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I studied Chinese for 2 years in University and hitchhiked mainland China in 2019. A common misconception is that Chinese "makes more sense" because many chara

I studied Chinese for 2 years in University and hitchhiked mainland China in 2019. A common misconception is that Chinese "makes more sense" because many characters look like what they mean. So you can guess what a new character means just by looking at it. A downside is that for many Chinese characters it becomes impossible to know how to pronounce a new word. I've seen adult native speakers ask how to pronounce a new word many times. Oftentimes there are hints in the characters (the "phonetics" mentioned by the writer), but usually not enough to guess correctly. English is also bad at this, ironically. Spanish is really good at this, if not the best. When you come across a new word, it's 99.99% of the time pronounced how its written.

mcmoor 2y ago
> English is also bad at this, ironically https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/pronounce https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/pronounce
dreamcompiler 2y ago
Japanese is great for this also, at least for signage written in Katakana or Hiragana. If you learn those alphabets you will always know how to pronounce words written in them. Kanji is a very different story of course.
- brigandish 2y ago
  There are exceptions, certainly in colloquial speech variants, 雰囲気 and 原因 come to mind. Both have an annoying ん ("n") in the middle that makes them a pain to pronounce even for natives, so the first gets changed from ふんいき to ふいんき and the latter from げんいん to げいいん. So, if written properly in hiragana you'd know how to pronounce them "properly" but not necessarily as they're actually used by a significant amount of people when spoken. Even the auto-kanji-conversion of my keyboard respects the variants.
  - Liquid_Fire 2y ago
    I can accept ふいんき as an exception, but for 原因 that's just a consequence of the rules for how to pronounce ん, which depends on the surrounding sounds (it's not quite い either). I wouldn't really call it an exception. Consider 一千円, 禁煙 etc all of which are pronounced like that.
    - brigandish 2y ago
      There are two distinct pronunciations, げんいん and げいいん, the first is the standard, the second is a variant. The only consequence of the ん in the second one is that it has been replaced because it's a pain to pronounce in that position. That there are other words with ん in a similar position (一千円 not being one of them) is by the by, 原因 and 雰囲気 are two of most frequently used words in the language (in the first 800), 禁煙 is used far less (in the first 5000) so under less pressure for adaptation.
localfirst 2y ago
this was a big reason why Korean alphabet was invented because the literacy was so poor for the reasons you mentioned. Lot of terms/loanwords from Chinese language can be found in all neighbouring countries but you'd have to be part of the artistocracy to get the schooling. Japan still uses it but North Korea banned it out of the gate. South Korea slowly phased out use of traditional chinese characters. It was common to see Chinese characters up until late 00s but definitely used a lot more sparingly.
gomox 2y ago
> I studied Chinese for 2 years in University and hitchhiked mainland China in 2019. You owe us at least one fun story from mainland China in 2019.
- jzwinck 2y ago
  I'm not who you replied to, but I have such a story. I was in southern China for a couple weeks, using Google Translate to try to talk to locals sometimes. The voice-to-voice feature seemed useful and more approachable than asking someone to type on my phone. I'd often start by saying "Talk into the phone and it will translate." This did not go well. People seemed bewildered, utterly unwilling to try it out. Some people already knew what I was doing but the rest seemed to think I was crazy. One or two tried taking the phone and holding it to their ear like they were going to have a normal phone conversation with someone far away. I later found out that Google had translated my phrase as something like "There is a phone call for you."
  - arcticfox 2y ago
    > I later found out that Google had translated my phrase as something like "There is a phone call for you." Language learning stories are always amazing because the perpetrator of the comedy is almost always entirely oblivious. Love your story. My shining moment when I was learning Portuguese... I went to the pharmacy because I'd hurt my ankles hiking. They kept everything behind the counter, so I asked for some painkillers that would work for ankle pain. The cashier gave me the weirdest look and the rest of the line started giggling. Eventually, after several attempts at repetition and variation, they gave me some ibuprofen - perfect. As I was leaving I processed my mistake - I'd accidentally swapped calcanhares (ankles) for calcinhas (panties), so my series of requests (as a male) had come out as: "My panties are killing me, do you have anything to help? ... Sorry, my Portuguese...I'll try again: My panties. Pan-ties. Pain. Pain in my panties. Panties pain. Medicine?"
  - hexhu 2y ago
    Fun fact: Quality of Google translate and Google search in Simplified Chinese and Google maps in mainland China has plummeted over the past decade. Barely usable if at all. I would suggest avoid them at all cost for your peace of mind
basementcat 2y ago
Is hitchhiking still … awkward in China? My understanding is hitchhiking was more "accepted" in Japan and the West.
- cynicalpeace 2y ago
  Correct, but who cares lol. I did it and came out a better man.
alentred 2y ago
Curiously, French is also good at being "pronounced how its written", but horrible the other way around, writing down what you hear. With only a few exceptions, you can always read out loud a written word. There is quite a lot of rules, but they are rather strict. Once you know them, you are good to go and read everything out loud. But if you want to learn French by "listening and looking up the words in a dictionary" - good luck with that. There are multiple ways to write down the same sounds. You hear [ku] and it can be "coup", "cou", "coût"...
perilunar 2y ago
> English is also bad at this, ironically Yes. English desperately needs spelling reform.
gs17 2y ago
> Oftentimes there are hints in the characters (the "phonetics" mentioned by the writer), but usually not enough to guess correctly. Yeah, it's unfortunately not enough to sightread purely from radicals. My girlfriend has been trying to teach me and it's the biggest frustration. The discussion keeps going "this radical is how you know it's pronounced ___, oh, but not in this one, that's pronounced entirely differently". If I don't know a character, the phonetic radicals might let me guess close but not correctly or it might not have anything in common. The semantic radicals are a little better IMO, but not enough to guess more than the category something might be in sometimes. I'm not sure if the rules are just full of exceptions or if it's simply change over the past millennia, but it means rote learning has been the only way for me to learn hanzi.
- cynicalpeace 2y ago
  Pinyin
  - gs17 2y ago
    Yes, anyone can sightread pinyin after an hour or two, but turning everything into it won't really help me learn to read Chinese as the language is actually used.
    - cynicalpeace 2y ago
      The only thing that realistically could would be to go to China or Taiwan and live there for a few years. No Google translate.

mcmoor 2y ago

> English is also bad at this, ironically https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/pronounce https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/pronounce

dreamcompiler 2y ago

Japanese is great for this also, at least for signage written in Katakana or Hiragana. If you learn those alphabets you will always know how to pronounce words written in them. Kanji is a very different story of course.

brigandish 2y ago
There are exceptions, certainly in colloquial speech variants, 雰囲気 and 原因 come to mind. Both have an annoying ん ("n") in the middle that makes them a pain to pronounce even for natives, so the first gets changed from ふんいき to ふいんき and the latter from げんいん to げいいん. So, if written properly in hiragana you'd know how to pronounce them "properly" but not necessarily as they're actually used by a significant amount of people when spoken. Even the auto-kanji-conversion of my keyboard respects the variants.
- Liquid_Fire 2y ago
  I can accept ふいんき as an exception, but for 原因 that's just a consequence of the rules for how to pronounce ん, which depends on the surrounding sounds (it's not quite い either). I wouldn't really call it an exception. Consider 一千円, 禁煙 etc all of which are pronounced like that.
  - brigandish 2y ago
    There are two distinct pronunciations, げんいん and げいいん, the first is the standard, the second is a variant. The only consequence of the ん in the second one is that it has been replaced because it's a pain to pronounce in that position. That there are other words with ん in a similar position (一千円 not being one of them) is by the by, 原因 and 雰囲気 are two of most frequently used words in the language (in the first 800), 禁煙 is used far less (in the first 5000) so under less pressure for adaptation.

localfirst 2y ago

this was a big reason why Korean alphabet was invented because the literacy was so poor for the reasons you mentioned. Lot of terms/loanwords from Chinese language can be found in all neighbouring countries but you'd have to be part of the artistocracy to get the schooling. Japan still uses it but North Korea banned it out of the gate. South Korea slowly phased out use of traditional chinese characters. It was common to see Chinese characters up until late 00s but definitely used a lot more sparingly.

gomox 2y ago

> I studied Chinese for 2 years in University and hitchhiked mainland China in 2019. You owe us at least one fun story from mainland China in 2019.

jzwinck 2y ago
I'm not who you replied to, but I have such a story. I was in southern China for a couple weeks, using Google Translate to try to talk to locals sometimes. The voice-to-voice feature seemed useful and more approachable than asking someone to type on my phone. I'd often start by saying "Talk into the phone and it will translate." This did not go well. People seemed bewildered, utterly unwilling to try it out. Some people already knew what I was doing but the rest seemed to think I was crazy. One or two tried taking the phone and holding it to their ear like they were going to have a normal phone conversation with someone far away. I later found out that Google had translated my phrase as something like "There is a phone call for you."
- arcticfox 2y ago
  > I later found out that Google had translated my phrase as something like "There is a phone call for you." Language learning stories are always amazing because the perpetrator of the comedy is almost always entirely oblivious. Love your story. My shining moment when I was learning Portuguese... I went to the pharmacy because I'd hurt my ankles hiking. They kept everything behind the counter, so I asked for some painkillers that would work for ankle pain. The cashier gave me the weirdest look and the rest of the line started giggling. Eventually, after several attempts at repetition and variation, they gave me some ibuprofen - perfect. As I was leaving I processed my mistake - I'd accidentally swapped calcanhares (ankles) for calcinhas (panties), so my series of requests (as a male) had come out as: "My panties are killing me, do you have anything to help? ... Sorry, my Portuguese...I'll try again: My panties. Pan-ties. Pain. Pain in my panties. Panties pain. Medicine?"
- hexhu 2y ago
  Fun fact: Quality of Google translate and Google search in Simplified Chinese and Google maps in mainland China has plummeted over the past decade. Barely usable if at all. I would suggest avoid them at all cost for your peace of mind

basementcat 2y ago

Is hitchhiking still … awkward in China? My understanding is hitchhiking was more "accepted" in Japan and the West.

cynicalpeace 2y ago
Correct, but who cares lol. I did it and came out a better man.

alentred 2y ago

Curiously, French is also good at being "pronounced how its written", but horrible the other way around, writing down what you hear. With only a few exceptions, you can always read out loud a written word. There is quite a lot of rules, but they are rather strict. Once you know them, you are good to go and read everything out loud. But if you want to learn French by "listening and looking up the words in a dictionary" - good luck with that. There are multiple ways to write down the same sounds. You hear [ku] and it can be "coup", "cou", "coût"...

perilunar 2y ago

> English is also bad at this, ironically Yes. English desperately needs spelling reform.

gs17 2y ago

> Oftentimes there are hints in the characters (the "phonetics" mentioned by the writer), but usually not enough to guess correctly. Yeah, it's unfortunately not enough to sightread purely from radicals. My girlfriend has been trying to teach me and it's the biggest frustration. The discussion keeps going "this radical is how you know it's pronounced ___, oh, but not in this one, that's pronounced entirely differently". If I don't know a character, the phonetic radicals might let me guess close but not correctly or it might not have anything in common. The semantic radicals are a little better IMO, but not enough to guess more than the category something might be in sometimes. I'm not sure if the rules are just full of exceptions or if it's simply change over the past millennia, but it means rote learning has been the only way for me to learn hanzi.

cynicalpeace 2y ago
Pinyin
- gs17 2y ago
  Yes, anyone can sightread pinyin after an hour or two, but turning everything into it won't really help me learn to read Chinese as the language is actually used.
  - cynicalpeace 2y ago
    The only thing that realistically could would be to go to China or Taiwan and live there for a few years. No Google translate.