7 ms·

No. The Chinese realize their language is a pain in the butt to learn and that the writing system is terrible in comparison to any alphabet system. Consequently

by boyter 16y ago

No. The Chinese realize their language is a pain in the butt to learn and that the writing system is terrible in comparison to any alphabet system. Consequently they are all learning English so they can work with foreign companies. You need to keep in mind, China has few natural resources so they are reliant on everyone else. Because of this they will be forced to learn English. Chinese will still be the main language of China, but it won't become the world language the way English has.

DanielN 16y ago
More to the point, mandarine will not become the language of international business for the same reason French WAS the language of international business up to the early 1900s; the french were involved with business everywhere even though the british and germans had most of the consumer population. Furthermore, English education is already an integrated part of the chinese (and asian) education systems.
- fgf 16y ago
  I didn't know this, do you have a source? (because I want to read more about it not because I doubt it)
yuan 16y ago
No. The Chinese realize their language is a pain in the butt to learn and that the writing system is terrible in comparison to any alphabet system. As a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese, I think you are full of shit. No native Chinese speaker I know thinks English is easier to learn than Chinese. And I prefer the Chinese writing system myself if I have a choice. It's true that many people are learning English, because today Chinese are producing and selling. When the day comes when Chinese become buyers and the rest of the world are trying to get sales from Chinese, they will start learning Chinese.
- varjag 16y ago
  I seem to remember that the common Chinese idiom for a tough to learn language is 跟天书一样. "Hard as the heavenly script". If you really refer to your own language as yardstick for complexity, his post has a point.
  - eru 16y ago
    The German idiom translates to "Polish backwards".
  - yuan 16y ago
    > I seem to remember that the common Chinese idiom for a tough to learn language is 跟天书一样. "Hard as the heavenly script". If you really refer to your own language as yardstick for complexity, his post has a point. What is the point? I use my own language as a reference point because it's the language I know best. And I hope others would do the same: comment on things you know best and stop spreading lies, myths, pointless memes about things you know little. When we say "天书", we usually refer to "无字天书" (the divine book without letter); i.e., a blank book for those of us without magical power. Again, I don't see relevancy here. We don't need magical power to learn Chinese.
    - varjag 16y ago
      Everyone knows their native language best. If you lay apart the expletives, the poster said that Chinese realize their language is hard to pick up for foreigners. So their strategy seems to be learning English instead of holding their breath for rest of the world learning Mandarin. Do you disagree with this assessment? If you do, where exactly? Do you suggest that all languages and writing systems are equally easy to learn as a second language? If not, do you consider Mandarin to be easier or as easy to learn as English? I, for one, find Mandarin damn hard to learn (doing it my first year), and the script is indeed the toughest part. While I find it visually elegant, it is fairly irregular, prompting for massive amount of drill and memorization in learning. (I knew two other foreign languages and two natively before approaching Mandarin, so I have some perspective here). Many people seem to share such experience, i.e. people reliably find Chinese hard. Oh, and I found where from that reference to the heavenly script stuck in my head: http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
- gizmomagico 16y ago
  You lack some perspective and tact, you silly goose. It's not very surprising you and your friends think your native language is easier and that you prefer your own writing system. Way to navel-gaze, hello? As someone whose native language is neither, having studied both, I'd say English is much easier. The tones in Chinese really fuck with someone whose native language isn't tonal (and most aren't), and wouldn't you rather become literate by learning 26-30 symbols than by learning thousands of symbols? Makes sense, doesn't it? Words in Chinese don't get conjugated much (if at all), but you've got a relatively strict word order, whereas in English, you've got particles and a more relaxed word order. Not having tones and no huge obstacle to becoming literate makes English a hell of a lot easier to learn.
  - vorg 16y ago
    > The tones in Chinese really fuck with someone whose native language isn't tonal (and most aren't), I speak Chinese by learning the sounds of words, but not the tones, in my active learning. If I speak quickly, in complete contextual sentences, using two-syllable words (instead of the one-syllable ones), then people generally understand me. I learn the tones passively afterwards. > and wouldn't you rather become literate by learning 26-30 symbols than by learning thousands of symbols? Most Chinese symbols are made up of components, of which there's about 400 to 600, depending on how you count them. E.g. the one character 解 is made up of four components 勹用刀牛. > but you've got a relatively strict word order, Introductory lessons in Chinese only present the standard word order, but, like in English, you can arrange the content words of a sentence in many different orders depending on what you want to make thematic or focus on.
  - eru 16y ago
    Could you please be more polite? Thanks! (And your native language was probably closer related to English than to Chinese. Was it?)
    - gizmomagico 16y ago
      What exactly did I say that warranted a reprimanding like that?
- Retric 16y ago
  From the western perspective a prosperous China is a good thing. Unfortunately, China is speeding towards one of the largest economic walls the world has ever seen. Mix a rapidly aging population, high levels of corruption, high savings rates, and an unstable government and you have a recipe for disaster. Growing the Chinese GDP to 3 or 4 times its current size should still be easy, but as per person income starts to approach Japan it’s going to be really rough sailing.
othello 16y ago
the writing system is terrible in comparison to any alphabet system This is a common misconception (which I shared until I studied Japanese). Writing a sentence may be more of a hassle than with an alphabet based system - and even that would remain to be seen - but reading it is much more efficient due to the more condensed form factor: a page of kanji would take much more space written in romaji. The fact that Japan and China stuck to an ideogram-based writing system did not stem from a lack of alternative. Japanese actually has had not only one but two syllabic alphabets for more than a millenia (1). Yet kanji were kept, notably because of the numerous homophones in the Japanese language. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#History
- nandemo 16y ago
  I don't think it's a misconception at all. I used to enjoy learning kanji but objectively speaking it's a much worse system than alphabets. The merits -- I can think of shorter text and quicker reading -- hardly outweigh the defects: the sheer number of characters, all the years it takes for native speakers to memorize them, the mess that are loan words and neologisms (unless you use kana), etc. Now it's too late to change but Japan could have done it, just as Korea did. About homophones: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198145 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198145
  - donw 16y ago
    Well, Japan does have katakana, which has moved a bit towards being more alphabet-like via 'little characters'. For example, there's no 'fo' sound in Japanese (as in 'fork'), so you can't represent it using either kanji or one of the two syllabaries (hiragana or katakana). The closest you can come is 'フオク', which would be pronounced 'fuoku'. But, you can modify the vowel in katakana with a 'little letter', giving you the common way to say 'fork': フォーク, which sounds very similar to the English pronunciation. It's not a true alphabet, because you still can't whip together unpronounceable crap like we can do in English, but it's better than having no way to represent out-of-language sounds.
- 16y ago
alinajaf 16y ago
> No. The Chinese realize their language is a pain in the butt to learn and that the writing system is terrible in comparison to any alphabet system... I used to think this, but you can learn to recognize thousands in less than a year with the right methods, and learning to read after that is comparable in difficulty to learning any new vocab in a European language.

by boyter 16y ago

DanielN 16y ago

More to the point, mandarine will not become the language of international business for the same reason French WAS the language of international business up to the early 1900s; the french were involved with business everywhere even though the british and germans had most of the consumer population. Furthermore, English education is already an integrated part of the chinese (and asian) education systems.

fgf 16y ago
I didn't know this, do you have a source? (because I want to read more about it not because I doubt it)

yuan 16y ago

No. The Chinese realize their language is a pain in the butt to learn and that the writing system is terrible in comparison to any alphabet system. As a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese, I think you are full of shit. No native Chinese speaker I know thinks English is easier to learn than Chinese. And I prefer the Chinese writing system myself if I have a choice. It's true that many people are learning English, because today Chinese are producing and selling. When the day comes when Chinese become buyers and the rest of the world are trying to get sales from Chinese, they will start learning Chinese.

varjag 16y ago
I seem to remember that the common Chinese idiom for a tough to learn language is 跟天书一样. "Hard as the heavenly script". If you really refer to your own language as yardstick for complexity, his post has a point.
- eru 16y ago
  The German idiom translates to "Polish backwards".
- yuan 16y ago
  > I seem to remember that the common Chinese idiom for a tough to learn language is 跟天书一样. "Hard as the heavenly script". If you really refer to your own language as yardstick for complexity, his post has a point. What is the point? I use my own language as a reference point because it's the language I know best. And I hope others would do the same: comment on things you know best and stop spreading lies, myths, pointless memes about things you know little. When we say "天书", we usually refer to "无字天书" (the divine book without letter); i.e., a blank book for those of us without magical power. Again, I don't see relevancy here. We don't need magical power to learn Chinese.
  - varjag 16y ago
    Everyone knows their native language best. If you lay apart the expletives, the poster said that Chinese realize their language is hard to pick up for foreigners. So their strategy seems to be learning English instead of holding their breath for rest of the world learning Mandarin. Do you disagree with this assessment? If you do, where exactly? Do you suggest that all languages and writing systems are equally easy to learn as a second language? If not, do you consider Mandarin to be easier or as easy to learn as English? I, for one, find Mandarin damn hard to learn (doing it my first year), and the script is indeed the toughest part. While I find it visually elegant, it is fairly irregular, prompting for massive amount of drill and memorization in learning. (I knew two other foreign languages and two natively before approaching Mandarin, so I have some perspective here). Many people seem to share such experience, i.e. people reliably find Chinese hard. Oh, and I found where from that reference to the heavenly script stuck in my head: http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
gizmomagico 16y ago
You lack some perspective and tact, you silly goose. It's not very surprising you and your friends think your native language is easier and that you prefer your own writing system. Way to navel-gaze, hello? As someone whose native language is neither, having studied both, I'd say English is much easier. The tones in Chinese really fuck with someone whose native language isn't tonal (and most aren't), and wouldn't you rather become literate by learning 26-30 symbols than by learning thousands of symbols? Makes sense, doesn't it? Words in Chinese don't get conjugated much (if at all), but you've got a relatively strict word order, whereas in English, you've got particles and a more relaxed word order. Not having tones and no huge obstacle to becoming literate makes English a hell of a lot easier to learn.
- vorg 16y ago
  > The tones in Chinese really fuck with someone whose native language isn't tonal (and most aren't), I speak Chinese by learning the sounds of words, but not the tones, in my active learning. If I speak quickly, in complete contextual sentences, using two-syllable words (instead of the one-syllable ones), then people generally understand me. I learn the tones passively afterwards. > and wouldn't you rather become literate by learning 26-30 symbols than by learning thousands of symbols? Most Chinese symbols are made up of components, of which there's about 400 to 600, depending on how you count them. E.g. the one character 解 is made up of four components 勹用刀牛. > but you've got a relatively strict word order, Introductory lessons in Chinese only present the standard word order, but, like in English, you can arrange the content words of a sentence in many different orders depending on what you want to make thematic or focus on.
- eru 16y ago
  Could you please be more polite? Thanks! (And your native language was probably closer related to English than to Chinese. Was it?)
  - gizmomagico 16y ago
    What exactly did I say that warranted a reprimanding like that?
Retric 16y ago
From the western perspective a prosperous China is a good thing. Unfortunately, China is speeding towards one of the largest economic walls the world has ever seen. Mix a rapidly aging population, high levels of corruption, high savings rates, and an unstable government and you have a recipe for disaster. Growing the Chinese GDP to 3 or 4 times its current size should still be easy, but as per person income starts to approach Japan it’s going to be really rough sailing.

othello 16y ago

the writing system is terrible in comparison to any alphabet system This is a common misconception (which I shared until I studied Japanese). Writing a sentence may be more of a hassle than with an alphabet based system - and even that would remain to be seen - but reading it is much more efficient due to the more condensed form factor: a page of kanji would take much more space written in romaji. The fact that Japan and China stuck to an ideogram-based writing system did not stem from a lack of alternative. Japanese actually has had not only one but two syllabic alphabets for more than a millenia (1). Yet kanji were kept, notably because of the numerous homophones in the Japanese language. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#History

nandemo 16y ago
I don't think it's a misconception at all. I used to enjoy learning kanji but objectively speaking it's a much worse system than alphabets. The merits -- I can think of shorter text and quicker reading -- hardly outweigh the defects: the sheer number of characters, all the years it takes for native speakers to memorize them, the mess that are loan words and neologisms (unless you use kana), etc. Now it's too late to change but Japan could have done it, just as Korea did. About homophones: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198145 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198145
- donw 16y ago
  Well, Japan does have katakana, which has moved a bit towards being more alphabet-like via 'little characters'. For example, there's no 'fo' sound in Japanese (as in 'fork'), so you can't represent it using either kanji or one of the two syllabaries (hiragana or katakana). The closest you can come is 'フオク', which would be pronounced 'fuoku'. But, you can modify the vowel in katakana with a 'little letter', giving you the common way to say 'fork': フォーク, which sounds very similar to the English pronunciation. It's not a true alphabet, because you still can't whip together unpronounceable crap like we can do in English, but it's better than having no way to represent out-of-language sounds.
16y ago

alinajaf 16y ago

> No. The Chinese realize their language is a pain in the butt to learn and that the writing system is terrible in comparison to any alphabet system... I used to think this, but you can learn to recognize thousands in less than a year with the right methods, and learning to read after that is comparable in difficulty to learning any new vocab in a European language.