- Joined
- Nov 19, 2010
Hey, os, butchering languages is a global event. If youths don't do it, governments will do it for ya.
Hey, os, butchering languages is a global event. If youths don't do it, governments will do it for ya.
Ha! It would have been a stampede Michelle would have been mortified. But it would have been fun!
Nice to see that her dress got the right media attention.
I currently live in London and it was a pleasant surprise to see a fantastic picture of her from the State dinner in the "Metro" newspaper! There were only 3 pictures and she was on one of them
I think her dress impressed quite a few people!
In Chinese however, the same sounding tone depends on which other words and context it is being used can have literally 20-30 variation of the sound, and the 4 intonation per same sound can literally means hundreds or thousands variation of different characters. This makes it a clever, sophisticated and flexible language (almost too clever), because each word has very specific meaning but there need to be used correctly even though they sound the same. You can say there's no such thing as syllables in a Chinese word, because each word is always just one syllable.
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the whole post was jawdropping, I bookmarked it!
So in primary school for example they learn one syllable words and how to pronounce them accordingly to what they want to say, instead of learning an alphabet > create syllables > words from it?So in the written speech how many words there are?
a western person is it even possible to produce these sounds?
I m also interested in the 12 course dinner
It is also so much different to learn a language with all the grammar and syntax and all, and when you apply it, it is an alien universe. It is like learning a wooden language , rules and exams cant give you exactly the language that is alive and changing. In Greece almost all children we are taking the exams held by the British Council of Cambridge lower level in primary and proficiency level in secondary school , with this paper you can even teach to a school afterwards and probably speak with the queen of england (i have it framed) and then I came on the board where people are actually speaking English and I felt dump
You also realize the strange rules of your native language once you see the difficulties that foreign people have when learning it.
I think contemporary things learn you the language once you know its rules, like music, books, GS...
Hmm, I'm not quite sure if I can speak for Chinese schools in general, but I do know I was first taught Pinyin, which would be like the romanized version of Chinese. Basically, it uses English letters but there's a sign above each word that denotes how it's to be pronounced; specifically, four different possible signs since, like Os said, each Chinese syllable has 4 different ways of pronouncing it. Once you've learned that, they start you on constructing words together by giving you the pinyin form and the character. Tons of memorization right there since if you mess up a stroke by accident, you can completely change the word! Same thing w/pronounciation; even now, I sometimes accidentally say to my mom "I'm missing my eyes" and not "I'm missing my glasses" because "glasses" and "eyes" in Chinese sound very similar save for a different stress sound!
I was at first confused at how you could confuse eyes and glasses. Then I realized it was the second word of each phrase that gave you the problem. This reminds me of an associate/friend who had been to China about 20 times but still didn't know the language so I arranged for him to exchange lessons with a Chinese business woman here. Anyway, I was curious and asked him why, of all things, he happened to know "mouse" in Chinese. Turned out he once tried to say "teacher" and got the Chinese laughing because it sounded more like "mouse"!
Both the new pinyin pronunciation system and simplified writing are Communist government's attempts to make Chinese easier to learn. Instead of traditional pinyin symbols, Roman alphabets are used. However, they don't always sound the same as what the alphabet users are accustomed to. Chinese pronunciations can be very exact and precise compared to other languages. E.g. In English "T' is pronounced differently with different words and with different emphases. The Chinese pinyin uses "D" and "T" to differentiate them. As well, other sounds are so refined that they use some alphabets uniquely for distinction, thus the use of "Q" which sounds more like "Ch" which is already assigned for a specific "Ch" sound.
As os expressed, these reforms initiated by the current Chinese government "butchered" the language. I understand what s/he means. Written Chinese is comprised of characters derived from pictograms, making written Chinese just about the hardest to learn and maintain. Spoken Chinese, however, is quite easy as long as one has overcome the intonation recognition problem, due to the simplicity of grammar and limited pronunciations. The pictogram characteristics, similar and even identical pronunciations of different words, and the simple grammar contribute greatly to the beauty of the language for literary use, such as poetry, verses and songs because there can be so many plays of words, written arrangements, implications, purposeful ambiquity, and innuendos. However, without alphabets, this is IMO a terribly non-pragmatic language. It's difficult to organize and hardly lends itself to easy typing, filing, scientific nomenclatures, etc.
Chinese is a beautiful language for literature but a very poor technical one. I guess the Communist government tries to improve it for the latter and practical reasons, but in the process also sacrifices/"butchers" the beauty and former characteristics.
Edited because even as I'm explaining the Chinese language, I need to check my English and minimize my inevitable mistakes!
Chinese is a beautiful language for literature but a very poor technological one. I guess the Communist government tries to improve it for the latter and practical reasons, but in the process also sacrifices/butchers the beauty and former characteristics.
It is also so much different to learn a language with all the grammar and syntax and all, and when you apply it, it is an alien universe. It is like learning a wooden language , rules and exams cant give you exactly the language that is alive and changing. In Greece almost all children we are taking the exams held by the British Council of Cambridge lower level in primary and proficiency level in secondary school , with this paper you can even teach to a school afterwards and probably speak with the queen of england (i have it framed) and then I came on the board where people are actually speaking English and I felt dump
You also realize the strange rules of your native language once you see the difficulties that foreign people have when learning it.
I think contemporary things learn you the language once you know its rules, like music, books, GS...
"I was like stunned..."
Where's the link to Michelle saying this? I'd like to read all of the statements she made at this event.
For Ms. Kwan, whose parents are both ethnically Chinese and who is now studying public policy, the dinner was a gee-whiz opportunity to gaze at celebrities like former President Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state. She made it a point to say hello to Mr. Carter, who once awarded her a Goodwill Games medal. “I was like stunned, stunned that he remembered me,” she said.
My professor (an American scholar) had actually been living in China in 1949 and was placed under mild house arrest by the communist government for several years. When he was allowed to return to America, he got in trouble with the U.S. House Unamerican Activities Committee because he refused to say that his captors beat him daily, etc.
Yehudi Menuhin...