect).
Then there's the fact that I can't read the simplified character set properly, or that some things just don't translate one to one; theoretically Hazuki (leaf + moon) would become Yeyue, but that sounds bizarre and I don't think I've ever seen it.
You would think a couple of countries with over a thousand years of history togethr would have blended more.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:41PM
You'd think that might be the case, but even in the UK, which is smaller than Japan, never mind China, there are a variety of accents and dialects from one end of the island to the other. And it's not even the same language, seeing as Wales has that town named Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
(Score: 2) by bugamn on Friday December 18 2015, @06:38PM
I just want to point out that I marveled to discover that name.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday December 19 2015, @02:24AM
"Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch."
That sounds like a town made of Taz. Not "a bunch of Tasmanian devils." A few hundred clones of Taz, the Looney Tune. How the hell do you pronounce that? o_O
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ilPapa on Thursday December 17 2015, @03:12AM
A big part of that is the pitch of the pronunciation. If you say a word at a higher or lower pitch, the meaning changes. If the pitch rises or falls, it changes the meaning.
I was surprised to learn that there is a much higher percentage of people who speak Chinese who have perfect pitch than that of English or other European language speakers. Chinese is a tonal language, which means there is meaning in the tone of the word.
I have relative pitch, which means I can identify two tones' relationship to one another. If you play a C and a G on a piano, I can tell you that they're a perfect fifth apart, and so on. It's a handy thing to have for musicians, unlike perfect pitch, which can actually cause difficulty. But I've studied Chinese martial arts for years with native Chinese speakers, and even when I pronounce a Chinese word perfectly, I'm still likely to provoke the "What are you trying to say?" response.
Also, there are just certain sounds in certain languages that English speakers really have a hard time recognizing. My wife is Serbian, and they have like five ways to say what sounds to me like "ch" (depending on the diacritical mark above the "c"). She tells me that the inability to recognize those differences is often considered a sign of stupidity among Serbian speakers. But she would tell me that because she thinks I'm little bit stupid (which, compared to her, I am).
Here's a link about Asian-language speakers and perfect pitch:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041114235846.htm [sciencedaily.com]
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday December 17 2015, @04:39AM
I was surprised to learn that there is a much higher percentage of people who speak Chinese who have perfect pitch than that of English or other European language speakers. Chinese is a tonal language, which means there is meaning in the tone of the word.
No great surprise. Greek used to be a tonal language. Homer does not really make sense without it. But modern Greek has lost vowels, and gotten more consonantal. Simplification, or digital precision in the fricative sense? And should we not even get started on the Altaic languages? Or the Finno-Algraic? and the Mayar-Hungarian? The Phoenicians are responsible for the Phonetic alphabet, which is why it is called "Phonetic". The Egyptians used ideographs, mostly. And look were that got them. There is a large advantage to having a written form of spoken language, instead of the esoteric symbol system. Consider how now many peoples cannot read a sign unless they first take a picture of it with their smartphone. You know, those squarish things with the pixelation? Look like a modern version of Chinese. But, it is still, I must say, all greek to me.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 17 2015, @05:07AM
The Egyptians used hieratic, a cursive form of hieroglyphs, in their day-to-day. Their civilization lasted about 2700 years, pre-Roman era, so you could argue that their symbol system served them well enough. Chinese, too, have their cursive, hand-written form of characters that people write in. And they're 5,000 years old and still going strong, putting satellites in space and making scientific discoveries.
Not trying to be argumentative, only to say that there might not necessarily be a competitive disadvantage for ideographic writing systems vis-a-vis alphabets.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday December 17 2015, @05:53AM
Well, yes, of course. Part of what I was suggesting is that the preference for phonetic writing systems may be coming to an end. Of course, for us, this means replacement by machine readable language, and only machine readable. The advantage in phonetic systems is two-fold, one side is that any member who has acquired language in the normal way can become literate based on the spoken language. Becoming literate in ideographic systems can take a bit more time and investment. Of course, that may itself be an advantage! Second, and the reason for the Phoenicians developing a phonetic writing system in the first place, is something like the IPA, International Phonetic Alphabet, used by linguists to transcribe any spoken speech in any language, and so very useful for a foreigner trying to find a bathroom. Or a trader trying to read "The Art of the Deal".
The "Greek to me" comment hit home, however, because at one point in the ancient world, all educated people could speak, read and write in Greek. It was, to use the Ugly Roman phrase, a Lingua Franca. But at some point Europe lost contact, what with Barbarian incursions and the Republicans in the Roman Senate voting for tax relief over infrastructure, with the rest of the world. And my language became lost. Except in Ireland, but that is another story. We may be in a similar situation as far as human readable language is concerned. But that sounds like sci-fiction. On the other hand, consider how many Chinese cannot now read classical texts, because of the simplification of the characters. And consider how many young westerners can no longer read the letters of their near ancestors, since they are no longer taught to write, or read! cursive!
It always struck me, about computer languages: they call it "code", what are they hiding?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 17 2015, @04:29PM
The Chinese Communist Party has a lot to answer for. A lot. But character simplification has worked to boost literacy levels. Can the average Chinese peasant read the original court documents in the Tang Dynasty? No, but they can read the newspaper, and that's a lot more than the peasants during the Tang Dynasty could have said. Likewise opium addiction and foot-binding have been stamped out by the CCP. Those are both very good things. The first was of course encouraged by the British to suck all the silver out of China, the second was an awful misogynist practice that had become "tradition." I once saw an elderly, foot-bound woman trying to climb the path on Taishan, the holiest mountain in Daoism, and it broke my heart.
Jiantizi (simplified characters) give hundreds of millions of Chinese access to knowledge that would have remained shut off to them. It's a good thing.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @04:35PM
It always struck me, about computer languages: they call it "code", what are they hiding?
As a programmer, the answer is simple: Bugs. They're hiding the bugs.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @11:00AM
> The Phoenicians are responsible for the Phonetic alphabet, which is why it is called "Phonetic".
“Phonetic” means “related to phones” with “phone” meaning “sound.”
“Microphone” doesn’t mean “little Phoenician.”
Sprouting language names may let you appear knowledgeable, sprouting that kind of nonsense does not.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 17 2015, @05:21PM
The Egyptians used ideographs, mostly. And look where that got them.
A successful civilization that lasted thousands of years?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by lrmo on Thursday December 17 2015, @07:09PM
Don't forget that Serbo-Croatian is slightly tonal as well =). So the word "grad" can mean town or hail depending on pitched used.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbo-Croatian#Pitch_accent [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Tuesday December 22 2015, @02:35AM
You're right, but to my ear it's a very tiny difference. The "grad" as in "Beograd" seems to have a slight downward pitch and the "grad" as in "hail" has a flat or very slight upward pitch. I would never have noticed at all if you hadn't pointed it out.
The big difference, I guess, is that Serbian is an extremely phonetic language, unlike English, where words like "through" and "cough" give Serbians fits.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 17 2015, @04:55AM
There's generally only one way to pronounce a given Chinese character (there are a few exceptions), so one you know the pronunciation of one character, you know how to read it in all contexts. It also gives you hints for pronunciation when it's in other contexts as a radical (that is, part of the whole sign).
"Horse" is a good example. 马, or mǎ, has the falling-rising tone.
"Mother" is 妈, or mā, the even tone. Note that the right half of that character is the radical for horse, so you can guess the character for mother is going to be some tone of "ma." The left-hand radical is that for "woman," so you can guess the character has something to do with women.
Further, "scold" is 骂, or mà, the falling tone. The bottom half of that character is the radical for horse again, the top half is two radicals for "mouth," side by side.
吗, or ma, empty tone, is the syllable you put on the end of a sentence to make it a question. Again, the horse radical is in there to give you a hint about pronunciation.
Add that all up and you have the famous Chinese tongue-twister, 妈骂马吗?, or mā mà mǎ ma?
You don't need special hearing to detect the difference. You pick it up eventually, and context helps a lot. I also did once hear an explanation of tones that did make sense for an English speaker. Consider the different tones you'd use in saying the following "no's":
A: "Do you want to come with us, yes or no?"
B: "Mmm, no..."
A: "C'mon, you have to come."
B: "No! I have work to do."
A: "No? Well fine, stay here and be a stick in the mud, then."
In the English it's all shades of meaning, extra connotations beyond the literal meaning of "no." In Chinese it's like that, minus the connection of the literal meaning. It's just different meanings.
So you get used to it. If you stay long enough, it becomes second nature. I had a friend who stayed in China several years longer than I whom I spoke to when she had just returned. She tried to speak English tonally and we laughed ourselves silly over it.
Washington DC delenda est.