jake123

Didn't simplification start before communist party gained power?

嘉嘉

I heard it's after

people say 簡體 is a product of the commie

tofu

"""Didn't simplification start before communist party gained power?"""

yes, but official character simplifications was introuduced after prc was formed.  and people are forced to use it in around 80s.

嘉嘉

I meant, for English, people can't "guess" the meaning just by looking at the spelling of the words. According to Chinese culture, yep, we can guess/know the meaning of some of the words just by look ...
Ultraman 發表於 2009-3-18 17:50

of course you can tell the meaning of an english word by reading it @_@

most of the scientific terms in fact has meaning, like fibbi pointed out, which is derived from latin. (well cuz I study science, so I know many scientific terms have meaning of each part of the word. Maybe there are many more similar cases in the art field too)

嘉嘉

20# chunsh


I guess I would rather study more english la

嘉嘉

12# tofu


well I am not desperate to learn Mandarin, so that's ok la, haha
I prefer learning more japanese @w@ and never regret taking the courses

Ultraman

of course you can tell the meaning of an english word by reading it @_@

most of the scientific terms in fact has meaning, like fibbi pointed out, which is derived from latin. (well cuz I study scien ...
嘉嘉 發表於 2009-3-18 19:30

I don't mean to argue with you, but just by looking at the spelling of "w"..."o"..."r"..."d", how can people tell it means "文字" (one of the meanings)? Does "w" tell anything by itself? Does "o" tell anything by itself? ...... People learn the word as a whole, as "word", whenever people see this word, they can tell the meaning (of course they read the spelling and know the meaning).

Let's go back to Chinese, OK, the example is "麵". People must have knew the words "麥" and "面" first, but why not the pronunciation of "麵" is not "麥" but "面"? People still need to learn the word by itself, right?

Of course, every word has a meaning (or more). Yes, you can "tell the meaning of the scientific terms" because you already learnt them. Can you tell the meaning of a word that you never seen/learnt before just by looking at its spelling? That's what I meant.

fishbelly

Didn't simplification start before communist party gained power?
jake123 發表於 2009-3-18 20:02

Yes, and the spin (Commies claim anyway!) on using simplified is that firstly, it's easy to learn and read so that it could lower iliteracy; secondly it's the political trick to make people think the "past has gone" and there comes a new set of rules and fonts

Beside simplifying Chinese writing our lovely chairman Mao also promotes Pinying, which makes chinese language easier to communicate with western world.  I personally think it's OK and convienient to use english piniying as chinese input, but of coz it could create many "same pronounciation different words different meanings" problem....

fishbelly

"...don't mean to argue with you, but just by looking at the spelling of "w"..."o"..."r"..."d", how can people tell it means "文字" (one of the meanings)? Does "w" tell anything by itself? Does "o" tell anything by itself? ...... People learn the word as a whole, as "word", whenever people..." Ultraman

that's a whole set of differnt values btn East and West.

Generally Latin based languages and writings are deemed to be more precise, easy to get to the point, various Chinese words are picture based, which is quite ambiguous but very artistic....

fibbi

27# Ultraman

Further discussion. Every language, we need to learn from basic "blocks" first. In Chinese, there are 4 methods of making up each "word": 會意，假借，象形，形聲
Some words are strictly derived from picture (象形). e.g. Sun, Moon, Mountain. And after many years the "pictures" turn to strokes and becomes the word we use today.
Some words are derived from the sound. Some from the "meaning".  But of course, you need know quite many basic characters in Chinese. Why the word "noodle" use the sound of "min" but not the "wheat" part. I don't know. All I know is that it makes sense.
Just by looking at the word, especially in Chinese, we can guess the meaning (or how it pronouns).
Say in English (or latin), if we see anything "optometrist", "opto...." we know it's something eye-related.