5 ms·

To me it is plausible that Classical Chinese is unique among written languages - not necessarily in its foreignness, but just sufficiently different to necessit

by FabHK 7y ago

To me it is plausible that Classical Chinese is unique among written languages - not necessarily in its foreignness, but just sufficiently different to necessitate the article. Two points as examples: 1. Chinese has very few distinct syllables compared to other languages, even including tones. Thus, many words in speech are multisyllabic to allow for disambiguation. However, in the written language, the character disambiguates sufficiently that only the major part of a word needs to be written. So, while in most languages a written text can be read out aloud and understood (and many people are not even aware that spoken and written language are substantially different), in Chinese > the written language often cannot be understood when read aloud unless the listeners are already familiar with the passage and what this means in turn is that the written language should probably not be seen as a transcription of speech (Graham 1987: 390; DeFrancis 1984: 126) 2. Chinese does not feature conjugation or much punctuation, and often leaves out verbs completely. See for example the famous poem about Moon and homesickness by Li Bai [1], the first and last lines are 床前明月光 bed before bright moon light 低頭思故鄉 Lower head think home English (or most Indo-European languages) rarely drop the verb, and if the translator puts it there, they have to choose a specific conjugated form (ie person, number, tense, voice, mood...), thus necessarily interpreting. For example, the lines quoted are translated as "I wake, and moonbeams play around my bed" or "In front of my bed is the bright moonlight"; "Then I lower my head, thinking of my hometown", or "Then lay me down — and thoughts of home arise." These are all somewhat different, but ok, it's a poem and should primarily convey some emotion. But now imagine this sort of ambiguity in a philosophical discussion. Bottom line: there is continuum of how easy and unambiguous a text is to interpret (and/or translate), and while Biblical Hebrew might well be towards the complicated end, I think it's reasonable to argue that Classical Chinese is even further that way. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Night_Thought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Night_Thought

yorwba 7y ago
> 1. Chinese has very few distinct syllables compared to other languages, even including tones. Thus, many words in speech are multisyllabic to allow for disambiguation. This is true of Mandarin, but Classical Chinese had mostly monosyllabic words with many more distinct syllables and maybe wasn't even a tonal language. The exact pronunciations are obviously unknown except by reconstruction from descendant languages, but it's unlikely that ambiguity of pronunciation was much of a problem when the texts were written. It does however affect works of later periods written in Literary Chinese, trying to emulate the style of the classics they were quoting.
- FabHK 7y ago
  Very good point. I notice that many varieties (eg Cantonese) seem to make many distinctions that have collapsed in Mandarin. So, whether Classical Chinese read out was intelligible to ancient listeners is hard to establish, but there’s a good chance it was. Surely, Classical Chinese is a language quite different from contemporary vernacular Chinese. Of course, Latin is quite different from Spanish, too. Yet, I’d maintain that Classical Latin is more easily rendered in modern English (and with less interpretative leeway) than Classical Chinese.
yorwba 7y ago
> 2. Chinese does not feature conjugation or much punctuation, and often leaves out verbs completely. [...] English (or most Indo-European languages) rarely drop the verb, and if the translator puts it there, they have to choose a specific conjugated form (ie person, number, tense, voice, mood...), thus necessarily interpreting. While Chinese has its unique set of quirks, having a wide range of possible translations is just as much about the target language. Translating English into a language with gendered nouns, case markers, pronouns of varying formality, and/or a more liberal word order, also requires the translator to choose which possible nuance was intended by the original. For example, "I'm sure you're very busy." can apparently be expressed by any of 95 different Italian sentences: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/2046775 https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/2046775 Not all of those distinctions are necessarily relevant, but in the end a sentence in any language is a fuzzy bundle of possible meanings, with no particular reason to expect that bundle to align perfectly with any other language.
- posterboy 7y ago
  Since Indo-European-Languages share to varying degree some root bundles, there are idioms that have analogues in all those languages, and subsets of basic grammar that are nearly identical. Of course there is a particular reason to expect perfect alignment between languages, hypothetically, which is so far hopeless, namely universal grammar. I'm sure that example sentence has 95 variants in English alone. "You're tied up, I know".
knolax 7y ago
You do realize that "Lower"/低 Is a verb right? In fact if you look at the complete poem every line contains a verb except the first one. The full poem is: 床前明月光 Bright明 Moon月light光 before前 (the) bed床. 疑是地下霜 (The) suspicion疑 is是 frost霜 on下 (the) ground地. Verb: 是/Is 举头望明月 Raise举 head头, gaze望 (the) bright明 moon月. Verb: 举/Raise 低头思故乡 Lower低 head头, think思 (of) (the) homeland故乡. Verb: 低/Lower Quoted words are those not present in the poem. Chinese, like most languages doesn't have a definite article so "the" is implicit. The last "of" isn't present because "homeland"/故乡 is the object of the word think in Chinese where as the topic of a thought is usually marked with a preposition in English. The above was a word for word translation where only the order of words were changed. If you haven't noticed already, the last two lines literally translate to English in the same order (save for the lack of pronouns). The only thing missing are pronouns, which also occurs in English with the passive voice. 静夜思 By the way literally doesn't deviate in any way from "vernacular" Chinese in terms of grammar or vocabulary. In fact it's taught in early grade school and is easily understood. > the written language often cannot be understood when read aloud unless the listeners are already familiar with the passage and what this means in turn is that the written language should probably not be seen as a transcription of speech I'm sorry but this is nonsense. I learned the poem you mentioned before I knew how to read or write and understood it fine. On the flip side, I didn't know what the pledge of allegiance meant until I learned how to read/write. Differences between formal and casual registers exist in every language, there is no indication that this is any different in Chinese. Your example of "abbreviating words" also makes zero sense when the "parts of words" you refer to are atomic and have meaning by themselves. DeFrancis makes his wild claims about Chinese because he believed that all writing was ultimately phonetic when it's clear that all writing is logographic, which is the case for both Chinese and English. I'm tired of the mysticism that people display towards Chinese when arguably it has few difference from English.
- posterboy 7y ago
  You are basically saying that your understanding as a kid of a classical poetry was well developed. You understood the surface analysis, but I very much doubt that you had grasped any symbolism past the literal bright disk in the sky. You are potentially biased by native speaker instinct. What you understand just fine is only what you think it means. This is called identification. This does not give you authority over the interpretation. To everyone else the phrases look almost like gibberish, to the point that a lot deeper meaning is expected than the surface is letting on. They (read: I) do not really identify with, but reject it. You very apparently did not read the post very clearly that you cite. You responded to "the written language often cannot be understood when read aloud". However you did not finish reading before anger blinded your sight. It goes on "cannot be understood when read aloud unless the listeners are already familiar with the passage". It would be easy enough to criticize that this is a paradox situation. However it goes on further, "what this means in turn is that the written language should probably not be seen as a transcription of speech", which implies to me that the deeper sense is encoded in the signs themselves. I'd add that poetry thrives in word play. In general, the older the poem, the obscurer the word play, and yet most innocious the surface form for it to survive. Although, it might be that the verse is really just esthetically pleasing on a phonetical level, I wouldn't know (and GP would have mislead me). That is, a lot of old poetry starts verbally and is written down only generations later Word play on the graphemic level is a dimension well known in English from signage. But the combination with sound adds a constraint that's hard to imagine. "Speaking signs" (The city of Hamburg having a Burg "castle" on their emblem) are often banal, but can escalate over many levels of connotation (one level: The castle's gates are depicted open or shut depending on the times; Many levels: The background is red, the castle is white? A tavern may play on it and add a pork, because "ham"). I believe that's what they were trying to say. I expect that is something you must be aware of subliminally because there is no way to learn chinese signs well without a theory of composition. If you really only learn the geometric forms, I'd be disappointed. 望 for example has the sign for moon up-right, and emperor down-low, if I recal correctly. The latter also means tenno in Japanese and has some relation to sky (or the forbidden city in Peking) and high up, though up would be one stroke less (cp "[up]on", "raise"'s lower half, and its mirror image in "ground"'s left and "lower"'s right; I gather "is" may be "wall, stand, up; set in place); Also cp "head" ("top"?). The phonetics are often shown by only one of the radicals or none at all, so the symbolism can be easy to miss in speech, although the connotation may be obvious from common context, precisely such as this poem, if the semantics remained stable. In fact the poem might be an intralingual rosetta stone for learners of the writing. I am aware that's not quite what was being talked about. Not to mention that the symbolism of "is" has not been convincingly by scholars. It is elsewhere rather translated as "that", by the way, which is not withstanding insofar is that or that is are fixed collocations, that might well fuse to one word "that's", too. Word is that winter's coming. In times of stability at the end of the year as the evening star rises I like to think it's time to crawl before the lord, ask for allowance, and bring home my yen to support my family and spend time with them over the year's end. Indeed, English is no different. Just why is beowulf ostensibly "bee wolf = bear"? Also, the second to last part where you say English is logographic confuses me.

by FabHK 7y ago

yorwba 7y ago

> 1. Chinese has very few distinct syllables compared to other languages, even including tones. Thus, many words in speech are multisyllabic to allow for disambiguation. This is true of Mandarin, but Classical Chinese had mostly monosyllabic words with many more distinct syllables and maybe wasn't even a tonal language. The exact pronunciations are obviously unknown except by reconstruction from descendant languages, but it's unlikely that ambiguity of pronunciation was much of a problem when the texts were written. It does however affect works of later periods written in Literary Chinese, trying to emulate the style of the classics they were quoting.

FabHK 7y ago
Very good point. I notice that many varieties (eg Cantonese) seem to make many distinctions that have collapsed in Mandarin. So, whether Classical Chinese read out was intelligible to ancient listeners is hard to establish, but there’s a good chance it was. Surely, Classical Chinese is a language quite different from contemporary vernacular Chinese. Of course, Latin is quite different from Spanish, too. Yet, I’d maintain that Classical Latin is more easily rendered in modern English (and with less interpretative leeway) than Classical Chinese.

yorwba 7y ago

> 2. Chinese does not feature conjugation or much punctuation, and often leaves out verbs completely. [...] English (or most Indo-European languages) rarely drop the verb, and if the translator puts it there, they have to choose a specific conjugated form (ie person, number, tense, voice, mood...), thus necessarily interpreting. While Chinese has its unique set of quirks, having a wide range of possible translations is just as much about the target language. Translating English into a language with gendered nouns, case markers, pronouns of varying formality, and/or a more liberal word order, also requires the translator to choose which possible nuance was intended by the original. For example, "I'm sure you're very busy." can apparently be expressed by any of 95 different Italian sentences: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/2046775 https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/2046775 Not all of those distinctions are necessarily relevant, but in the end a sentence in any language is a fuzzy bundle of possible meanings, with no particular reason to expect that bundle to align perfectly with any other language.

posterboy 7y ago
Since Indo-European-Languages share to varying degree some root bundles, there are idioms that have analogues in all those languages, and subsets of basic grammar that are nearly identical. Of course there is a particular reason to expect perfect alignment between languages, hypothetically, which is so far hopeless, namely universal grammar. I'm sure that example sentence has 95 variants in English alone. "You're tied up, I know".

knolax 7y ago

You do realize that "Lower"/低 Is a verb right? In fact if you look at the complete poem every line contains a verb except the first one. The full poem is: 床前明月光 Bright明 Moon月light光 before前 (the) bed床. 疑是地下霜 (The) suspicion疑 is是 frost霜 on下 (the) ground地. Verb: 是/Is 举头望明月 Raise举 head头, gaze望 (the) bright明 moon月. Verb: 举/Raise 低头思故乡 Lower低 head头, think思 (of) (the) homeland故乡. Verb: 低/Lower Quoted words are those not present in the poem. Chinese, like most languages doesn't have a definite article so "the" is implicit. The last "of" isn't present because "homeland"/故乡 is the object of the word think in Chinese where as the topic of a thought is usually marked with a preposition in English. The above was a word for word translation where only the order of words were changed. If you haven't noticed already, the last two lines literally translate to English in the same order (save for the lack of pronouns). The only thing missing are pronouns, which also occurs in English with the passive voice. 静夜思 By the way literally doesn't deviate in any way from "vernacular" Chinese in terms of grammar or vocabulary. In fact it's taught in early grade school and is easily understood. > the written language often cannot be understood when read aloud unless the listeners are already familiar with the passage and what this means in turn is that the written language should probably not be seen as a transcription of speech I'm sorry but this is nonsense. I learned the poem you mentioned before I knew how to read or write and understood it fine. On the flip side, I didn't know what the pledge of allegiance meant until I learned how to read/write. Differences between formal and casual registers exist in every language, there is no indication that this is any different in Chinese. Your example of "abbreviating words" also makes zero sense when the "parts of words" you refer to are atomic and have meaning by themselves. DeFrancis makes his wild claims about Chinese because he believed that all writing was ultimately phonetic when it's clear that all writing is logographic, which is the case for both Chinese and English. I'm tired of the mysticism that people display towards Chinese when arguably it has few difference from English.

posterboy 7y ago
You are basically saying that your understanding as a kid of a classical poetry was well developed. You understood the surface analysis, but I very much doubt that you had grasped any symbolism past the literal bright disk in the sky. You are potentially biased by native speaker instinct. What you understand just fine is only what you think it means. This is called identification. This does not give you authority over the interpretation. To everyone else the phrases look almost like gibberish, to the point that a lot deeper meaning is expected than the surface is letting on. They (read: I) do not really identify with, but reject it. You very apparently did not read the post very clearly that you cite. You responded to "the written language often cannot be understood when read aloud". However you did not finish reading before anger blinded your sight. It goes on "cannot be understood when read aloud unless the listeners are already familiar with the passage". It would be easy enough to criticize that this is a paradox situation. However it goes on further, "what this means in turn is that the written language should probably not be seen as a transcription of speech", which implies to me that the deeper sense is encoded in the signs themselves. I'd add that poetry thrives in word play. In general, the older the poem, the obscurer the word play, and yet most innocious the surface form for it to survive. Although, it might be that the verse is really just esthetically pleasing on a phonetical level, I wouldn't know (and GP would have mislead me). That is, a lot of old poetry starts verbally and is written down only generations later Word play on the graphemic level is a dimension well known in English from signage. But the combination with sound adds a constraint that's hard to imagine. "Speaking signs" (The city of Hamburg having a Burg "castle" on their emblem) are often banal, but can escalate over many levels of connotation (one level: The castle's gates are depicted open or shut depending on the times; Many levels: The background is red, the castle is white? A tavern may play on it and add a pork, because "ham"). I believe that's what they were trying to say. I expect that is something you must be aware of subliminally because there is no way to learn chinese signs well without a theory of composition. If you really only learn the geometric forms, I'd be disappointed. 望 for example has the sign for moon up-right, and emperor down-low, if I recal correctly. The latter also means tenno in Japanese and has some relation to sky (or the forbidden city in Peking) and high up, though up would be one stroke less (cp "[up]on", "raise"'s lower half, and its mirror image in "ground"'s left and "lower"'s right; I gather "is" may be "wall, stand, up; set in place); Also cp "head" ("top"?). The phonetics are often shown by only one of the radicals or none at all, so the symbolism can be easy to miss in speech, although the connotation may be obvious from common context, precisely such as this poem, if the semantics remained stable. In fact the poem might be an intralingual rosetta stone for learners of the writing. I am aware that's not quite what was being talked about. Not to mention that the symbolism of "is" has not been convincingly by scholars. It is elsewhere rather translated as "that", by the way, which is not withstanding insofar is that or that is are fixed collocations, that might well fuse to one word "that's", too. Word is that winter's coming. In times of stability at the end of the year as the evening star rises I like to think it's time to crawl before the lord, ask for allowance, and bring home my yen to support my family and spend time with them over the year's end. Indeed, English is no different. Just why is beowulf ostensibly "bee wolf = bear"? Also, the second to last part where you say English is logographic confuses me.