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Old 11-17-2016, 11:53 AM
 
Location: Texas
1,982 posts, read 2,077,689 times
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Traditional Chinese characters are beautiful, for the most part, although there are prettier systems, but I think all three/four major writing systems in EA are stunning. That said, I also believe the Latin Alphabet can be very beautiful depending on the style.

Chinese characters, being logograms, have their pros and cons versus alphabets. I personally believe the system is inefficient in terms of learning, but it could be argued that it is more efficient in communicating ideas (assuming those involved know the system).
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Old 11-17-2016, 05:58 PM
 
280 posts, read 336,871 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Parhe View Post
Traditional Chinese characters are beautiful, for the most part, although there are prettier systems, but I think all three/four major writing systems in EA are stunning. That said, I also believe the Latin Alphabet can be very beautiful depending on the style.

Chinese characters, being logograms, have their pros and cons versus alphabets. I personally believe the system is inefficient in terms of learning, but it could be argued that it is more efficient in communicating ideas (assuming those involved know the system).
Disadvantages:


- Steep learning curve.
- Heavy reliance on memory, rote learning.
- Difficult to recall, no real intuition.


Advantages:


- Was at one stage pioneering since no other group had any written form in East Asia.
- United all Chinese dialects and to some extent, minorities.
- Somewhat expressive, seems easier to write efficiently than say English.
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Old 11-18-2016, 11:17 AM
 
Location: Taipei
8,862 posts, read 8,385,809 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by willister View Post
- Steep learning curve.
No one is asking anyone to learn it (apart from retarded Chinese nationalists that keep claiming that Chinese will become as relevant as English is today). You can easily dodge this bullet by carrying on with your life as if it never existed.

Quote:
- Heavy reliance on memory, rote learning.
Yeah I'm sure that memory isn't needed when learning English or French.

Quote:
- Difficult to recall, no real intuition.
Well if one wants to learn it and doesn't put any effort in understanding the rules then sure, it's hard to recall and there's no intuition.

Quote:
- United all Chinese dialects and to some extent, minorities.
I guess this is indeed an advantage ... from an imperialist POV, which you obviously love.

Quote:
Originally Posted by saibot View Post
Spanish is better than English, but its spelling still has its weak points (silent H, lack of distinction between B/V in most dialects, etc.) A very good example of one-to-one sound-letter correspondence is Finnish.
I find French pronunciation pretty consistent overall, at least much better than English, though the liaisons often don't make any sense.
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Old 11-18-2016, 12:21 PM
 
14,248 posts, read 11,550,945 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Greysholic View Post
I find French pronunciation pretty consistent overall, at least much better than English, though the liaisons often don't make any sense.
You can't be serious. French spelling is not even close to consistent, much less logical. How can you defend the phonetic rules of a language in which "ai, aie, aient, aies, ait, es, est, et" are all pronounced alike? It's worse than English.
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Old 11-18-2016, 08:06 PM
 
Location: Taipei
8,862 posts, read 8,385,809 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by saibot View Post
You can't be serious. French spelling is not even close to consistent, much less logical. How can you defend the phonetic rules of a language in which "ai, aie, aient, aies, ait, es, est, et" are all pronounced alike? It's worse than English.
I should rephrase it, the vowels are quite consistent, but yeah the consonants are not.
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Old 11-20-2016, 10:36 PM
 
Location: Earth
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french doesn't even have the number 90
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Old 11-22-2016, 11:55 AM
 
Location: Texas
1,982 posts, read 2,077,689 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by willister View Post
Disadvantages:


- Steep learning curve.
- Heavy reliance on memory, rote learning.
- Difficult to recall, no real intuition.


Advantages:


- Was at one stage pioneering since no other group had any written form in East Asia.
- United all Chinese dialects and to some extent, minorities.

- Somewhat expressive, seems easier to write efficiently than say English.
I would say those are more accomplishments than advantages. The first one is only useful for historians for the region who, while important, are a very small minority of the population.
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Old 07-25-2017, 08:48 AM
 
10,839 posts, read 14,668,417 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by saibot View Post
You can't be serious. French spelling is not even close to consistent, much less logical. How can you defend the phonetic rules of a language in which "ai, aie, aient, aies, ait, es, est, et" are all pronounced alike? It's worse than English.
NO, it is not worse. all these are pronounced alike, but they are ALWAYS alike, no surprise. So when you see them, you know exactly how to read (not the other way around though).

In English, the same letter/combination can be pronounced in many ways. How many pronunciation can "a" take? 6? 7? In French, there is 1. And "ough"?

English is FAR WORSE in that respect.
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Old 07-27-2017, 03:38 PM
 
2,162 posts, read 1,270,513 times
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Yeah, I find the French pronunciation much simpler and less complicated.

Back to the OP's topic, here are some examples I found online:

行 ~ can be pronounced in 5 different ways, depending on the context.
xíng, háng, xìng, hàng, héng

缪 ~ can pronounced as
móu, jiū, liǎo, miào, miù, mù
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Old 07-27-2017, 06:15 PM
 
2,790 posts, read 1,634,620 times
Reputation: 4478
Traditional Chinese characters are beautiful. Simplified is so rickety and UGLY. What a way to ruin the beauty of the written language. Whoever made simplified be the standard of education should be shot.

As for learning the language, learning any language is hard. But Asian languages with characters, not Roman alphabet (I think that's what English and other European language are called) makes it impossible to read the word. If you don't know, you don't know. You can't even attempt it. You don't even have a clue as to what it sounds like. In English at least, you can TRY to pronounce it, even if it's wrong. Like Pullayup. At least you know it starts with a P sound. A Chinese character can literally start with ANY sound. You have to ASK someone how to say this word, unless you learn Pinyin.

I'm very sensitive to sounds, and the sound of Mandarin makes my ears bleed. It sounds TERRIBLE. It sounds screechy and like a violin off key. I had a Mandarin co-worker and she sounded like a pack of hynenas every time she spoke. When she was agitated, she spoke extremely fast and the hyena sounded more screechy and high pitched than ever. I seriously wanted to throw something at her to shut her up.

I know Cantonese. It's my second language, and the homophones make my head spin. A word with the sound "wong" in the SAME tone can be written some 6 different ways, all with different definitions.

I hate that spoken and written Cantonese use completely different vocabulary words. When you say "Why" in English, you also write "Why." When you say "Why" in Cantonese, you say it "dim gai," but you write it "wai sam mo." You have 2 sets of vocabulary words in the same language. That's why if you only know the spoken vocabulary, you'll never be able to understand song lyrics because song lyrics are written in formal words. Unlike English.
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