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There is a relationship between the oral and written language whereas with Chinese characters there is not. I am not putting down Chinese characters. I am just trying to discuss and understand the impact it may have on the countries which adopt it. On this thread, I have quoted Father João Rodrigues saying Chinese characters actually help the Chinese and the Japanese being smarter. However, I have also quoted Leibniz, the famous German philosopher, who believed the characters demand too much of one's memory.
There is a relationship between oral and written Chinese characters as well, it's just that you are not aware of it as you've never learned it. There are four main categories of how Chinese characters are written, and some 90% of Chinese characters belong to the category of radical-phonetic compounds. One could usually know how the character is pronounced by knowing the phonetic part of the character, at least roughly, whereas the meaning lies in the radical. It's not always accurate, but it works most of the time.
Simplified Chinese sucks because it completely ruins this otherwise very consistent rule, in addition to being absolutely ugly.
There is a relationship between oral and written Chinese characters as well, it's just that you are not aware of it as you've never learned it. There are four main categories of how Chinese characters are written, and some 90% of Chinese characters belong to the category of radical-phonetic compounds. One could usually know how the character is pronounced by knowing the phonetic part of the character, at least roughly, whereas the meaning lies in the radical. It's not always accurate, but it works most of the time.
Simplified Chinese sucks because it completely ruins this otherwise very consistent rule, in addition to being absolutely ugly.
No, simplified Chinese does not change the rule for the most part, on the contrary it sometimes "abuses" the rule and makes some new characters that way. e.g. 战 极 选
^There are also many words that used to be but are not consistent with the rule any more, like 尘, 囯, 穷.
And there are even more words that I just don't get how could they possibly be simplified to those forms, and I also don't like how some words are "shared", such as 发.
I know there are good arguments for romanization, but I would still hate for so much to be lost. For one, almost the entire body of Chinese literature would be lost, because it can not be romanized without becoming incomprehensible. You can write conversational Chinese phonetically without much of a problem, but characters are indispensable for understanding the literary language.
I know there are good arguments for romanization, but I would still hate for so much to be lost. For one, almost the entire body of Chinese literature would be lost, because it can not be romanized without becoming incomprehensible. You can write conversational Chinese phonetically without much of a problem, but characters are indispensable for understanding the literary language.
I've always thought for a tonal and varied language like Chinese, something like Bopomofo or some variation of it would be best. It still retains a level of 'Chinese-ness" and it unique, similar to that of Hangul. For that to happen though there would need to be a huge transition period, it won't happen as well as removing maybe 1-2 tones, making Mandarin a more pitch accent language, similar to that of Japanese.
^There are also many words that used to be but are not consistent with the rule any more, like 尘, 囯, 穷.
And there are even more words that I just don't get how could they possibly be simplified to those forms, and I also don't like how some words are "shared", such as 发.
尘 and 国 become 会意字, not 形声字 any more. However it is still a "legitimate" way to make characters.
I suspect they got the 国 from Japan. Obviously some ideas were from Japan.
With nowhere near the efficiency of English or Korean input. The fastest Chinese typists cannot match those of those languages based on an alphabet.
Do you have any source or study to support such claim? I don't think so at all.
It seems like only people who don't speak a slick of Chinese want to romanise it or further simplify the language. For what?
Quote:
Originally Posted by yueng-ling
尘 and 国 become 会意字, not 形声字 any more. However it is still a "legitimate" way to make characters.
I suspect they got the 国 from Japan. Obviously some ideas were from Japan.
Yeah...新會意字 lol, it's actually quite funny.
There are more examples, but I can't think of more rn.
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