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I don't speak Chinese or Japanese, but people that do told me that there are more than five ways to pronounce "yi", they all mean different things, but they're
by zavulon 16y ago
I don't speak Chinese or Japanese, but people that do told me that there are more than five ways to pronounce "yi", they all mean different things, but they're all transliterated to English in the same way.
However, that's not what I meant. I meant to say as far as ease of transcribing spoken word onto paper, alphabet system is fundamentally easier, because you only have to remember 25-45 (approximately) number of characters. While in hieroglyphics, the number is much much larger.
- w1ntermute 16y agoI don't speak Chinese or Japanese, but people that do told me that there are more than five ways to pronounce "yi", they all mean different things, but they're all transliterated to English in the same way. That's because Chinese is tonal. There are 5 different tones in Standard Mandarin. When transliterating Chinese to the English alphabet, there is no way to write the tone, so you introduce ambiguity that wasn't officially present.