4 ms·

In spoken Mandarin Chinese you can normally derive the meaning from context but in Classical Chinese (or in fact anything written more formally) it's not necess

by 4cao 6y ago

In spoken Mandarin Chinese you can normally derive the meaning from context but in Classical Chinese (or in fact anything written more formally) it's not necessarily so straightforward. There is a poem that illustrates it, where each syllable is pronounced exactly the same, /shi/ just with different tones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_... (施氏食獅史). It goes like that: « Shī Shì shí shī shǐ » Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī. Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī. Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì. [...] Good luck trying to figure out the meaning without the "written adornments."

hnick 6y ago
Yes I've seen that poem before. According to google translate though, the tones on the parent example are identical. So context would be all they have to go by unless there is an aspect I'm missing as a non-speaker. It's probably the case that reading is just harder for us to process than listening in general which is why jokes like http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm exist. We hold onto a lot of redundancy too in the English world.
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  Amusingly that link actually undersells how English orthography fails to capture English pronunciation and even its final sentence has many pronunciation "mistakes" by its own standard. > Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. The first "a" in "Fainali" is not pronounced the same as the second "a" in "Fainali" (e.g. finally does not rhyme with rally and rawly, the correspondence between the latter two depending on your own regional accent). The "x" in "xen" and "xe" is not the same sound as the "x" in "xrewawt" or in "orxogrefkl." The "o" in "lojikl" is not the same "o" as in "kohirnt." The "e" in "xe" is not the same "e" as in "xen" and is not the same "e" as in "orxogrefkl." And more. And that's not even touching stuff that has heavy regional variation such as the "e" in "aafte" and the "i" in "kohirnt."
- 4cao 6y ago
  Formal written Chinese is very different from the spoken form, essentially to the point it could be considered another language altogether. This situation isn't really comparable to anything in English. In spoken Mandarin, lexical units are generally formed of multiple-character compounds (typically 2 to 4 characters). In such a scenario, the character being used can be figured out just from the context. If such an utterance is transcribed phonetically and written down, the same still holds. So your conjecture is correct to the extent it pertains to the colloquial language. However, the same cannot be said for the formal written language, which is based on Classical Chinese, and much more succint: here, each character is often an independent lexical unit. At the same time, numerous more obscure characters come into play and annoyingly many of them tend to be homophones. In particular, in Mandarin, as a result of the phonetic processes it underwent, there are a lot of characters pronounced either /yi/ or /shi/. At this point, figuring out the meaning of what is being said tends to become cumbersome or downright impossible (as in the case of the poem), unless the actual written characters can be seen, which is usually not an issue as this form of the language is used predominantly in writing (with the exception of a huge number of idiomatic expressions that educated people are expected to know by heart and be accustomed to). And it is this latter form of Chinese that is the language of history, culture, but also anything more sophisticated in general, such as any better news publications. So while a basic, dumbed-down version of Mandarin would survive even when simplified even further, perhaps to the point of being written only phonetically, I doubt any educated Chinese would willingly sign up for it (particularly as there are is no incentive to do so since everybody learned the language as a child anyway, and for those who did it well, it is a marker of status). If you want the Chinese to ditch their "written adornments," you could just as well be telling them to switch to Esperanto.
powerapple 6y ago
I am sure there are tongue twisters in English can be used to explain the interpretability of the language /s
dawidw 6y ago
I'm curious how the poem with proper pronunciation sounds like.
- 4cao 6y ago
  Here's one rendition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWFNhuDQ0Tc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWFNhuDQ0Tc

by 4cao 6y ago

hnick 6y ago

Yes I've seen that poem before. According to google translate though, the tones on the parent example are identical. So context would be all they have to go by unless there is an aspect I'm missing as a non-speaker. It's probably the case that reading is just harder for us to process than listening in general which is why jokes like http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm exist. We hold onto a lot of redundancy too in the English world.

dwohnitmok 6y ago
Amusingly that link actually undersells how English orthography fails to capture English pronunciation and even its final sentence has many pronunciation "mistakes" by its own standard. > Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. The first "a" in "Fainali" is not pronounced the same as the second "a" in "Fainali" (e.g. finally does not rhyme with rally and rawly, the correspondence between the latter two depending on your own regional accent). The "x" in "xen" and "xe" is not the same sound as the "x" in "xrewawt" or in "orxogrefkl." The "o" in "lojikl" is not the same "o" as in "kohirnt." The "e" in "xe" is not the same "e" as in "xen" and is not the same "e" as in "orxogrefkl." And more. And that's not even touching stuff that has heavy regional variation such as the "e" in "aafte" and the "i" in "kohirnt."
4cao 6y ago
Formal written Chinese is very different from the spoken form, essentially to the point it could be considered another language altogether. This situation isn't really comparable to anything in English. In spoken Mandarin, lexical units are generally formed of multiple-character compounds (typically 2 to 4 characters). In such a scenario, the character being used can be figured out just from the context. If such an utterance is transcribed phonetically and written down, the same still holds. So your conjecture is correct to the extent it pertains to the colloquial language. However, the same cannot be said for the formal written language, which is based on Classical Chinese, and much more succint: here, each character is often an independent lexical unit. At the same time, numerous more obscure characters come into play and annoyingly many of them tend to be homophones. In particular, in Mandarin, as a result of the phonetic processes it underwent, there are a lot of characters pronounced either /yi/ or /shi/. At this point, figuring out the meaning of what is being said tends to become cumbersome or downright impossible (as in the case of the poem), unless the actual written characters can be seen, which is usually not an issue as this form of the language is used predominantly in writing (with the exception of a huge number of idiomatic expressions that educated people are expected to know by heart and be accustomed to). And it is this latter form of Chinese that is the language of history, culture, but also anything more sophisticated in general, such as any better news publications. So while a basic, dumbed-down version of Mandarin would survive even when simplified even further, perhaps to the point of being written only phonetically, I doubt any educated Chinese would willingly sign up for it (particularly as there are is no incentive to do so since everybody learned the language as a child anyway, and for those who did it well, it is a marker of status). If you want the Chinese to ditch their "written adornments," you could just as well be telling them to switch to Esperanto.

powerapple 6y ago

I am sure there are tongue twisters in English can be used to explain the interpretability of the language /s

dawidw 6y ago

I'm curious how the poem with proper pronunciation sounds like.

4cao 6y ago
Here's one rendition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWFNhuDQ0Tc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWFNhuDQ0Tc