Takeshi at Taipei Goldern Horse Film Festival

[thatonechick]

yuan said:

take said:

However, some scholars criticise this transformation of written Chinese deteriorates the traditional Chinese culture. Unfortunately, most of the Mainland Chinese (except GongDong province like Hong Kong) write simplied Chinese.

Why deteriorate Simplified Chinese the traditional Chinese culture? All I know is that Traditional Chinese is a **** to read on a computer. You can't see what sign it is! I even think that the simplified system wasn't simplified enough. They could have gone further and made the language even easier to learn. The only thing that scares westerners to learn Chinese is the Characters - which are lovely too!

YUAN

True. I've been dabbling in the learning of Chinese and Japanese. My biggest problem is the chinese characters. They may be intimidating at times, but I feel that the more I try, the easier it will become. I find Chinese to be a very unique language.

I can see how simplified chinese gets it's bad wrap, but at least the traditional has not gone by the wayside.

Its like when you replace proper english writing to mobile text messaging, its annoying but saves time...lol

The only problem I have with 'net speak' is when it shows up in other places than the net. To me, it's like, you are no longer in a chat or on a MB, spell it out. So, in a way, I can understand the scrutiny simplified chinese gets.

Thanks you guys for expanding on this topic. I love learning about different languages!

[MissCarlos]

yuan said:

I've my doubts. Most people in Taiwan speaks Mandarin, I've heard. It's because the Nationalist fled from the mainland to Taiwan. Those who already lived there of course speaks Taiwanese, but I think they're in minority now.

Aside from Japanese, I sometimes get confused on who's speaking what language as Cantonese, Chinese, Mandarin, Taiwanese (for examples) sound nearly all the same to me. I can understand Japanese, written and spoken (I'm doing good with writing Japanese, the more simple kanji) more than I can any Chinese language, but I do know some.

With "Hero", starring Jet Li. It was in Mandarin. All I was thinking, this movie is in Chinese. "The movie is in Mandarin. Are you sure you want to see it?" Look, lady, you asked me THREE TIMES!! YES I WANT TO SEE THE MOVIE!! It's subtitled in English. I WANT TO SEE ASIANS, DANGIT!! Just gimmie my ticket. I want to go, "oooo!! Hot!!" ;D

I love Asian culture.

[thatonechick]

take said:

Simplified Chinese is referring to the format of writing. As you may discover, the writing of Chinese is rather complicated. You have to draw several or many lines to form a word. For convenience purpose, people simplify the way they write.

I use a sentence for an example, "ÁúµÄ´«ÈË" is the simplified Chinese of "ýˆµÄ‚÷ÈË". (Hope your computer can encode these words)

In order words, people draw 5-6 lines to complete a word instead of drawing 15-16 lines.

However, some scholars criticise this transformation of written Chinese deteriorates the traditional Chinese culture. Unfortunately, most of the Mainland Chinese (except GongDong province like Hong Kong) write simplied Chinese.

Mandarin is the spoken language, it is not related to writing.

Hope this clarification could help. ;D

Yes, Take, it helps. THANKS!

So...Simplified Chinese is not a way of speaking, but a way of writing?

And.....Mandarin is not a written language, but a spoken one?

I'll get it all organized someday.....lol...

[yuan]

misscarlos said:

I love Asian culture.

Who doesn't? ;D

[yuan]

thatonechick said:

So...Simplified Chinese is not a way of speaking, but a way of writing? And.....Mandarin is not a written language, but a spoken one?

Well, you can put it this way. Simplified and Traditional Chinese isn't about dialect. They're about geography and politics. But if you see pinyin as a scripture - that actually is used by kids - then you have several scriptures.

Then there actually exists specific colloquial characters so you can write Cantonese spoken language. I don't know when, maybe in novels to give it a realistic touch. But most people uses Simplified Chinese in writing and reading, whatever dialect they speak.

The spoken language differs greatly. I don't know how much you know about Nordic languages but what they are toward each other, Chinese dialects are toward each other. For example I understand Danish and the two dialects in Norway, even though I never learned them. Icelandic I don't understand even though it's related to Swedish. But the largest gap between two Chinese dialects are as wide as between Swedish and Icelandic.

It's strange that Chinese can be one language with that gap, when Danish and Swedish are different languages. What's a language and what's a dialect is difficult. As difficult for me to know when to use "is" or "are"...

[thatonechick]

Thanks Yuan, but you didn't really answer my questions.......and I don't know any Nordic languages so I'm not following you there at all......

[yuan]

thatonechick said:

Thanks Yuan, but you didn't really answer my questions.......and I don't know any Nordic languages so I'm not following you there at all......

I try one more time. This time the short version.

Simplified Chinese is only a way of write and read.

Mandarin is only a way of speak.

They can be combined, but other variants exist. The combination Mandarin and Simplified Chinese is the most common.

This was really short. ;D

[thatonechick]

Thanks, Yuan. The long version wouldn't have been so bad if you would have kept with the Chinese theme instead of comparing it to something I know nothing about. I appreciate your time.

[jean]

Never mind, Takeshi speaks english anyway....LOL

[glaucia]

The point is: we associate the sound of a language with the way of writing. We've got a phonetic writing language. Now, all you need is to forget It and you will understand Chinese, Japanese. They use ideograms, so kanji, for example, is a symbol that transmits an idea, not a sound. So, the spoken language is not related with the way of writing. Am I right?

[yuan]

glaucia said:

The point is: we associate the sound of a language with the way of writing. We've got a phonetic writing language. Now, all you need is to forget It and you will understand Chinese, Japanese. They use ideograms, so kanji, for example, is a symbol that transmits an idea, not a sound. So, the spoken language is not related with the way of writing. Am I right?

Well, actually Chinese is a syllable alphabet, so you could by the radicals (pieces in the character) see what it could sound as. The problem is that Chinese is a couple of thousands years old. That makes it really hard (impossible) to guess nowadays.

But I want to come with a smaller protest about our languages' phonetic style. I actually think English is hard to write. I understand it when I read, but many times I have a problem knowing how to spell. My teacher in English said that the English spelling come from 500 years ago, when for example Swedish had the recent larger spelling reform for 150 years ago. That makes Swedish easier to spell if you know how it's pronounced.

Only Maori (native language of New Zealand) is spelled as it's pronounced, though.

[jean]

o well it doesnt matter you can always communicate by the language of love!!

[MissCarlos]

yuan said:

Who doesn't? ;D

There's no China Town in Quebec City. I wish there was but there are a lot of Chinese and Japanese resturants and what's so awesome about that is they have authentic Chinese and Japanese employees!! ;D

[yuan]

misscarlos said:

yuan said:

Who doesn't? ;D

There's no China Town in Quebec City. I wish there was but there are a lot of Chinese and Japanese resturants and what's so awesome about that is they have authentic Chinese and Japanese employees!! ;D

Yeah, but don't all of them speak Cantonese? I've a hard time to actually find a Beijing restaurant. The Cantonese often have shark fin soup and I really don't want to support that kind of cruelty. The Japanese are always full of Swedes. A cruelty to the food... ;D

[MissCarlos]

At the Japanese ones that I go to, they speak Japanese.

At the Chinese ones, it's either Chinese or Cantonese. If I'm not mistaken, the new one I went to yesterday, I think they were speaking Mandarin. I have "Hero" on DVD and some of the words they said sounded Mandarin. I don't hear Chinese, Taiwanese, Mandarin, or Cantonese often enough to tell the difference. Well, I know Chinese when I hear it.

I do know that at the Vietmanese resturants here, they speak Vietmanese.

We don't have any Korean resturants here.