Characters are objectively harder, even for Chinese

[ala]

...Chinese characters no more "transcend sound" than alphabetic systems.

hehe. I think it was the wording in the context. I was referring to the Dungan script where one is able to make "some sense" with the Chinese character script version of what that Dungan is saying than with the Romanization, assuming one is knowledgable of characters. But like I said, it comes at a price of marginalizing the non-standard form of Chinese, as you inevitably aren't reading Dungan, but Mandarin pidgin.

[pazu]

Everything in Mandarin that can be spoken and understood, can be written in Pinyin and understood. That's a basic fact of linguistics.

It's only in your Beginner's Chinese textbook.

[39degN]

I don't understand. Do you think that Mandarin speakers "compromise" when they have conversations with each other?

Everything in Mandarin that can be spoken and understood, can be written in Pinyin and understood. That's a basic fact of linguistics.

well, if this tongue twister writen in pin yin, can you figure it out?

to be frank, as native speaker, i cant.

《施氏食狮史》

石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。氏时时适市视狮，十时，适十狮 适市，是时，适施氏适市，施氏视是十狮，拭矢石，使是十狮逝世。氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。石室拭，氏始试食是十狮。食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。试释是事。

——赵元任

[dmoser]

Everything in Mandarin that can be spoken and understood, can be written in Pinyin and understood. That's a basic fact of linguistics.

It's only in your beginning Chinese textbook.

No, this is an incredibly important point, and those who who don't see it are in heavy denial. I know an American college professor who writes letters to his Chinese wife in pinyin (without tones indicated), and never has any misunderstanding. At certain times in the last few years I have had to use a computer with no Chinese character-processing capability, and at such times I was able to communicate by email with Chinese friends, with both of us simply writing in pinyin. It's true that reading pinyin was probably slower for both of us; me, because there are still many lexical items I'm not familiar with; slower for the Chinese, simply because they are not used to sounding out the words. But once they do sound it out, they have no trouble understanding it at all. After all, if I simply spoke the message rather than wrote it, they would have no problem.

But we can go further and say that virtually everything that is written nowadays can easily be understood when read out loud. And if this is true, then it follows logically that these books could be written in pinyin with no loss of meaning.

Just try the obvious experiment. Take any modern Chinese novel or non-fiction book, find another native Chinese, and start reading the book outloud. If he/she can understand 99.9% of it, then this "basic fact of linguistics" is true, and is a valid jumping-off point for the argument for pinyin. If, however, he/she keeps saying "What?", then we really need to reevaluate the extent to which the characters have influenced the comprehensibility of the written language when read outloud. I've done this experiment a few times, and I was surprised how well the Chinese speakers did. Specifically, I read some excerpts from "Wei Cheng" to Chinese, and met with virtually 100% comprehension.

We all know that the characters afford a kind of terseness in the writing language that can border on incomprehensibility when read aloud, but it is surprising how seldom this actually happens. You have to go back to wenyan-baihua hybrid writing such as some Lu Xun, or go back to the standard wenyan in order to find true incomprehensibility in the text when read out loud.

[dmoser]

well, if this tongue twister writen in pin yin, can you figure it out?

to be frank, as native speaker, i cant.

Ahem. Not a good example. It's in wenyan, classical Chinese. And we're all in agreement that classical Chinese cannot be understood when read out loud. (I could never understand it, even written on the page.)This is a wonderful example from the great linguist Zhao Yuanren (who at some point advocated getting rid of the characters, by the way). If it were written in modern Mandarin, I think people could do a pretty good job of understanding it when read aloud.

[39degN]

ok, this one is in modern chinese, pls help me to figure out.

hei1 hua4 fei2 hui1 hua4 fei2 hui1 hui4 hui1 fa1 fa1 hui1 hei1 hui4 wei2 hei1 hui1 hua1 hui4 hui2 fei1

above is the first line of this:

黑化黑灰化肥灰会挥发发灰黑讳为黑灰花会回飞

灰化灰黑化肥会会挥发发黑灰为讳飞花回化为灰

my point is, there are certainly some unique cultrure things sticking on characters, if you threw off the characters, you would unavoidably throw them off too, is the price really worth?

[Quest]

39degN 仲论紧？边有得论架，你native speaker自己话唔难，佢係都要话你自己都觉得难。你话拼音唔好用，字好用，佢係都要话拼音好用过字。你话平时拼音会阻碍文学阅读，对我哋native speaker嚟讲係不便。佢哋根本唔会去读嗰啲书，所以佢哋觉得冇不便。真係好似我哋自己睇唔出啲好与坏处咁。佢哋认为佢哋清楚过我哋，简直就係鸡同鸭讲，算把啦。

[39degN]

No, this is an incredibly important point, and those who who don't see it are in heavy denial. I know an American college professor who writes letters to his Chinese wife in pinyin (without tones indicated), and never has any misunderstanding. At certain times in the last few years I have had to use a computer with no Chinese character-processing capability, and at such times I was able to communicate by email with Chinese friends, with both of us simply writing in pinyin. It's true that reading pinyin was probably slower for both of us; me, because there are still many lexical items I'm not familiar with; slower for the Chinese, simply because they are not used to sounding out the words. But once they do sound it out, they have no trouble understanding it at all. After all, if I simply spoke the message rather than wrote it, they would have no problem.

and so what? even though all characters could be transfered to pin yin, why we have to do this? what's the "real" advantage and benefits writing in pin yin?

[ala]

and so what? even though all characters could be transfered to pin yin, why we have to do this? what's the "real" advantage and benefits writing in pin yin?

I bet if a genuine digraphia environment can be nurtured, you will find out real soon the real advantage of using an alphabetized system. Really, if characters are inherently superior, there is little to fear of digraphia, right?

[Quest]

it has little to fear of digraphia, right?

that hidden agenda of yours

[Ian_Lee]

According to Dmoser, pinyin is like the metric system and character is like the old British system still used in US.

Dmoser felt that he would have better school days if he only need to remember 1 km = 1000 m rather than 1 mile = 5,280 ft.

I sympathize with his plight in the childhood. But actually I needed to remember 3 systems in my school years -- Chinese, British and metric.

I had to know 1 catty equals to 16 taels. And for the British system, I had to memorize 1 pound = 20 shillings & 1 shilling = 12 pence.

But all these complicated systems actually made my braincell function more effectively.

Well, the world is not perfect. If every system has to be modified like the metric system. then 1 hour should equal to 100 minutes, 1 day should equal to 10 hours, and 1 year should equal to 1,000 days.

I guess Dmoser has a hard time to remember that 1 hour is equal to 3,600 seconds too if he has problem in remembering 1 mile equals 5,280 feet.

[39degN]

喺呀，真个係鸡同鸭讲，早斗吧我哋！

[ala]

that hidden agenda of yours

It's not a hidden one, nor is it revolutionary. It is the liberal conservative stance that society is better off when it is given a choice.

[Ian_Lee]

Now our foreign posters seem even more arrogant than our posters from Beijing.

Their proposal of replacing characters with romanized script like hanyu pinyin is based on the assumption that every Chinese knows hanyu pinyin.

Well, that will certainly bring problem to people in HK and Taiwan.

In HK, I would say most people, especially the adults, hardly know hanyu pinyin at all. Our putonghua is "working Putonghua" which is picked up from daily cultural and personal contacts. In fact, recently the Putongua test in the territory records low passing rate since it tested on hanyu pinyin.

In Taiwan, the students study bopomofo and most do not learn hanyu pinyin.

But after all, our un-hanyu pinyin accent is the kind that those TV anchors in Mainland emulate which propaganda department just sent down a decree to ban.

So now Dmoser and Taibei are asking HKers and Taiwanese to learn from scratch based on what they think is the right approach.

[39degN]

I bet if a genuine digraphia environment can be nurtured, you will find out real soon the real advantage of using an alphabetized system. Really, if characters are inherently superior, there is little to fear of digraphia, right?

roman letters are inherently superior, ok.

meanwhile take hut off to those who productively working on nothing.

c ya!

[pazu]

Dmoser,

It's possible in some situations only, but indeed these days I had read 3 Chinese books, travelog/ novel/ news report, sometimes I just couldn't help but think, oh luckily they were written in Hanzi, otherwise how could I understand it.

By using Pinyin as the written form, you limit yourself for using the existing vocabulary without flexibility.

Here's an excerpt, see if you can guess the meaning:

zai4 jin4 shan1 qian2 de shan1 wa1 zi li3, zhe4 gong1 she4 zui4 bian1

yuan3 de sheng1 chan3 dui4, zhi1 you3 ji1 hu4 ren2 jia1 de yi1 ge4 xiao3

cun1 zi, ta1 jian4 dao4 ge4 dai4 tong2 bian1 yan3 jing4 de lao3 zhe3

zuo4 zai4 jia1 men2 kou3 tai4 yang2 xia4, liang3 shou3 peng3 yi1 ben3 chong2

zhu4 le de xian4 zhuang1 shu1, xi4 mi1 qi3 yan3, shou3 bei4 shen1 de

lao3 chang2, shu1 li2 de hen3 yuan3.

(for my reference, it's from p.320)

Another excerpt:

ta1 wei2 you3 su4 zhu1 zhi3 bi3 jie4 bi3 tong2 zi4 ji3 dui4 hua4 lai2 pai2

yi2 zhe4 fen1 gu1 du2。dong4 bi3 qian2 ye3 yi3 kao3 luu4 zhou1 quan2, ke3

yi3 ba3 bo2 bo2 de xin4 zhi3 juan3 qi3 sai1 jin4 men2 hou4 sao3 zhou3 de

zhu2 ba3 shou3 li3, ba3 zhu2 jie2 yong4 jie2 qian1 zi da3 tong1 le,

gao3 zi ji1 zan3 duo1 le zai4 zhuang1 jin4 ge4 yan1 xian2 cai4 de? zi

li3, fang4 shang4 shi2 hui1 dian4 di3, yong4 su4 liao4 za1 zhu4 kou3,

wu1 li3 wa1 ge4 dong4 li3 zai4 di4 xia4, zai4 nuo2 shang4 na3 kou3 da4

shui3 gang1。ta1 bing4 fei1 yao4 xie3 bu4 shen4 me zhu4 zuo4, *cang2 zhi1

ming2 shan1 chuan2 zhu1 hou4 shi4*, ta1 mei2 xiang3 zhe4 me duo1, wu2

fa3 qu4 she4 xiang3 wei4 lai2, ye3 mei2 you3 she1 wang4。

(p341)

Note that these 2 paragraphs are chosen randomly, the one bracketed by ** was written in older Chinese form, others should be perfectly okay as modern Chinese. This novel was written in 1999, by a prestigious Chinese author. And ***cang2 zhi1 ming2 shan1 chuan2 zhu1 hou4 shi4* is the older form of Chinese, but I'm sure it's perfectly okay for a Chinese primary kid to understand in Hanzi. Some have suggested that a change of written form may help people to understand, so it should be written as "ba3 zhe4 ben3 shu1 shou1 cang2 zai4 ming2 shan1 li3 mian4, rang4 ta1 liu2 chuan2 dao4 hou4 shi4", okay, it's still Chinese, but plain dull Chinese. The use of Hanzi condensed written Chinese as I've said, some examples are:

反貪污 (chong tham nhung) -> 反貪

不合法活動 (hoat dong bat hop phat) -> 不法活動

防預貪污 (phong ngua tham nhung) -> 防貪

公共關係 (quan he cong chung) -> 公關

I doubt that if you can understand the latinized version of these terms as easy as using Hanzi. I quoted these examples because I have just learnt them in Vietnamese. Maybe Vietnamese can understand "phong tham" as "phong ngua tham nhung", I don't know, but I just quoted from the "Law Daily", they wrote the longer form instead.

Sometimes I wonder if it's a reason why Audiobooks have never been really popular in China.

[Ian_Lee]

Actually the real advantage of using characters is manifested clearly in the Sinic circle.

The rule of the thumb is the more character used and the more original type is used extensively in that society, the more advance that society is.

Just compare North and South Koreas. Other than all those political factors, one of the reasons why South fares better than the North may be because the North has completely abolished the use of characters.

One of the reasons why Vietnam fares worse than China, Taiwan, HK, Korea and Japan may be also because it abandons characters.

Hmmm........Now I wonder if Chrysler can hire designers like those employed in Toyota who use Kanji in their drawings, probably the former's cars may not have that many defects!

[ala]

zai4 jin4 shan1 qian2 de shan1 wa1 zi li3' date=' zhe4 gong1 she4 zui4 bian1

yuan3 de sheng1 chan3 dui4, zhi1 you3 ji1 hu4 ren2 jia1 de yi1 ge4 xiao3

cun1 zi, ta1 jian4 dao4 ge4 dai4 tong2 bian1 yan3 jing4 de lao3 zhe3

zuo4 zai4 jia1 men2 kou3 tai4 yang2 xia4, liang3 shou3 peng3 yi1 ben3 chong2

zhu4 le de xian4 zhuang1 shu1, xi4 mi1 qi3 yan3, shou3 bei4 shen1 de

lao3 chang2, shu1 li2 de hen3 yuan3.

(for my reference, it's from p.320)

Another excerpt:

ta1 wei2 you3 su4 zhu1 zhi3 bi3 jie4 bi3 tong2 zi4 ji3 dui4 hua4 lai2 pai2

yi2 zhe4 fen1 gu1 du2。dong4 bi3 qian2 ye3 yi3 kao3 luu4 zhou1 quan2, ke3

yi3 ba3 bo2 bo2 de xin4 zhi3 juan3 qi3 sai1 jin4 men2 hou4 sao3 zhou3 de

zhu2 ba3 shou3 li3, ba3 zhu2 jie2 yong4 jie2 qian1 zi da3 tong1 le,

gao3 zi ji1 zan3 duo1 le zai4 zhuang1 jin4 ge4 yan1 xian2 cai4 de? zi

li3, fang4 shang4 shi2 hui1 dian4 di3, yong4 su4 liao4 za1 zhu4 kou3,

wu1 li3 wa1 ge4 dong4 li3 zai4 di4 xia4, zai4 nuo2 shang4 na3 kou3 da4

shui3 gang1。ta1 bing4 fei1 yao4 xie3 bu4 shen4 me zhu4 zuo4, *cang2 zhi1

ming2 shan1 chuan2 zhu1 hou4 shi4*, ta1 mei2 xiang3 zhe4 me duo1, wu2

fa3 qu4 she4 xiang3 wei4 lai2, ye3 mei2 you3 she1 wang4。

[/quote']

Please review 《漢語拼音正詞法基本規則》, before posting pinyin and expecting understanding.

[ala]

The rule of the thumb is the more character used and the more original type is used extensively in that society' date=' the more advance that society is.

Just compare North and South Koreas. Other than all those political factors, one of the reasons why South fares better than the North may be because the North has completely abolished the use of characters.

One of the reasons why Vietnam fares worse than China, Taiwan, HK, Korea and Japan may be also because it abandons characters. [/quote']

Funny how you conveniently leave out Thailand, which has a far larger per capita GDP than China.

[Ian_Lee]

Ala:

FYI: Thailand is not in the Sinic Circle. Thailand, like neighboring Cambodia and Myanmar, are subject to both Chinese and Indian cultural and religious influences.