Thread: What do you think about Chinese characters?

I think that China has a couple scripts and some are easier to read.

I believe that eventually they will make one of the easier ones the universal, partially due to foreigners learning the language and choosing to learn the easiest one and partially to make it easier for the citizenry to read.

They will probably keep some of the old characters in some scenarios for traditional reasons as long as the nation stands.

Well okay, one script is traditional, the other is modern. But the modern script is still a separate character for every word in existence, that's the point. There's no alphabet to speak of... yet!

Yeah, the closest to that alphebat is pronounced Kan-gee, (the Japanese use another variant of and although each word doesn't have a different character, it is still pretty crazy and not at all like a conventional alphabet! Yeah you're right... it's strange.

Don't the Chinese have to learn like 400 characters?

Originally Posted by slayer

Don't the Chinese have to learn like 400 characters?

Heh. Try 10,000 just to read a newspaper.

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

Heh. Try 10,000 just to read a newspaper.

;_;

Make everyone learn english and there ya go.

I think it's beautiful to have to learn so much just to read.
It really is an art.

Beautiful, yet horribly impractical. Creates a lot of illiteracy.

World domination is easier when citizens can't write complaints.

Originally Posted by ClouD

World domination is easier when citizens can't write complaints.

I'm in favor of dictatorships, as long as I'm the dictator.

Well, japanese has two "basic" sets of symbols, consisting of one symbol for each syllable, , and one "complicated" one, with one symbol for each word. You learn the basics first and then the complicated one. It really isn't that hard if you think of it: you learn new words everyday, don't you? So, instead of learning a new word, you learn a new symbol.

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

Beautiful, yet horribly impractical. Creates a lot of illiteracy.

If I'm not mistaken, Japan has the lowest illiteracy rates in the world. I think it's pretty much zero. Don't blame illiteracy on a language, blame it on politics (I'm not criticising China, I'm just saying there're quite some poor people there).

And English is by far not a language I'd recommend. On an overall term, I'd recommend the artificial language Interlingua. But since implementing an artificial language is so hard, I think everyone could do pretty well with Spanish. Grammar is nearly as easy as the English one, and is based all on latin-derived radicals.

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

Beautiful, yet horribly impractical. Creates a lot of illiteracy.

Makes the language less likely to change, and thus more stable, though.

I mean, english has 40 sounds to 26 characters. That's pretty crazy.

So having one character per word makes reading pretty much free of spelling errors and not being able to pronounce words..

There is the Japanese written word pronounced Kan-jee that is relativley easy to learn. Put yourself to it and you can have it down in a year. The Japanese are actually as literate as America, at 99%.

(CIA world factbook.)

Kromoh, you may be thinking about the more complex Japanese and much more uncommon form of Japanese word. In relativity to that, than maybe it is.

America has 99% literacy? Wake up man.

Kanji is based on one or two symbols per word, if I was told right.

Counting mentally able individuals above age 15, yes, we have 99% literacy inclusive to basic literacy.

Cia world factbook

Kanji is based on one or two symbols per word, if I was told right.

Yeah, but context, accompanying case and symbols for those letters, and order dictate what word it is. It's difficult in that it's not phonetic, but it's an alphabet in many regards. There certainly aren't two unique letters per word.

And English is rising really fast in Japan! A fluent Japanese/English speaker who has experience in teaching can make a good amount of money in Japan teaching English courses.

Hopefully they'll fully adopt English. English has been on the rise as 'the language of business' since the end of WWII.

Originally Posted by Grod

Hopefully they'll fully adopt English. English has been on the rise as 'the language of business' since the end of WWII.

Adopt English? Fuck you.

Go watch American Idol and leave the Internet for smart people.

Originally Posted by Kromoh

Adopt English? Fuck you.

Go watch American Idol and leave the Internet for smart people.

This message has been brought to you by

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

All for converting the forums to Mandarin, say 'I'.

Originally Posted by A Roxxor

This message has been brought to you by

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

All for converting the forums to Mandarin, say 'I'.

Well, go back to your ignorant self now. You probably don't even think about how much of an important part of culture and society a language is to a nation. Fuck you and your americanism. Go learn another language and stop being lazy. You just want to take control over the rest of the world with your goddamn capitalism. You don't give a shit about Mandarin, but you expect people to adopt English. Fuck you.

All for blasting ignorant and disregardful americans, say 'I'.

Kromoh, stop being an ass to people. A single-languaged world is best, and keeping the world seperated by language in order to preserve culture is a waste. What I vouche for, is the entire world learning english as their secondary language, except for UK, USA and Australia, of course.

No K, Exo hasn't changed, it's you my friend.

Originally Posted by Kromoh

Well, go back to your ignorant self now. You probably don't even think about how much of an important part of culture and society a language is to a nation. Fuck you and your americanism. Go learn another language and stop being lazy. You just want to take control over the rest of the world with your goddamn capitalism. You don't give a shit about Mandarin, but you expect people to adopt English. Fuck you.

All for blasting ignorant and disregardful americans, say 'I'.

Is language all that important, culturally? If it is, should it be?

Irish is rapidly dying, and when I was in Ireland I wrote a paper on why that's okay. The paper got rave reviews by Irish professors.

I'm not saying I'm right, but I am saying that it's a debatable issue.

Also, stop bashing Americans.