6 ms·

> The best the Chinese can probably hope for is the emergence of some kind of Pidgin that is easier to pronounce for them and contains more Chinese loanwords

> The best the Chinese can probably hope for is the emergence of some kind of Pidgin that is easier to pronounce for them and contains more Chinese loanwords I could really see Mandarin take off if they would adopt a writing system similar to Vietnamese.

PinkMilkshake 9y ago
I don't think that would help. Chinese is very heavy on homophones and the characters allow meaning differentiation. In spoken Chinese you have to rely on context. Written and spoken Chinese seem tightly coupled.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  Context is just as present in writing as it is in speech.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dibujante 9y ago
    No, not really. Chinese characters use different characters / radicals to distinguish homophones in a way that makes writing much easier to understand if you're shakier on the context.
    - thaumasiotes 9y ago
      It is true that Chinese characters contain so much nonphonetic information that writing can be understood even if you've written something that would be total nonsense if spoken aloud. And similarly, that extra information can substitute for a certain amount of context. But it's obviously not necessary, because all writing still has just as much context as speech does. The fact that you need the context less doesn't somehow make it go away.
    - kerkeslager 9y ago
      I know next-to-nothing about Chinese, but it seems to me that if a language can be spoken, it can be represented with a phonetic alphabet. There might be sentences in written Chinese that wouldn't make sense in spoken Chinese, and these wouldn't make sense in the phonetic alphabet either, but if we can agree that spoken Chinese is useful, then the phonetically written Chinese would also be useful. However, if I were Chinese, I might worry that due to simplicity, the phonetically-written Chinese would eclipse the traditionally-written Chinese quickly. Those sentences which only make sense in traditionally-written, not spoken or phonetically-written Chinese, would obviously be a huge cultural loss. Not everything is about making business more efficient.
      - Chaebixi 9y ago
        > I know next-to-nothing about Chinese, but it seems to me that if a language can be spoken, it can be represented with a phonetic alphabet. You might be interested in this: http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm One interesting thing I learned from it the logographic aspects of written Chinese have influenced spoken Chinese by encouraging short, phonetically-ambiguous abbreviations that tend to replace the original phonetically-distinct words. > Those sentences which only make sense in traditionally-written, not spoken or phonetically-written Chinese, would obviously be a huge cultural loss. That's already happened to a degree. The Chinese dropped written Classical Chinese for written Mandarin, which is based on a vernacular. That's akin to the West dropping written Latin in favor of vernacular writing. I understand Classical Chinese needs to be translated to be understood.
globuous 9y ago
Me too, but if they keeps their current one ^^. If my understanding is of chinese writing is correct, then you could put any pronunciation on their characters. So we could have a universal writing system. If french, english and russian all mapped their words to chinese symbols, then we could all communicate through writing while keeping our languages. In practice it's obviously not this easy since we have different grammars, but I think the basic principle holds and we'd all be able to somewhat read each other. Numbers are a great example of that. We all have our own words for numbers, but can all communicate it with its associated symbols (which are different in arabic script for instance, though everyone's agreed on european script). Mathematics is full of those symbols we communicate with regardless of their pronunciation in different languages, e.g. the 'for all' and 'there exist' symbols for instance, but also the equal sign and the integral, set notation etc etc. They're all concept, ideas, and have associated symbols. So why wouldn't we all use chinese 'synbols' for our 'everyday' vocabulary when we write. It's be harder to learn to read 1 language, but so much easier to learn to read all of them. When we communicate in western languages an idea I from person A to person B; then when A translate I into a translation t in a language l that both A and B understand. then B translates back t into I'. It's actually pretty hard to get I' to equal I. Where as with chinese characters, my understanding is their characters are closer to the ideas themselves. Potentially making it easier to communicate between each other across multiple languages.
- megaman22 9y ago
  This has been done before, with Mongolian, and Manchu, and pre-Hangul Korean, and Japanese, and virtually every other language that neighbored on and fell into the cultural orbit of pre-modern China. It never really worked out that well, and almost universally was replaced with alphabets of one variety or another eventually, because it is impossible for people to become fluent without an absurd number of years of study when reading and writing in ideographs; at least comparable to the very short time it takes to train someone in an alphabet.
- jcranmer 9y ago
  That's not how Chinese script works (or translation for that matter). Chinese script is logographic: each character roughly refers to a single morpheme. There is also a degree of phonetic component to the script (to some degree, it's a game of playing "what sounds like fish and has to do with food?") But morphemes are not universal across different languages, and phonetic games can quickly become obtuse: Japanese kanji is basically completely unintelligible to Chinese speakers, despite literally deriving from Chinese. Even within the different Chinese topolects, the actual comprehensibility of the standard writing system without having been specifically taught it is I believe only in the region of trying to understand Spanish knowing only French.
coldtea 9y ago
>I could really see Mandarin take off if they would adopt a writing system similar to Vietnamese. They could also easily introduce a second, easier, writing system, and maintain a low-high kind of language (like many countries do). Eventually the second easier one will tend to dominate, but even until then, it will be easier for foreigners to learn it, and for chinese to learn both.
- tCfD 9y ago
  Japanese takes exactly this sort of 'embrace and extend' approach to building on top of the Chinese character base, with hiragana for native construction, katakana for foreign loanwords, and furigana (more of an orthographical sugar than a separate symbol set) to bridge the systems for the sake of easier learning..
creaghpatr 9y ago
I agree here, I took several years of Mandarin and the language itself is pretty intuitive, it's just the writing that bogs you down. That said, I learned characters mostly by handwriting- if I had been taught exclusively using a QingPin input system, I could have focused on recognizing more characters than trying to remember stroke counts for each word.

PinkMilkshake 9y ago

I don't think that would help. Chinese is very heavy on homophones and the characters allow meaning differentiation. In spoken Chinese you have to rely on context. Written and spoken Chinese seem tightly coupled.

thaumasiotes 9y ago
Context is just as present in writing as it is in speech.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dibujante 9y ago
  No, not really. Chinese characters use different characters / radicals to distinguish homophones in a way that makes writing much easier to understand if you're shakier on the context.
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    It is true that Chinese characters contain so much nonphonetic information that writing can be understood even if you've written something that would be total nonsense if spoken aloud. And similarly, that extra information can substitute for a certain amount of context. But it's obviously not necessary, because all writing still has just as much context as speech does. The fact that you need the context less doesn't somehow make it go away.
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    I know next-to-nothing about Chinese, but it seems to me that if a language can be spoken, it can be represented with a phonetic alphabet. There might be sentences in written Chinese that wouldn't make sense in spoken Chinese, and these wouldn't make sense in the phonetic alphabet either, but if we can agree that spoken Chinese is useful, then the phonetically written Chinese would also be useful. However, if I were Chinese, I might worry that due to simplicity, the phonetically-written Chinese would eclipse the traditionally-written Chinese quickly. Those sentences which only make sense in traditionally-written, not spoken or phonetically-written Chinese, would obviously be a huge cultural loss. Not everything is about making business more efficient.
    - Chaebixi 9y ago
      > I know next-to-nothing about Chinese, but it seems to me that if a language can be spoken, it can be represented with a phonetic alphabet. You might be interested in this: http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm One interesting thing I learned from it the logographic aspects of written Chinese have influenced spoken Chinese by encouraging short, phonetically-ambiguous abbreviations that tend to replace the original phonetically-distinct words. > Those sentences which only make sense in traditionally-written, not spoken or phonetically-written Chinese, would obviously be a huge cultural loss. That's already happened to a degree. The Chinese dropped written Classical Chinese for written Mandarin, which is based on a vernacular. That's akin to the West dropping written Latin in favor of vernacular writing. I understand Classical Chinese needs to be translated to be understood.

globuous 9y ago

Me too, but if they keeps their current one ^^. If my understanding is of chinese writing is correct, then you could put any pronunciation on their characters. So we could have a universal writing system. If french, english and russian all mapped their words to chinese symbols, then we could all communicate through writing while keeping our languages. In practice it's obviously not this easy since we have different grammars, but I think the basic principle holds and we'd all be able to somewhat read each other. Numbers are a great example of that. We all have our own words for numbers, but can all communicate it with its associated symbols (which are different in arabic script for instance, though everyone's agreed on european script). Mathematics is full of those symbols we communicate with regardless of their pronunciation in different languages, e.g. the 'for all' and 'there exist' symbols for instance, but also the equal sign and the integral, set notation etc etc. They're all concept, ideas, and have associated symbols. So why wouldn't we all use chinese 'synbols' for our 'everyday' vocabulary when we write. It's be harder to learn to read 1 language, but so much easier to learn to read all of them. When we communicate in western languages an idea I from person A to person B; then when A translate I into a translation t in a language l that both A and B understand. then B translates back t into I'. It's actually pretty hard to get I' to equal I. Where as with chinese characters, my understanding is their characters are closer to the ideas themselves. Potentially making it easier to communicate between each other across multiple languages.

megaman22 9y ago
This has been done before, with Mongolian, and Manchu, and pre-Hangul Korean, and Japanese, and virtually every other language that neighbored on and fell into the cultural orbit of pre-modern China. It never really worked out that well, and almost universally was replaced with alphabets of one variety or another eventually, because it is impossible for people to become fluent without an absurd number of years of study when reading and writing in ideographs; at least comparable to the very short time it takes to train someone in an alphabet.
jcranmer 9y ago
That's not how Chinese script works (or translation for that matter). Chinese script is logographic: each character roughly refers to a single morpheme. There is also a degree of phonetic component to the script (to some degree, it's a game of playing "what sounds like fish and has to do with food?") But morphemes are not universal across different languages, and phonetic games can quickly become obtuse: Japanese kanji is basically completely unintelligible to Chinese speakers, despite literally deriving from Chinese. Even within the different Chinese topolects, the actual comprehensibility of the standard writing system without having been specifically taught it is I believe only in the region of trying to understand Spanish knowing only French.

coldtea 9y ago

>I could really see Mandarin take off if they would adopt a writing system similar to Vietnamese. They could also easily introduce a second, easier, writing system, and maintain a low-high kind of language (like many countries do). Eventually the second easier one will tend to dominate, but even until then, it will be easier for foreigners to learn it, and for chinese to learn both.

tCfD 9y ago
Japanese takes exactly this sort of 'embrace and extend' approach to building on top of the Chinese character base, with hiragana for native construction, katakana for foreign loanwords, and furigana (more of an orthographical sugar than a separate symbol set) to bridge the systems for the sake of easier learning..

creaghpatr 9y ago

I agree here, I took several years of Mandarin and the language itself is pretty intuitive, it's just the writing that bogs you down. That said, I learned characters mostly by handwriting- if I had been taught exclusively using a QingPin input system, I could have focused on recognizing more characters than trying to remember stroke counts for each word.