6 ms·

If English was Written Like Chinese

73 points by mnemonicsloth 18y ago

silencio 18y ago
hah, I was reading the page and going "why does this 'yingzi' sound more and more like chinese as I keep reading?" The English spelling system doesn't sound like that much of a pain compared to Chinese since some of the aspects of both spelling methods are similar enough: prefixes and suffixes and some Latin roots are pretty close to the idea of radicals. But consider this: pronouncing English words are nowhere near as difficult as pronouncing hanzi because English uses an alphabet and has pronunciation rules that make it easy to at least approximate what a word should sound like. Chinese has no such luxury with hanzi (i.e. the characters alone, without pinyin)...if you come across a character you don't know how to pronounce and you have no way to look it up, you might be able to guess at best if you see some sort of radical or character that looks like some other one you know. Lastly, I will say this having spent the last few months trying to learn Mandarin...both typing and writing is frustrating to me. One accidental lengthening of a stroke turns a hanzi into something completely different. If I don't know the pinyin for the hanzi it takes me forever to type it (and unfortunately I haven't gotten used to any other keyboard-based input method) and I end up going to my iPhone to use the handwriting recognition. I type slow as molasses despite being comfortable writing in both hanzi and pinyin. I grew up bilingual (english and korean), but this is a completely different experience. And of course, the page mentions the simplification of hanzi...I can't practice using the language because all my Chinese-fluent friends know Cantonese, and not Mandarin Chinese. Talk about a massive brainfuck because of the differences in writing (simplified vs. traditional, which affects lots of commonly written radicals and characters) and speaking, although it's interesting to see how the same characters can be pronounced so differently. On the upside, I would not mind dreaming that I could take the best of both worlds and combine it into one language. Chinese grammar is ridiculously simple while the English vocabulary simpler to use. I took French and Spanish back in high school and all I remember from then are nothing but conjugations while with Chinese I didn't have to stress over that and could focus on other things. Soooooo simple. Can't get over how simple it is ;)
- wallflower 18y ago
  Yes, it is a repost. Here is a classic essay by David Moser: "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard". David Moser has taught linguistics at Beijing Foreign Studies University, and he has dubbed the voice of Curly for Three Stooges in Mandarin. http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
  - tokenadult 18y ago
    I am a native speaker of English who learned Chinese as a second language, beginning at the beginning of my university studies. I was part of the norming administration for the (never officially launched) test of Chinese as a foreign language developed in the early 1980s by a consortium of United States universities, and set the bar for all other test-takers with my reading score, and did very well in my grammar score too. For most of the 1980s, I was a contract Chinese-English interpreter for the United States Information Agency. On Professor Moser's points: 1) Agree. Professor William Boltz points out that China missed one chance, historically, to transition to a more user-friendly writing system along the lines of Japanese kana syllabaries more than 2,000 years ago. https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_2KO0LUDAZ.HTM https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_2KO0LUDAZ.HTM 2) Actually, there has only been mass literacy in China since alphabetical writing (either National China's zhuyin fuhao [BO PO MO FO] system or the PRC's Hanyu pinyin system) has been used for primary reading instruction. But, yes, there has never been an extension of that use of alphabetical writing into a sufficiently large number of adult texts for the systems to become pervasive in Chinese-speaking countries. 3) Historical sound change has played havoc with the originally sound-indicating aspects of traditional Chinese writing, so, yes, one can't rely on pronunciation as a guide to what to write, nor can one reliably read aloud an unfamiliar written character in most cases. 4) The next objection only applies to native speakers of English (or another Indo-European language) learning a second Indo-European language. Or else it's a mere restatement of what is above. In fact, the many Chinese people who are not native speakers of Mandarin http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200501/03/eng20050103_169500.html http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200501/03/eng20050103_1695... (a number far larger than most Western observers guess) rely heavily on cognate features of their native Sinitic languages (Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hakka, etc.) to muddle through in speaking and even writing Mandarin. 5) Yes, dictionary look-up in Chinese is very messy. The best approach, and the approach taken by professional editors in Chinese-speaking countries, is to learn the alphabetic writing systems well enough for alphabetic look-up. (I have seen this done.) But one still has to be able to count strokes to look up an unfamiliar written character of unknown pronunciation. 6) A peculiarity of the modern Chinese written language is the preservation of many stock phrases and cliches from the ancient written language, which has quite different grammar and some significant semantic changes in the meaning of individual characters. A well-read reader of English can bluff through some French and some Latin, but a reader of Chinese has to deal with much more ancient language. 7) This is just a restatement of point 2 above. If there were just one or two regularly used alphabets (a situation comparable to Japanese), the official ones would be used for romanization. Hanyu pinyin is in fact very elegant, having been designed by a team of linguists from the Soviet Union and the Chinese communist movement, and I find it very easy to use. 8) Yes, that's very Anglo-centric. I know various speakers of various languages (Ibo is one example) who have thrived when learning Chinese because their native language has phonologically distinctive tones, so learning tones is no problem for them. I agree with most native speakers of English that learning Chinese tones is difficult, but I can manage to speak Chinese over the telephone. The late Y. R. Chao told a funny story of traveling to Sweden one time and failing to buy a train ticket to his destination because he pronounced Malmö with the wrong tone. (Swedish has tone, also.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_language#Sounds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_language#Sounds 9) Big deal. That's what makes Chinese fun.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
albertni 18y ago
I must admit, as someone who was born in the USA but is reasonably fluent in Chinese (can pass as a native in Beijing when speaking, at least on the phone, and can read/write at like a third-fifth grade level which is harder than it sounds in Chinese), as soon as I saw this I thought "why????". Still, the article did turn out to be quite interesting. What I've also found interesting in my own personal experience with my parents (born in China, immigrated in their 20s) is how they go about learning new words in English. For example, I used to dismiss my mom's horrendous spelling as simply a byproduct of immigration, but only recently have started to think about it more deeply and I've noticed a couple of things. First, she tends to insert nonsensical letters (or miss extremely obvious ones) when trying to spell words she's recently just heard for the first time. This used to bother me a lot because it seemed like the mistakes were so obvious to correct, but now I've realized that because of how Chinese is designed, the concept of breaking a word down into pieces just simply isn't natural for someone who only started learning English in their late 20s. Not to say it can't be learned, but just that even after 20+ years in the states, my mom still doesn't default to "break it down" mode when attempting to spell words, partly because she never had any formal English training (my dad is much, much better about this, and I think it's because of more formal training in a university environment) and just picked it up.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  because of how Chinese is designed, the concept of breaking a word down into pieces just simply isn't natural for someone who only started learning English in their late 20s Yes. There is much research to back this up. http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Read-Thinking-Learning-about/dp/0262510766/ http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Read-Thinking-Learning-about... Phonological awareness (being able to divide words into sounds, simply put) is a learned skill that not everyone learns. It has implications for two issues we are discussing under this subject: 1) A country with a large number of speakers of regional dialects of the national language will find it harder to have people's speech converge to the national standard language without a boost from alphabetic (or at least syllabic) writing, and 2) once a learner is well acquainted with alphabetic writing, phonological awareness can become so "second nature" that it feels natural, and the sound processing happens below the level of conscious awareness.
mhartl 18y ago
This raises an issue I've often wondered about: how much richer would China be if Chinese used an alphabetic writing system? I mean, they sure are spending a lot of CPU cycles on their crazy writing system. English orthography, though it may seem perverse to the typical Spaniard or Italian, is nevertheless light-years ahead of written Chinese. That has to be worth something.

73 points by mnemonicsloth 18y ago

hah, I was reading the page and going "why does this 'yingzi' sound more and more like chinese as I keep reading?" The English spelling system doesn't sound like that much of a pain compared to Chinese since some of the aspects of both spelling methods are similar enough: prefixes and suffixes and some Latin roots are pretty close to the idea of radicals. But consider this: pronouncing English words are nowhere near as difficult as pronouncing hanzi because English uses an alphabet and has pronunciation rules that make it easy to at least approximate what a word should sound like. Chinese has no such luxury with hanzi (i.e. the characters alone, without pinyin)...if you come across a character you don't know how to pronounce and you have no way to look it up, you might be able to guess at best if you see some sort of radical or character that looks like some other one you know. Lastly, I will say this having spent the last few months trying to learn Mandarin...both typing and writing is frustrating to me. One accidental lengthening of a stroke turns a hanzi into something completely different. If I don't know the pinyin for the hanzi it takes me forever to type it (and unfortunately I haven't gotten used to any other keyboard-based input method) and I end up going to my iPhone to use the handwriting recognition. I type slow as molasses despite being comfortable writing in both hanzi and pinyin. I grew up bilingual (english and korean), but this is a completely different experience. And of course, the page mentions the simplification of hanzi...I can't practice using the language because all my Chinese-fluent friends know Cantonese, and not Mandarin Chinese. Talk about a massive brainfuck because of the differences in writing (simplified vs. traditional, which affects lots of commonly written radicals and characters) and speaking, although it's interesting to see how the same characters can be pronounced so differently. On the upside, I would not mind dreaming that I could take the best of both worlds and combine it into one language. Chinese grammar is ridiculously simple while the English vocabulary simpler to use. I took French and Spanish back in high school and all I remember from then are nothing but conjugations while with Chinese I didn't have to stress over that and could focus on other things. Soooooo simple. Can't get over how simple it is ;)

wallflower 18y ago
Yes, it is a repost. Here is a classic essay by David Moser: "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard". David Moser has taught linguistics at Beijing Foreign Studies University, and he has dubbed the voice of Curly for Three Stooges in Mandarin. http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
- tokenadult 18y ago
  I am a native speaker of English who learned Chinese as a second language, beginning at the beginning of my university studies. I was part of the norming administration for the (never officially launched) test of Chinese as a foreign language developed in the early 1980s by a consortium of United States universities, and set the bar for all other test-takers with my reading score, and did very well in my grammar score too. For most of the 1980s, I was a contract Chinese-English interpreter for the United States Information Agency. On Professor Moser's points: 1) Agree. Professor William Boltz points out that China missed one chance, historically, to transition to a more user-friendly writing system along the lines of Japanese kana syllabaries more than 2,000 years ago. https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_2KO0LUDAZ.HTM https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_2KO0LUDAZ.HTM 2) Actually, there has only been mass literacy in China since alphabetical writing (either National China's zhuyin fuhao [BO PO MO FO] system or the PRC's Hanyu pinyin system) has been used for primary reading instruction. But, yes, there has never been an extension of that use of alphabetical writing into a sufficiently large number of adult texts for the systems to become pervasive in Chinese-speaking countries. 3) Historical sound change has played havoc with the originally sound-indicating aspects of traditional Chinese writing, so, yes, one can't rely on pronunciation as a guide to what to write, nor can one reliably read aloud an unfamiliar written character in most cases. 4) The next objection only applies to native speakers of English (or another Indo-European language) learning a second Indo-European language. Or else it's a mere restatement of what is above. In fact, the many Chinese people who are not native speakers of Mandarin http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200501/03/eng20050103_169500.html http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200501/03/eng20050103_1695... (a number far larger than most Western observers guess) rely heavily on cognate features of their native Sinitic languages (Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hakka, etc.) to muddle through in speaking and even writing Mandarin. 5) Yes, dictionary look-up in Chinese is very messy. The best approach, and the approach taken by professional editors in Chinese-speaking countries, is to learn the alphabetic writing systems well enough for alphabetic look-up. (I have seen this done.) But one still has to be able to count strokes to look up an unfamiliar written character of unknown pronunciation. 6) A peculiarity of the modern Chinese written language is the preservation of many stock phrases and cliches from the ancient written language, which has quite different grammar and some significant semantic changes in the meaning of individual characters. A well-read reader of English can bluff through some French and some Latin, but a reader of Chinese has to deal with much more ancient language. 7) This is just a restatement of point 2 above. If there were just one or two regularly used alphabets (a situation comparable to Japanese), the official ones would be used for romanization. Hanyu pinyin is in fact very elegant, having been designed by a team of linguists from the Soviet Union and the Chinese communist movement, and I find it very easy to use. 8) Yes, that's very Anglo-centric. I know various speakers of various languages (Ibo is one example) who have thrived when learning Chinese because their native language has phonologically distinctive tones, so learning tones is no problem for them. I agree with most native speakers of English that learning Chinese tones is difficult, but I can manage to speak Chinese over the telephone. The late Y. R. Chao told a funny story of traveling to Sweden one time and failing to buy a train ticket to his destination because he pronounced Malmö with the wrong tone. (Swedish has tone, also.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_language#Sounds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_language#Sounds 9) Big deal. That's what makes Chinese fun.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

albertni 18y ago

I must admit, as someone who was born in the USA but is reasonably fluent in Chinese (can pass as a native in Beijing when speaking, at least on the phone, and can read/write at like a third-fifth grade level which is harder than it sounds in Chinese), as soon as I saw this I thought "why????". Still, the article did turn out to be quite interesting. What I've also found interesting in my own personal experience with my parents (born in China, immigrated in their 20s) is how they go about learning new words in English. For example, I used to dismiss my mom's horrendous spelling as simply a byproduct of immigration, but only recently have started to think about it more deeply and I've noticed a couple of things. First, she tends to insert nonsensical letters (or miss extremely obvious ones) when trying to spell words she's recently just heard for the first time. This used to bother me a lot because it seemed like the mistakes were so obvious to correct, but now I've realized that because of how Chinese is designed, the concept of breaking a word down into pieces just simply isn't natural for someone who only started learning English in their late 20s. Not to say it can't be learned, but just that even after 20+ years in the states, my mom still doesn't default to "break it down" mode when attempting to spell words, partly because she never had any formal English training (my dad is much, much better about this, and I think it's because of more formal training in a university environment) and just picked it up.

tokenadult 18y ago
because of how Chinese is designed, the concept of breaking a word down into pieces just simply isn't natural for someone who only started learning English in their late 20s Yes. There is much research to back this up. http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Read-Thinking-Learning-about/dp/0262510766/ http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Read-Thinking-Learning-about... Phonological awareness (being able to divide words into sounds, simply put) is a learned skill that not everyone learns. It has implications for two issues we are discussing under this subject: 1) A country with a large number of speakers of regional dialects of the national language will find it harder to have people's speech converge to the national standard language without a boost from alphabetic (or at least syllabic) writing, and 2) once a learner is well acquainted with alphabetic writing, phonological awareness can become so "second nature" that it feels natural, and the sound processing happens below the level of conscious awareness.

mhartl 18y ago

This raises an issue I've often wondered about: how much richer would China be if Chinese used an alphabetic writing system? I mean, they sure are spending a lot of CPU cycles on their crazy writing system. English orthography, though it may seem perverse to the typical Spaniard or Italian, is nevertheless light-years ahead of written Chinese. That has to be worth something.