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About LinkBacksThey USE it, it means it can be used.Do you have any clue to talk about the theme? Chinese themselves have problems with their language:
They USE it, it means it can be used.Do you have any clue to talk about the theme? Chinese themselves have problems with their language:
Oh for Pete's sake. Marcus, as crazy as English spelling is, it is MUCH more phonetic than Chinese.Originally Posted by Marcus
Of course, you can say that about many other languages, too (that their writing system is much more phonetic than Chinese) because the Chinese writing system is incredibly NON-phonetic.
I'm not an expert on Chinese, but as I understand it, a typical Chinese character does contain a "phonetic element," but the phonetic element only gives you very vague information, such as: "this word begins with a sibilant consonant sound" (s, sh, z, zh, etc.). But it doesn't tell you WHICH sibilant consonant (s, or sh, or zh...), nor does it tell you which vowel follows the consonant, nor does it tell you the tone-value of the vowel. To understand what I mean, just imagine that Russian used the glyph $ to represent ALL of the following syllables: са, ся, се, сё, со, си, сы, су, сю, за, зя, зе, зё, зо... ...жа, же, жо... ...ша, ше ... щи, щу! Thus, Шла Саша по шоссе и сосала сушку would be written as $ла $$ по $$ и $$ла $$ку.
There are certain advantages to this extremely non-phonetic written language -- a Mandarin speaker and a Cantonese speaker can both read the same written character, even though they will pronounce the spoken word so differently that they can't understand each other.
But if you're a native speaker of English, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, etc., and you're trying to learn Mandarin as a spoken AND written language, it's a significant disadvantage that written Chinese offers very few clues about the spoken pronunciation.
There are people who do queer things, why should do others?
In Asia now English is broadly adopted. In Singapore, Philippine it's becoming a native language.
They use it -- because they learn to speak it from the cradle, and they learn to write it from kindergarten.
However, this does not guarantee that Chinese would be widely popular as a global SECOND language learned by non-Chinese on every continent, starting as teenagers, or in college.
The symbol "7" or"$" does not give you any clue to pronunciation, does it bother you?
Most people learn a foreign language as a written one. It won't be so difficult if caracters were everywhere. Then again, why don't languages with simpler spelling gain any advantage over English? So, one can learn a caracter and a pronunciation written in pinyin. When we learnt English we learnt the spelling and the transcription of every word. I can say that instead Mandarin has almost no inflection.
Finally, no one said that foreigners will know Chinese well, they will do it in the same degree as they do English today.
About English pronunciation, do you any language which is not Germanic but sounds similar to English?
No, but if I had to memorize 3,000+ different symbols in order to be sufficiently literate to read a daily newspaper, it might bother me a bit! Remember, Marcus, I'm certainly not saying that English spelling is logical or easy; I'm just saying that in general, alphabetic writing systems are easier to learn than a character-based system like Chinese or Japanese, because alphabets reduce the total number of different symbols that one must memorize.
Again, here you make some good points. In one of my comments above, I suggested the possibility that a Chinese/English "creole" might develop in the future as a successful international language. If this were to happen, one can speculate that such a creole would have the following features:
- A core vocabulary (words like sun, moon, water, bread, man, woman, walk, make, sleep, one, two, three...) based mainly on Chinese.
- But also a huge number of loanwords derived from "international English" -- that is, words from the English vocabulary that have already been borrowed into many other languages, for example, terms like computer, to televise, gay porn, genetics, cheeseburger -- in many cases replacing the standard Chinese words. (From Google, I find that the Chinese word for "computer" is diàn nǎo, but I would predict that if Chinese began to develop into a global lingua franca, foreigners learning Chinese would prefer to use a word that sounds more or less like "computer", because that's what they're accustomed to in their own languages.)
- Practically no inflection, even of English loanwords.
- Pinyin romanization as the primary writing system, with the use of Chinese characters being optional.
Yeah, that could work. Wouldn't exactly be Chinese, but it would be MOSTLY Chinese...
Говорит Бегемот: "Dear citizens of MR -- please correct my Russian mistakes!"
Actually, when we read, we try to recognize a word as an image like a character. So, the process of memorizing characters can be compared to memorizing words. There are also electronic dictionaries where you can always find the meaning of a character and there are programs which convert pinyin into characters.
The reason it will never happen is not because the Spanish-speaking won't come here or aren't already here. The reason it won't happen is the same reason that we don't currently speak Dutch or Irish. Part of a group's desire to maintain their original language IN PRIMACY when establishing roots in a second country is a feeling of division WITH that country. When that subsides, as it did for Dutch, Germans, French, Italians, Irish, Scottish, and then countless others who came here.. at least, MY bet is that English will be spoken by most of them, and will remain in primacy in this country.
Indian native languages never became the primary language of England. French never became the primary language of Canada. Yiddish didn't become the primary language of Germany, though in that last bit I think I've chosen a poor example.. Anyway, it's just my opinion, and my wager also.
luck/life/kidkboom
Грязные башмаки располагают к осмотрительности в выборе дороги. /*/ Muddy boots choose their roads with wisdom. ;
I think maybe English is so strong for a lingua franca because of it's analytic/isolating character. Isolating language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Less inflection, easier to make comprehensible phrases regardless of inflection mistakes, the perfect source for pidgin. (Not suggesting English is pidgin.) I think this may have arisen from the origins of English itself, as a language between various linguistic groups in Britain mediating between Germanic, Romance, and Gaelic(?) languages. Just a guess.
Japanese language have an alphabet, actually two alphabets
They do use some Chinese characters but their language is more modern and flexible
And more pleasant to ears from my point of view
Esperanto is much simpler than English. But it hasn't replaced English. The same will be with Chinese: it will simply replace English.
Unlikely
English is spoken in many countries but Mandarin is only in few
"only" in China. It doesn't matter.Unlikely
English is spoken in many countries but Mandarin is only in few
That's incorrect
It's officially spoken in Singapore and Taiwan
And unofficially in other places
Я знаю. Просто Китай такая огромная страна, что говорить про него "только" неправильно.That's incorrect
It's officially spoken in Singapore and Taiwan
And unofficially in other places
I'm pretty sure this won't happen.
In fact, I'm so sure, how about this: if it DOES happen, I'll buy you a Coke.
Look: As I understand it, there was a long time when old Russia was entranced by France, and were taking steps to become more European under Peter the Great.. Well, nobles even learned a lot of French, right? Even the books say they were embarassed to speak Russian and preferred to speak French to save "face" during that time. Well, to ask all of Russia to BECOME French-speaking was simply too much for a country of people, many of whom LIKED their native language. It's the same with English and us in the West. Anything can happen, but we'll keep our native language, because we like it. And no amount of foreign influx is going to change THAT - though we happily let a lot of things change as people come here.
I'm pretty confident as a student of history that I can stand in the shadow of the distant future and say that we in the US will continue speaking English as a native tongue.
luck/life/kidkboom
Грязные башмаки располагают к осмотрительности в выборе дороги. /*/ Muddy boots choose their roads with wisdom. ;
No, of course English will be spoken where it is spoken, but it won't the international language number one, as it is now. This place will be taken by Chinese.
only in few
означает только в нескольких (странах)
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