| Is the Chinese language dead? | |
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| Mar 12, 2007 01:35 | #31   |
 | Be patient |
| Mar 12, 2007 09:33 | #32 |
| Well I certainly didn't mean to offend you, Roger. I actually figured you would find the comment on your response to the Apault's burgle statement funny. But I never said your were a crook, Roger, as you suggest in your post. ...and to explain my "same boat" comment more clearly: neither of us are linguistic anthropologists. ...and finally to the Community, I began my post with the comment, "no offense intended" recognizing the sensitivity of what I was asking: a question about how an ancient language, based on characters rather than a alphabet, could contend with the sort of change brought on by modernization. If I offended any native speakers with my question, I offer all of you my sincerest apologies. |
| Mar 21, 2007 08:42 | #33 |
| What an interested thread you kicked off GRIZ. Since setting my mind to learning Mandarin (little more than a year ago) I have been variously puzzled and amazed by the differences between the character based approach to written language, and the 'alphabet' approach of my native english. I think the question you posed regarding whether new characters will ever be created for new words, and how this reflects on the nature of the language development, is certainly an interesting one. Many respondents have shown that the Chinese language has been developing by constructing new combinations of characters to create 'words' to represent emerging new technologies, and previously unexpressed concepts, and have shown this can be independent of any importation from the west. However, this is rather similar to the mechanism of new word creation used by all the other (alphabet based) languages of the world, and doesn't tap the potential for generating new characters to capture concepts pictorially. Maybe it would all be too difficult to manage if the language were dynamic on all levels. If you were to consider the introduction of a new character for representation of say 'motor', how could you possibly integrate this into the spoken language where it would already have established a multi-character, multi-syllable identity? Clearly it has been demonstrated that the Chinese character set can be revised in a controlled manner (as in the simplification), but could the language accommodate many new characters if these did not come with new sound/stress combinations? Would it not be frightening if new characters were to be brought into being that necessitated use of more western sounds!! :-) |
| Mar 23, 2007 05:50 | #34 |
| Traveller Mike, I thought I pointed out in my comments how Chinese can and does create new characters. The periodic table of the elements provides plenty of examples- all the elements that have been discovered in modern times have required their own unique character. This is done by recombining radicals. Radicals, which as a student of Chinese you should be starting to become familiar with, are simple characters or stripped-down forms of simple characters which are combined to form more complex characters. A couple of examples would be curry and coffee, both imported probably in fairly recent times. Curry is 咖喱. Notice that both characters have the 口 radical on the left. This means mouth and in these two characters indicate that the word refers to something you eat. The radicals 加 and 厘 provide the phonetic information. The combination comes out as 'gali', meaning curry. Coffee, 咖啡 follows the exact same method. "Clearly it has been demonstrated that the Chinese character set can be revised in a controlled manner (as in the simplification), but could the language accommodate many new characters if these did not come with new sound/stress combinations? Would it not be frightening if new characters were to be brought into being that necessitated use of more western sounds!! :-)" What on earth do you mean? The new characters naturally come with their own pronunciation, first of all. Secondly, I've never heard of a language which imports foreign pronunciations with its loan words. Think of all the English words of a non-English origin: we never pronounce them as they were originally pronounced in the source language, we pronounce them as if they were English words (which they now are). Chinese is no different. With curry and coffee we can see how Chinese can assign new words sounds that approximate the pronunciation in the source language, but these sounds come from within the Chinese language. |
| Mar 23, 2007 13:01 | #35 |
| OK Chris, I am clearly out of my depth here! I had read your earlier post, and think I picked up on some of the rule based combinations of radicals used to provide indication of meaning & sound of new words. Perhaps the question I should have asked was whether new radicals can be created, to picture new concepts (such as 'motor'), or new sounds (such as 'stu' as in me = stupid?). the former might be desirable, but as to the latter I hope it doesn't happen I much appreciate the enlightenment to the subject you have brought through your posts. |
| Mar 23, 2007 23:51 | #36 |
| Better question. Well, a clearer question and one worth asking. I don't know how you'd create new radicals, although at some stage in the past all the radicals must have been created and I can't think of any reason why new ones couldn't be created or if new radicals would be accepted either by the "authorities" or by the populace. Same goes for new sounds. Although, apparently a lot of foreign words and slang are written in combinations of numbers and Latin (English, whatever) letters online, e.g. 3q for thank you, 3166 for sayonara, mm for meimei (meaning pretty girl). So basically I can't answer your question and I don't know anybody who can, although this could be an interesting area for further study. Sorry for going off at you like that. I can get a bit worked up about subjects like this. |
| Aug 30, 2007 23:48 | #37 |
| i think that is just the advantages of Chinese most of chinese word are combined with single characters. and we don't need inventing single characters,that will hard to remember ,like huge english new word invented every year let's analyse: the words are combined with single charactors the single characters are combined with (how to say) "unit" the "part" are combined with (how to say)"part" so the basic factor is "part",like the 26 letters chinese:part-unit-single charactor-word english:letter-word(including some combined word) part,unit,single charactor,letter are fixed. word is invented continually,but chinese is easy to remember single characotors we used in daily life are about 2000-3000,we only remember these we can easy to combined a new word with known single characters,and we can guess the word meaning through the single characters. and now english number of words is much more than Shakespeare period. but the combined word is fewer. the language is differrent from the information,language is use by human-being in daily life,simple and easy to learn and remember is the most important. and the information,techenique,knowledge ,we can remember by computer,and we don't use all of them in daily life. for example english: pig-pork sheep-mutton chinese zhu-zhu rou(zhu's meat) yang-yang rou(yang's meat) |
| Aug 31, 2007 12:51 | #38 |
| Nice to see this thread continuing... It is an interesting topic for those of us attempting to recognize and say a few characters. ...and Chris' posts are quite enlightening. :-) |
| Sep 2, 2007 17:25 | #39 |
| While it has been established herein, that the language of China, is very much alive and well; I am very happy to observe that the 'cigar' in your previous avatar has died !!! Don't worry Lion Power, more American humor !!! :) |
| Sep 2, 2007 20:09 | #40 |
| I might revive my cigar avatar just so you can call me stinky again ;-) |
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