Asian Language Romanization

[BeTheReds]

Japanese for the most part makes sense in their romanization system..

Korea on the other hand...

There are many Korean words that romanization does not lend a helping hand to.  If one does not read hangul or how each hangul letter gets romanized, english romanization makes the word incomprehensible when uttered by the non-speaker simply reading the romanization.

Sometimes the romanization doesn't matter terribly, like the two ways of spelling the name of the big southern coastal city (Pusan or Busan).  Or SEoul's domestic airport (Gimpo or Kimpo)  or the Korean island that Japan wrongfully claims (Tokto Tokdo Dokto Dokdo).

The vowels is where it gets most confusing.

Take Seoul for instance... 
Many people think it rhymes with soul, but it does not, and in fact Seoul has 2 syllables and those are "Seo" and "ool".  "eo" is the romanization of the vowel that actually sounds more like "aw" or "uh".  So remember, it's not "soul" but "saw-ool" 

How about people's names then?

Choi and Park and Hur come to mind...

Choi is not to be pronounced how it is spelled.  It's more close to "CHEY" or "CHAY"

and Park is nothing like the park you go to play in.  It's more like "PAH +K"  but not really a full K either, man, this is hard to explain... like, you don't breathe out air when you say the k part. like your tounge just blocks the vocal channel and lets no air thru...  confusing?

Hur is also Heo, so, it could be HUH or HAW is suppose.  (funny anecdote, friend's dad chose american historical figures when westernizing his and his wife's names when they naturalized.  Thus she was Martha Washington Hur and he was Benjamin Franklin Hur.. or Ben Hur.  !!!!  BEN HUR!!!!


Hwang is not meant to be said with a southern "TWANG"!!!  read it like italian or spanish and that is my last name... woo woo.

hmm what else...

Stop saying "tie kwin doe" you morons.  "Take one, doh!" haha

man, i need to reform that shitty romanization system..

but what to do with the super aspirates?  the difference between b p and pp?  good luck..


Oh, and s before i is always shi... 

[MellowDrama]

All other romanizations of Mandarin except pinyin piss me off :angry: I don't care if the commies made pinyin, I like it as a Romanization system.

[Chris]

I have no porblem with japanese. But when I try learning Korean. I giving up. The romanization of it is so hard to understand. I can't even noraebang to my favoriting korean songs.

[Napoleon Chynamite]

<!--QuoteBegin-Chris+Aug 2 2003, 09:17 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Chris @ Aug 2 2003, 09:17 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I have no porblem with japanese. But when I try learning Korean. I giving up. The romanization of it is so hard to understand. I can't even noraebang to my favoriting korean songs. [/b][/quote]
You can't possibly achieve any amount of decent proficiency in Korean if you can't read Hangul. But fortunately learning Hangul is much easier than learning Japanese characters and wayyy easier than Chinese characters (or perhaps just much much less time consuming). Much more efficient in my opinion.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

<!--QuoteBegin-MellowDrama+Aug 2 2003, 09:05 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (MellowDrama @ Aug 2 2003, 09:05 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> All other romanizations of Mandarin except pinyin piss me off :angry: I don't care if the commies made pinyin, I like it as a Romanization system. [/b][/quote]
gwoyeu romatzyh is better :P no seriously, lots of scholarly works are starting to use it, cuz they know people are sick of trying to understand pinyin without tone marks, and gwoyeu romatzyh doesn't need them cuz the tonal information is built into the spelling. It's annoying when people (usually academics) use long or complex terms in pinyin (usually in order to show off) and don't put tone marks on it, so you don't have a damn clue what they're talking about.

Oh yeah, I hate Cantonese pinyin. Write it in characters or don't write it at all. Don't give me this stupid "I spell it like it sounds" shit which only the person writing it can even read.

But the one thing which really pisses me off are webpages written in Taiwanese. Especially the one where they only use romanization for the indigeneous Hokkien words, so you can't tell at all what the damn thing means.

[golden_buns]

<!--QuoteBegin-FrozenPizza+Aug 2 2003, 09:45 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (FrozenPizza @ Aug 2 2003, 09:45 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> You can't possibly achieve any amount of decent proficiency in Korean if you can't read Hangul. But fortunately learning Hangul is much easier than learning Japanese characters and wayyy easier than Chinese characters (or perhaps just much much less time consuming). Much more efficient in my opinion. [/b][/quote]
I have no problems with basic Korean, but those Korean words that come from Chinese make things really hard, cuz there are words that in Chinese they mean a completely different thing and are spelled differently, but in Hangul they're spellled the same way, so you have to figure out what's the real meaning of it.

[yoMAMA]

This is off topic, but Golden Buns, your avatar scared the shit out of me the first time I saw it!

:blink:

[AngryABCGirl]

Pinyin can die, that's all I have to say.

[RasFarengi]

Well as a person who had to learn Mandarin from scatch, and has been studying it since 1998, I think pinyin is a great system, if accent marks are added for the tones. THat Wei Gale crap they use in Taiwan should be thrown in the garbage, it is all political though...they don't want to accept anything from the Mainland.

Don't know shit about Korean, but Japanese romanization is very good, probably better than pinyin for Mandarin, but Japanese has less sounds and no tones to express so, I guess it is much easier to develope.

[Chris]

<!--QuoteBegin-AzNBuffGrL+Aug 3 2003, 12:28 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (AzNBuffGrL @ Aug 3 2003, 12:28 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Pinyin can die, that's all I have to say. [/b][/quote]
word. it needs to be executed.

[seanp]

Vietnamese romanization is also outdated... it is more spanish/portugese, but now as English language is the main language for trading... it should be also updated...

Like my friend's name is Phuc.. and people usually pronounce it as "Fuck" :P :unsure: ...it's more like "fook", which rhymes with "look"

[MellowDrama]

<!--QuoteBegin-Chris+Aug 3 2003, 11:38 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Chris @ Aug 3 2003, 11:38 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> word. it needs to be executed. [/b][/quote]
Too bad the over 1 billion in the PRC don't agree!

Pinyin rox0rz! :D

[MellowDrama]

<!--QuoteBegin-seanp+Aug 3 2003, 11:58 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (seanp @ Aug 3 2003, 11:58 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Vietnamese romanization is also outdated... it is more spanish/portugese, but now as English language is the main language for trading... it should be also updated...

Like my friend's name is Phuc.. and people usually pronounce it as "Fuck" :P :unsure: ...it's more like "fook", which rhymes with "look" [/b][/quote]
Well, they don't write Vietnamese in a script anymore (Chinese char.) so for all intents and purposes, the Romanization IS the written language (as it is in Indonesia, Philippines, and Malaysia).

[YuheiCarreau]

<!--QuoteBegin-RasFarengi+Aug 3 2003, 01:13 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (RasFarengi @ Aug 3 2003, 01:13 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Well as a person who had to learn Mandarin from scatch, and has been studying it since 1998, I think pinyin is a great system, if accent marks are added for the tones. THat Wei Gale crap they use in Taiwan should be thrown in the garbage, it is all political though...they don't want to accept anything from the Mainland.

Don't know shit about Korean, but Japanese romanization is very good, probably better than pinyin for Mandarin, but Japanese has less sounds and no tones to express so, I guess it is much easier to develope. [/b][/quote]
Japanese requires a completely different way of speaking though, which the romanization doesn't convey.

"YOO-hi? Yuh-HEE? Yuh-HEY? Yuh-HI? YOO-hey?"... This is why my friend's little brother refers to me as "the big Chinese guy" <_<

[RasFarengi]

Oh...I see what you mean...like the differece between Hashi (bridge) and hashi (chopsticks)...yeah that is hard to see when writing romaji, but you can usually figure it out from the context of the sentence. The thing that annoys me is the japanese-English. If you write it in Romaji often, I assume it is a Japanese word at first glance...

[ModernLogic]

To all the Pin Yin haters, maybe this would help: http://www.chinawestexchange.com/Mandarin/...pinyinChart.htm (http://www.chinawestexchange.com/Mandarin/Pinyin/pinyinChart.htm)

[Faithless]

Don't know if this is related to romanization or not, but it strikes me as funny.

You take a last name like Leung. By sight, I want to pronounce it as Lee-yung.

But I have heard it pronounced as Lee-yurng. Why isn't an "r" put into the romanized spelling?

Then you take a word like har (as in har gao). By sight, and this might be a poor example of proper romanization, I want to pronounce it as haRRR.

But I have heard it pronounced as haWWW. Why put the darn "r" in there, then?

[Seamus]

Pinyin is so much better than Wade-Giles. I especially hate how Wade-Giles romanizes both the "j" sound as well as the "ch" sound as "ch". It makes it look like Chinese is just a bunch of Ching Chong Chang Chong sounds, like ignorant people believe.

Also, I don't like how Wade-Giles separates the syllables, making it seem like Chinese is a monosyllabic language. Like "mirror" is "Ching Tsih" rather than "jingzi." To an uninitiated person, they'll be like "Oh, so a mirror is a 'ching'?" Isn't that what every other Chinese noun is? Or is it a Chong? Ching Chang! The name of the river in Central China is the "Chang Chiang" rather than the "Changjiang" WTF? And what is the deal with "Hs"? I'll admit "x" looks a bit weird as a representation for the sh sound (though it's necessary to distinguish it from the "shr" sound in Mandarin), but I know people with the last name Hsieh or Hsiao, and people always pronounce it as "Haseyoh" like they're trying to say hello in Korean or something.

[Faithless]

Where's the definitive Yale romanization that SWK talks about?

[SunWuKong]

Don't know if this is related to romanization or not, but it strikes me as funny.

You take a last name like Leung. By sight, I want to pronounce it as Lee-yung.

But I have heard it pronounced as Lee-yurng. Why isn't an "r" put into the romanized spelling?

Then you take a word like har (as in har gao). By sight, and this might be a poor example of proper romanization, I want to pronounce it as haRRR.

But I have heard it pronounced as haWWW. Why put the darn "r" in there, then?


the "r" tongue-curling sound does not exist in Cantonese. Cantonese romanisation, like probably other Asian language romanisations as well, does not strictly follow the rules of English phonetics. it's only very similar. and sometimes, it is closer to British English phonetics than it is to American English phonetics.

Where's the definitive Yale romanization that SWK talks about?

i found this site to be helpful:
http://www.chinawestexchange.com/Cantonese/Pingyam/pingyamChart.htm

i'm no linguist, but i do think the Yale Romanisation is better. more importantly, i think we need to standardise one romanisation for Cantonese.

[Faithless]

i found this site to be helpful:
http://www.chinawestexchange.com/Cantonese/Pingyam/pingyamChart.htm

i'm no linguist, but i do think the Yale Romanisation is better. more importantly, i think we need to standardise one romanisation for Cantonese.
Thanks. Bookmarked.

I looked up Leung and played audio. Sounds different than the way I've heard it pronounced by some friends. I've definitely heard like a (soft) "r" sound thrown in. Could this be a totally unique dialect or something done very local to the East Bay?

[SunWuKong]

Thanks. Bookmarked.

I looked up Leung and played audio. Sounds different than the way I've heard it pronounced by some friends. I've definitely heard like a (soft) "r" sound thrown in. Could this be a totally unique dialect or something done very local to the East Bay?

it could have been a different dialect. well, in Mandarin, "leung" is pronounced "liang". or it could just be one of the many different variations of Cantonese. but to the best of my knowledge, the "r" sound doesn't exist in any variation of Cantonese.

by the way, the Yale Romanisation is for "proper" Guangzhou Cantonese. even in HK, there are some small differences because it's so slang-ridden.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

How someone pronounces the vowel in "leung" is usually the easiest way to guess where they're from. "Lerng" is an ABC thing. "Lee-ung" probably mainland or Taiwan. "Lung" exactly like English lung probably a Westerner.

[tapestrybabe]

Japanese for the most part makes sense in their romanization system..

Korea on the other hand...

There are many Korean words that romanization does not lend a helping hand

yeah, i agree...
when it comes to reading korean...
sometimes its difficult for me to
decipher how to pronounce certain words
in the romanization system...

but when it comes to reading the hangul
characters... i have a much easier time tho...

[yuuteya]

Always one way.

Its time for Western language Asiafication.

[SunWuKong]

Its time for Western language Asiafication.

doesn't this already happen in Japanese?

there are Chinese transliterations for some English terms (as well as other languages), and pretty much all important names also have an equivalent Chinese transliteration. they really have no meaning in Chinese, but are characters that sound like the syllables of the words in English (or other languages).

the funny thing is that they use Mandarin to do the transliteration, and so sometimes pronouncing the same characters in Cantonese doesn't sound anything like the actual words in their original languages.

[yuuteya]

doesn't this already happen in Japanese?

there are Chinese transliterations for some English terms (as well as other languages), and pretty much all important names also have an equivalent Chinese transliteration. they really have no meaning in Chinese, but are characters that sound like the syllables of the words in English (or other languages).

the funny thing is that they use Mandarin to do the transliteration, and so sometimes pronouncing the same characters in Cantonese doesn't sound anything like the actual words in their original languages.

Yes, in Japanese certain Western loan words have been rendered in Kana script, mostly Katakana, with the odd Hiragana exception. Likewise there would be Chinese orthographizations of non-Chinese words as well.

Although what I meant was that even inside their linguistic homelands, Japanese and Chinese languages have been rendered into Romanized script, as there is a historical context behind how Western-Romanized orthography appeared in East Asia... Yet the reverse has never happened, not to any extent, of Western languages such as French and English, inside their linguistic homelands, France and Britain, being rendered entirely in an Asian script... Hasn't happened

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Yet the reverse has never happened, not to any extent, of Western languages such as French and English, inside their linguistic homelands, France and Britain, being rendered entirely in an Asian script... Hasn't happened
Due to simple practicality. Asian people don't want to waste time making political statements with what alphabet they choose to provide for tourists to read their signs. The Roman alphabet has only two close competitors for the number of people who can read it (and even they're pretty far back): Cyrillic and Arabic. For those thinking like Asians and not like Americans, those both have a hell of a lot more ideological baggage than the Roman alphabet, most especially in China and SE Asia which deal with both religious tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the legacy of Russian-directed communism.

Hell, China created pinyin in the Roman alphabet (in a system of its own devising, not accepting one designed by outsiders) and not Cyrillic precisely as an expression of national sovereignty against the local imperialist power, the USSR. In Malaysia, the use of the Roman alphabet rather than Jawi (modified Arabic script) to write Bahasa Melayu serves as a symbolic reinforcement of the ideal that our national language should belong to everyone, not just the Muslims. And, in a sharp break from past practice, nations retain control over the spelling conventions in romanizations of their own language. For example, Korea recently reformed their official romanization, changing Pusan to Busan and the like. (In addition to promulgating a new official way of writing Seoul in Chinese characters).

The Roman alphabet is the most acceptable (out of the three mentioned) in countries using other alphabets precisely because it belongs to a spectrum of outsiders ranging across the geopolitical spectrum, not to locals or to specific ideologies or religions.

And besides, introductory language-study books aimed at Asians often use the local phonetic alphabet or writing system to indicate pronunciations of entire sentences in Western languages, even when the local characters are utterly unsuited to this task (as in the case of Chinese).

[SunWuKong]

Although what I meant was that even inside their linguistic homelands, Japanese and Chinese languages have been rendered into Romanized script, as there is a historical context behind how Western-Romanized orthography appeared in East Asia... Yet the reverse has never happened, not to any extent, of Western languages such as French and English, inside their linguistic homelands, France and Britain, being rendered entirely in an Asian script... Hasn't happened

it's really just for practicality of when foreigners are in China trying to read signs, or for when foreigners are trying to learn Chinese. it's much simpler learning to speak Chinese without also trying to learn the real written language, and pinyin can go a long way to help.

the Chinese government also thought they could make Chinese easier to learn for Chinese kids as well. they thought the complexity of Chinese characters caused the low literacy rate, but then they realised it was just because there was no system of public education.

In addition to promulgating a new official way of writing Seoul in Chinese characters

hah, finally. better than just calling it "Han City".

[yuuteya]

Due to simple practicality. Asian people don't want to waste time making political statements with what alphabet they choose to provide for tourists to read their signs. The Roman alphabet has only two close competitors for the number of people who can read it (and even they're pretty far back): Cyrillic and Arabic. For those thinking like Asians and not like Americans, those both have a hell of a lot more ideological baggage than the Roman alphabet, most especially in China and SE Asia which deal with both religious tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the legacy of Russian-directed communism.

Hell, China created pinyin in the Roman alphabet (in a system of its own devising, not accepting one designed by outsiders) and not Cyrillic precisely as an expression of national sovereignty against the local imperialist power, the USSR. In Malaysia, the use of the Roman alphabet rather than Jawi (modified Arabic script) to write Bahasa Melayu serves as a symbolic reinforcement of the ideal that our national language should belong to everyone, not just the Muslims. And, in a sharp break from past practice, nations retain control over the spelling conventions in romanizations of their own language. For example, Korea recently reformed their official romanization, changing Pusan to Busan and the like. (In addition to promulgating a new official way of writing Seoul in Chinese characters).

The Roman alphabet is the most acceptable (out of the three mentioned) in countries using other alphabets precisely because it belongs to a spectrum of outsiders ranging across the geopolitical spectrum, not to locals or to specific ideologies or religions.

And besides, introductory language-study books aimed at Asians often use the local phonetic alphabet or writing system to indicate pronunciations of entire sentences in Western languages, even when the local characters are utterly unsuited to this task (as in the case of Chinese).Oh yeah sign of the times init, but times have never stood still...
And yes, Asians have soo much to choose from dont they...
But I was talking about Europe.

it's really just for practicality of when foreigners are in China trying to read signs, or for when foreigners are trying to learn Chinese. it's much simpler learning to speak Chinese without also trying to learn the real written language, and pinyin can go a long way to help.

the Chinese government also thought they could make Chinese easier to learn for Chinese kids as well. they thought the complexity of Chinese characters caused the low literacy rate, but then they realised it was just because there was no system of public education.
So for the sake of practicality, for when Chinese people are in the West, then Chinese signs should also be put up in all public places in Western countries, and Chinese bilingual announcements should also be made too, all for the sake of practicality. After all, haven't there always been way more Chinese people living in Western countries for the past 200 years and into the future, than there have ever been Westerners living in China?

[kuilong]

This reminds me of the people who spray paint over English signs in Wales (interestingly, I once saw a sign in Wales in which both the English and the Welsh was painted out. Go figure.) Wales is a foreign nation, they say -- English tourists should bring a phrasebook as they do when they go abroad elsewhere. This, despite the fact that a negligible percentage of the Welsh are monolingually English. It must be because they're angry at English tourists for scribling "N"s after ARAGOR ("open") on doors.

Its time for Western language Asiafication.

Have you ever walked down the streets of, say, Bangalore? (or more to the point, have you ever been to Bangalore after learning to read Kannada) You'll see plenty of signs with English words transliterated into Kannada. You'll see something similar in Kannada-language books, in which sometimes entire passages are transliterated.

In Russia, Chinese is regularly cyrillized (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillization_of_Chinese_from_Pinyin). If you've heard of the Dungans, they write their Sino-Tibetan language -- virtually a dialect of Mandarin -- in Cyrillic script. I suspect the popularity of romanization is due to:

(1) The large number of languages and language-speakers that use the Roman alphabet. The first is a benefit because the script isn't overwhelmingly tied to one country -- English, despite its worldwide dominance, is just one Roman script-using language among many.
(2) The small number of glyphs. (Russian Cyrillic has 33, Kannada has 49 plus innumerable ottaksharas.

Incidentally, I forgot to unconfuse BeTheReds about my romanization in the Korean/Japanese thread. I prefer Yale, because of the one-to-one correspondence with the Hankul.

[yuuteya]

Have you ever walked down the streets of, say, Bangalore? (or more to the point, have you ever been to Bangalore after learning to read Kannada) You'll see plenty of signs with English words transliterated into Kannada. You'll see something similar in Kannada-language books, in which sometimes entire passages are transliterated.

Thanks for presenting that case. Although my allegorical "Its time for..." doesnt mean that it (so called 'Asiafication') hasn't already happened in fragmented cases around the globe over the past few centuries. These cases of orthographic reinterpretation are a testament to the resilience of linguistic hybridity as a form of engagement with foreign linguistic influences, not only in loan-words and code switiching, but also transliterations. These sycretizations have likely always occured ever since early humans had spoken and written 'languages' in past eras. What I meant was that those fragmented cases of 'Asianization' do not at all parallel the vast globalized trend of romanization that has transpired over the past few centuries do to a whole range of 'other factors'...

[BeTheReds]

Always one way.

Its time for Western language Asiafication.


Impractical.

All of Western Europe and parts of Eastern Europe, and All of the Americas use romanization as their writing system for their native languages.

There isn't an equivalent pan-Asian alphabet that you could use for that end.

Some of you might be saying "CLASSICAL CHINESE, HELOOOOO" but even if you do use classical Chinese characters, the pronunciations for one character are so varied and numerous, that assigning them based on sound to emulate the sound of a Western language, is impossible.

So you'd have to assign them based on meaning, in which case you have chinese characters assigned to western words based on meaning, which isn't Asiafication of Western language at all, but basically a vocabulary swap on whatever grammar scheme exists.

[yuuteya]

There isn't an equivalent pan-Asian alphabet that you could use for that end.

Some of you might be saying "CLASSICAL CHINESE, HELOOOOO" but even if you do use classical Chinese characters, the pronunciations for one character are so varied and numerous, that assigning them based on sound to emulate the sound of a Western language, is impossible.

How do you think East Asian peoples communicated with each other during the long 1500 some odd years of the pre-European days?? It wan't with roman alphabets yo.

Mass romanizations only really got established in the 20th century.

[BeTheReds]

How do you think East Asian peoples communicated with each other during the long 1500 some odd years of the pre-European days?? It wan't with roman alphabets yo.


I already adressed the limitations of classical chinese as a viable method for all of Asia of transliterating the sounds of words in western languages. Didn't you see that in the post right before yours?

[kuilong]

So you'd have to assign them based on meaning, in which case you have chinese characters assigned to western words based on meaning, which isn't Asiafication of Western language at all, but basically a vocabulary swap on whatever grammar scheme exists.

Check this out. (http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm)

[yuuteya]

I already adressed the limitations of classical chinese as a viable method for all of Asia of transliterating the sounds of words in western languages. Didn't you see that in the post right before yours?
Which came first the chicken or the egg?

Which came first, writing on speaking? Or speaking on writing?

I already adressed the limitations of classical chinese as a viable method for all of Asia of transliterating the sounds of words in western languages. Didn't you see that in the post right before yours?
I wasn't taking about Western I was talking about East Asian. Didnt you see that in the post right before yours?

[SunWuKong]

So for the sake of practicality, for when Chinese people are in the West, then Chinese signs should also be put up in all public places in Western countries, and Chinese bilingual announcements should also be made too, all for the sake of practicality. After all, haven't there always been way more Chinese people living in Western countries for the past 200 years and into the future, than there have ever been Westerners living in China?

hehheh sure i would love that. actually i think a lot of signs in Japan and Korea already have Chinese on them. someone correct me if i'm wrong.

Impractical.

All of Western Europe and parts of Eastern Europe, and All of the Americas use romanization as their writing system for their native languages.

There isn't an equivalent pan-Asian alphabet that you could use for that end.

Some of you might be saying "CLASSICAL CHINESE, HELOOOOO" but even if you do use classical Chinese characters, the pronunciations for one character are so varied and numerous, that assigning them based on sound to emulate the sound of a Western language, is impossible.

So you'd have to assign them based on meaning, in which case you have chinese characters assigned to western words based on meaning, which isn't Asiafication of Western language at all, but basically a vocabulary swap on whatever grammar scheme exists.


if anything, Hangul would be a lot better for that purpose.

[BeTheReds]

if anything, Hangul would be a lot better for that purpose.

True, but nationalism will prevent that from ever happening.

Which came first the chicken or the egg?

Which came first, writing on speaking? Or speaking on writing?


Speaking.


I wasn't taking about Western I was talking about East Asian. Didnt you see that in the post right before yours?

I'm confused then, because I thought you were talking about an East Asian writing system recognized by all East Asians for the transliteration western languages.

What are you talking about? I can't follow anything you're saying other than that you'll disagree on everything I say.

Check this out. (http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm)


Interesting...

I'm happy with our alphabet though.

[yuuteya]

Check this out. (http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm)Nice idea. With increased sociocultural capital and favorable political-economic contexts, it might be spreadable outside Asia.

hehheh sure i would love that. actually i think a lot of signs in Japan and Korea already have Chinese on them. someone correct me if i'm wrong.Yes they do, as part of On/Kun-yomi in Japanese, and on its own as Chinese.

if anything, Hangul would be a lot better for that purpose.Nice Idea. Maybe in better politicocultural climates of the future, a (United) Korea could work on its position as the cultural/geographical bridge connecting China and Japan...

I'm confused then, because I thought you were talking about an East Asian writing system recognized by all East Asians for the transliteration western languages.Im confused too, I thought we were talking about an East Asian writing system recognized by Westerners for the transliteration of western languages.

What are you talking about? I can't follow anything you're saying other than that you'll disagree on everything I say.You know, I kind of thought the same way about you too.

[BeTheReds]

Im confused too, I thought we were talking about an East Asian writing system recognized by Westerners for the transliteration of western languages.



What would be the point, when we already have an alphabet?

[Seamus]

What would be the point, when we already have an alphabet?

The Dungans really have got it right. Considering that the only neighboring country to China that uses the Roman alphabet is Vietnam, and that all the others use either Cyrillic or some other alphabet, Chinese SHOULD be written in Cyrillic, though there are a few additional vowels in Chinese not found in Russian that we'd have to invent letters for (just as the Kazakhs and other non-Slavic former Soviets have done, with the letter that looks like a Y for u-umlaut, which I'll transcribe below as 'Y' and the one that looks like a theta for o-umlaut, which I'll transcribe below as ö). It would look like this:

дaджя xaу! Уодö мингзиы шиы шеиймус, эрче Уо джYедö нимен Xуaнгшиыдже.com дэ peн чигyaйыдэ xэн! 3aнмэн ыингaйы ëнг öлyоси пиныин-зиму щеджи цaи дyеылö !

You get swass points if you can figure out what that means.

And, you have to use a lot of exclamation marks so that it looks extra-cryptic (and makes it seem like somebody is shouting)

My other idea is that if you don't want Chinese to be completely alphabetized so that it retains an Oriental look, you could write the main roots of words using characters, but write the endings, particles and other grammatical components alphabetically for greater efficiency. So below is a sample of what this might look like. Characters are represented by uppercase, and alphabetic writing by lowercase, perhaps separated from the root using an apostrophe, like in Turkish:

DAJIA HAO! WO'de MINGzi SHI seamus, ERQIE WO JUEDE NImen HUANGSHIJIE'de REN QIGUAI'dehen! ZANmen zai WENZHANG'limian YINGGAI YONG ELUOSI-PINYINZIMU XIEZI cai DUI'le!!!

[AliBabaIncorporated]

The Dungans really have got it right. Considering that the only neighboring country to China that uses the Roman alphabet is Vietnam, and that all the others use either Cyrillic or some other alphabet, Chinese SHOULD be written in Cyrillic
What "should"? You could just as easily say Chinese should be written in Arabic since so many of the neighbours would have been using it if Uncle Joe hadn't forced Cyrillization on them (including the Dungan themselves, who also used to use Arabic!) in the 40s. And better yet, that make it retain an exotic Oriental look to the maximum number of people.

And seriously, if the rest of y'all are really serious about being anti-imperialist, shouldn't you start eschewing the use of ALL alphabets that spread from conqueror to conquered (rather than through cultural emulation). Otherwise out goes Chinese itself, (emulated by Korea and Japan without military control, but only spread to Vietnam after it was under Chinese control), Roman (once through the Roman Empire, and yet another time through the Spanish, French, and British empires), Cyrillic and Arabic as previously discussed, etc. So what's left? Variants of Brahmi script (e.g. Devanagari)? Greek? Hangul?

Or is it OK as long as it was non-Westerners doing the conquering?

Actually, I read somewhere that missionaries in Korea, after having had so much success promoting mass literacy via bibles printed in Hangul, were thinking about trying to adapt Hangul for writing Chinese ... I guess they didn't get anywhere, though.

[Seamus]

What "should"? You could just as easily say Chinese should be written in Arabic since so many of the neighbours would have been using it if Uncle Joe hadn't forced Cyrillization on them (including the Dungan themselves, who also used to use Arabic!) in the 40s. And better yet, that make it retain an exotic Oriental look to the maximum number of people.

And seriously, if the rest of y'all are really serious about being anti-imperialist, shouldn't you start eschewing the use of ALL alphabets that spread from conqueror to conquered (rather than through cultural emulation). Otherwise out goes Chinese itself, (emulated by Korea and Japan without military control, but only spread to Vietnam after it was under Chinese control), Roman (once through the Roman Empire, and yet another time through the Spanish, French, and British empires), Cyrillic and Arabic as previously discussed, etc. So what's left? Variants of Brahmi script (e.g. Devanagari)? Greek? Hangul?

Or is it OK as long as it was non-Westerners doing the conquering?

Actually, I read somewhere that missionaries in Korea, after having had so much success promoting mass literacy via bibles printed in Hangul, were thinking about trying to adapt Hangul for writing Chinese ... I guess they didn't get anywhere, though.


Hmm, the Arabic alphabet would be cool, though I don't know it well. Once again, you'd have to add extra vowels and make them explicit (like in Uyghur). Also, if you wanted to make it the hybrid system that I suggested, you'd have to write the characters from right to left again. The problem of figuring out how to make Arabic ligatures work with Hanzi characters would be tricky in the beginning.

As for the anti-imperialists: if something is good and works, a country should adopt it. Doesn't matter who it comes from. Writing alphabetically is obviously better than writing in characters for so many reasons (though I'm going to get panned for this), and China is borrowing so many ideas from the west anyway--why not do it with its writing? An alphabet is a political expression, like when Turkey switched from the Arabic alphabet to Latin, or when the Central Asian republics switched from Arabic to Cyrillic, or when Korean switched to the Korean alphabet, but practical concerns should outweigh politics.

[kuilong]

Nice idea. With increased sociocultural capital and favorable political-economic contexts, it might be spreadable outside Asia.

If you read the whole article, you'll see it's not a serious proposal to replace the Roman alphabet. It's a pedagogical tool, to demonstrate how the hÃnzì work.

As for the anti-imperialists: if something is good and works, a country should adopt it. Doesn't matter who it comes from. Writing alphabetically is obviously better than writing in characters for so many reasons (though I'm going to get panned for this), and China is borrowing so many ideas from the west anyway--why not do it with its writing?

「漢字不滅，中國必亡。」--魯迅

The big advantage to all this is that instead of the broken method for borrowing foreign words Chinese uses today (maikefeng? gimme a break) they could borrow words wholesale, as the Dungans already do (http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/dungan.html).

As for Cyrillization of Mandarin, I think I linked to (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillization_of_Chinese_from_Pinyin) the standard Cyrillization in Russia.

[yuuteya]

If you read the whole article, you'll see it's not a serious proposal to replace the Roman alphabet. It's a pedagogical tool, to demonstrate how the hÃnzì work.
yes, but pedagogical tool of yesterday, may be globalized orthography of tomorrow... thoughts of yesterday, actions of tomorrow... Like i said, with anything, if there's increased sociocultural capital, favorable trajectory of political-economic contexts, and of course time, then who knows...

[BeTheReds]

The Dungans really have got it right. Considering that the only neighboring country to China that uses the Roman alphabet is Vietnam, and that all the others use either Cyrillic or some other alphabet, Chinese SHOULD be written in Cyrillic, though there are a few additional vowels in Chinese not found in Russian that we'd have to invent letters for (just as the Kazakhs and other non-Slavic former Soviets have done, with the letter that looks like a Y for u-umlaut, which I'll transcribe below as 'Y' and the one that looks like a theta for o-umlaut, which I'll transcribe below as ö). It would look like this:

дaджя xaу! Уодö мингзиы шиы шеиймус, эрче Уо джYедö нимен Xуaнгшиыдже.com дэ peн чигyaйыдэ xэн! 3aнмэн ыингaйы ëнг öлyоси пиныин-зиму щеджи цaи дyеылö !

You get swass points if you can figure out what that means.

And, you have to use a lot of exclamation marks so that it looks extra-cryptic (and makes it seem like somebody is shouting)

My other idea is that if you don't want Chinese to be completely alphabetized so that it retains an Oriental look, you could write the main roots of words using characters, but write the endings, particles and other grammatical components alphabetically for greater efficiency. So below is a sample of what this might look like. Characters are represented by uppercase, and alphabetic writing by lowercase, perhaps separated from the root using an apostrophe, like in Turkish:

DAJIA HAO! WO'de MINGzi SHI seamus, ERQIE WO JUEDE NImen HUANGSHIJIE'de REN QIGUAI'dehen! ZANmen zai WENZHANG'limian YINGGAI YONG ELUOSI-PINYINZIMU XIEZI cai DUI'le!!!


Why'd you quote MY post? Your reply has nothing to do with what I was arguing with yut about.

[SunWuKong]

As for the anti-imperialists: if something is good and works, a country should adopt it. Doesn't matter who it comes from. Writing alphabetically is obviously better than writing in characters for so many reasons (though I'm going to get panned for this), and China is borrowing so many ideas from the west anyway--why not do it with its writing?

the Chinese government had actually considered getting rid of using Chinese characters a few decades ago, but then they realised, from looking at Taiwan and HK, that using Chinese characters is really not especially worse than using a phonetic written language like an alphabet with consonants and vowels. with the same amount of education, starting from when a person is young, he is able to be just as literate with Chinese characters as he would be with a phonetic written language. HK and Taiwan had reached a high literacy rate with Chinese characters just like Western countries had, with their phonetic languages. the problem was not Chinese characters, the problem was that China didn't have a good system of public education.

Chinese characters are only hard to learn when a grown adult is learning Chinese as a second language. if a child were to go to school and get a full education in Chinese, it's not especially harder to learn. and so the only people that would benefit from switching over to a phonetic system of writing are foreigners. it's not exactly worth getting rid of a system of writing that has been in use for thousands of years.

another thing is, the Chinese language has many dialects. using Chinese characters has actually been a unifying factor in China because no matter what dialect you speak, you still read the same system of writing. switching over to a phonetic system would risk also that phonetic system be fractured into several different systems because people pronounce different words differently depending on the dialect. it would be like what happened with Latin languages. the Chinese government would have to be even stricter with having people use Mandarin, which would contribute even more to eliminating local dialects.

[kuilong]

the Chinese government had actually considered getting rid of using Chinese characters a few decades ago, but then they realised, from looking at Taiwan and HK, that using Chinese characters is really not especially worse than using a phonetic written language like an alphabet with consonants and vowels. with the same amount of education, starting from when a person is young, he is able to be just as literate with Chinese characters as he would be with a phonetic written language.

I'm not sure this is true. Can a Chinese sixth-grader really read the full range of literature that a Year 5 English schoolchild could? Or a Finnish one? Eventually, of course, they'll become fully fluent in the language -- just as the English adults are just as literate in their language as the Finns. But it seems to be one of the most consistent myths in language education that children are significantly better at learning to speak or read languages than adults.

it's not exactly worth getting rid of a system of writing that has been in use for thousands of years.

If only the simplifiers had bought that logic...

another thing is, the Chinese language has many dialects. using Chinese characters has actually been a unifying factor in China because no matter what dialect you speak, you still read the same system of writing.

This is mainly because the baihua is based on Mandarin; it's a form of diglossia (like Tamil or Arabic). Non-Mandarin speakers certainly can give the characters pronunciations from their respective dialects, but really, when they learn to read and write, they're learning to read and write Mandarin. This is how educated Tamilians can read two-millenia old texts like the Thirukkural and Arabs can read the Qur'an: when they're taught to read and write, they're really learning a new language.

The written language used to be neutral, when wenyanwen was used. But China switching to baihua is a little like Europeans, who used Latin for interlanguage communication for centuries, deciding to switch to French. I suspect it worked in China because of the nearly pathologic fear of disunity.

[SunWuKong]

I'm not sure this is true. Can a Chinese sixth-grader really read the full range of literature that a Year 5 English schoolchild could? Or a Finnish one? Eventually, of course, they'll become fully fluent in the language -- just as the English adults are just as literate in their language as the Finns. But it seems to be one of the most consistent myths in language education that children are significantly better at learning to speak or read languages than adults.

i'm not sure. but i know i was able to read a Chinese newspaper without much difficulties when i was in 5th grade.

[Seamus]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/international/asia/15mongolia.html?

Just read an article that mentions that there's talk of switching from Cyrillic to Latin in Mongolia. I'm sure this affects most of you a great deal.

[Napoleon Chynamite]

i'm not sure. but i know i was able to read a Chinese newspaper without much difficulties when i was in 5th grade.

That's pretty impressive. I can't read any Chinese whatsoever but even as a native English speaker I don't think I was really comfortable reading the local times until maybe my teens (when I was forced to do so 'cause of school assignments or projects) due to a lot of the vocabulary. I'm sure some/many people started earlier, but I just wasn't really one of those that really cared much for current events.

[SunWuKong]

That's pretty impressive. I can't read any Chinese whatsoever but even as a native English speaker I don't think I was really comfortable reading the local times until maybe my teens (when I was forced to do so 'cause of school assignments or projects) due to a lot of the vocabulary. I'm sure some/many people started earlier, but I just wasn't really one of those that really cared much for current events.

could be the difference between English language and Chinese language education. to learn Chinese, you're basically forced to memorise words after words. so by 5th grade, i've had 5+ years of memorising Chinese words. but to learn English, if you're good enough at phoneticising, then you'd be able to read most words. they don't particularly emphasize memorisation of words.

[mrcfo]

the Chinese government had actually considered getting rid of using Chinese characters a few decades ago, but then they realised, from looking at Taiwan and HK, that using Chinese characters is really not especially worse than using a phonetic written language like an alphabet with consonants and vowels. with the same amount of education, starting from when a person is young, he is able to be just as literate with Chinese characters as he would be with a phonetic written language. HK and Taiwan had reached a high literacy rate with Chinese characters just like Western countries had, with their phonetic languages. the problem was not Chinese characters, the problem was that China didn't have a good system of public education.

Chinese characters are only hard to learn when a grown adult is learning Chinese as a second language. if a child were to go to school and get a full education in Chinese, it's not especially harder to learn. and so the only people that would benefit from switching over to a phonetic system of writing are foreigners. it's not exactly worth getting rid of a system of writing that has been in use for thousands of years.

another thing is, the Chinese language has many dialects. using Chinese characters has actually been a unifying factor in China because no matter what dialect you speak, you still read the same system of writing. switching over to a phonetic system would risk also that phonetic system be fractured into several different systems because people pronounce different words differently depending on the dialect. it would be like what happened with Latin languages. the Chinese government would have to be even stricter with having people use Mandarin, which would contribute even more to eliminating local dialects.

I heard Mao tried to get rid of Chinese characters because they were considered "backward" as well as a LOT of other thousand yr old Chinese customs. However, one thing, if it was during Maos reign that tried to abolish Chinese characters, I can't see how HK or Taiwan could have affected its decision.

I think prior to the 80s Hong Kong and Taiwan were still relatively poor by Western standards and literacy rates weren't above the 90% level. Personally, I'm pro phoentic (alphabet based written languages) although sadly this doesnt really fit well with the Chinese spoken language due to (arguably) it's monosyllabic structure and tonal system.

Take the Vietnamese case, it switched to an alphabet based system ages ago, when the majority was still illiterate. Yet, for a country of its size and economy (GDP per person) the literacy rate is incredibly high. The beauty of of a phoentic system based written language is its capability for self learning and efficiency. The drawback I suppose is the lack of understanding of a word....you may be able to pronounce a word in English through intuition BUT you probably wont know its meaning.

Providing a personal experience, I was born, raised and educated in English. I did attend Saturday Chinese classes BUT they werent really effective because of the teaching methods. I dont know its all part of going back to my roots or anything but through watching VCDs/DVDs, help from my parents AND the Internet, I was able to "self teach" myself Chinese to a extent. I am able to read 75% of a Chinese newspaper article with a sound understanding, but there are some aspects of Chinese I cant quite pick up like classical Chinese words and pharases. I'm still undecided if learning Chinese is difficult for an adult with a non Chinese background.

For one, I had little to no exposure to the Chinese language whilst I was young apart from speaking broken Cantonese and Chao Zhou Hua. English was often used at school and face it, you spend most of the day at school anyway and English was always the lingua franca amongst friends. Even discounting the fact that I am Asian with a Chinese background, I've met numerous non Chinese who picked it up during their adulthood and basically starting from scratch. Some had Asian partners, others learnt it for business, so there was some incentive there...but I was pretty amazed. Their Chinese language skills were quite good as well, it wasn't just stringing basic sentences together, but some spoke fluent Mandarin though I admit, few were able to master the writing apart from a few university lecturers and some who had been pretty much drilled into writing it from early High School.

[SunWuKong]

I heard Mao tried to get rid of Chinese characters because they were considered "backward" as well as a LOT of other thousand yr old Chinese customs. However, one thing, if it was during Maos reign that tried to abolish Chinese characters, I can't see how HK or Taiwan could have affected its decision.

I think prior to the 80s Hong Kong and Taiwan were still relatively poor by Western standards and literacy rates weren't above the 90% level.

i'm totally going from memory here of what my friends and i have talked about, so please excuse the historical inaccuracy. i think it was back in the 60s when the CCP was considering this, and i know that by then, HK had a comprehensive system of education (despite the inequities of its colonial system, which didn't go through reforms till the 70s), and also, it was during this time that HK's light industry was taking off. i'm not sure about Taiwan in the 60s though, but i'm inclined to think that it was able to considerably raise literacy rates by then.

but i'm not sure if their literacy rates were as much as 90%, back in the 60s. it was most probably lower than that.

Take the Vietnamese case, it switched to an alphabet based system ages ago, when the majority was still illiterate. Yet, for a country of its size and economy (GDP per person) the literacy rate is incredibly high. The beauty of of a phoentic system based written language is its capability for self learning and efficiency. The drawback I suppose is the lack of understanding of a word....you may be able to pronounce a word in English through intuition BUT you probably wont know its meaning.

the phonetic written language for Vietnamese was invented a while ago before it was actually widely taught to Vietnamese people. and the reason it started to be widely taught was because revolutionaries were promoting it because it was easier to learn to read simple messages with it, and so it helped them coordinate to fight the French. the French did not realise this until it was too late. they had thought that it was being promoted just to raise literacy rates. :biggrin:

[Seamus]

Personally, I'm pro phoentic (alphabet based written languages) although sadly this doesnt really fit well with the Chinese spoken language due to (arguably) it's monosyllabic structure and tonal system.

Chinese is NOT monosyllabic. You're confusing morphemes with words. A morpheme in Chinese corresponds to a character, but most "words," of complete units of thought, involve multiple syllables. The notion of a word in Chinese is slightly different from the idea of a word in Indo-European languages, but at the end of the day, it still takes many syllables to express in Chinese what corresponds to a word in IE languages. I'll give you a million bucks if you really claim that you don't understand the following sentence:

"Wo jinzao dei ba-pengyou song feijichang qu, zhenshi mafan!"

or, if you will,

"Wo jinzao(3) dei(3) ba(3)-pengyou song(4) feijichang qu(4), zhenshi(4) ma(2)fan!"

See, you don't even need tone markings everywhere to disambiguate meaning. By the way, I also want to point out that the word "ba-pengyou" is one of the reasons why people mistakenly think of Chinese as monosyllabic. "ba" is a morpheme that is a prefix making the noun accusative. Both "peng" and "you" convey a semantic meaning of "friend," but neither is a complete word in itself! (though "you" is used in other compound words involving the meaning of "friend" without the syllable "peng" in front of it). So "ba-pengyou" means "friend (accusative)." There you have it: 3 syllables for a word that has one syllable in English. "Feijichang" has three syllables; "airport" has two. Sure: "Fei" means "fly," "ji" means "machine" and "chang" means "place," but "feijichang" is a single unit of thought. When people say this word, they don't really mean, or have a mental image of, a "flying machine place," just as in English, we don't think of the "air" we breathe, and a port where ships dock.

[kuilong]

Chinese is NOT monosyllabic. You're confusing morphemes with words. A morpheme in Chinese corresponds to a character, but most "words," of complete units of thought, involve multiple syllables. The notion of a word in Chinese is slightly different from the idea of a word in Indo-European languages, but at the end of the day, it still takes many syllables to express in Chinese what corresponds to a word in IE languages. I'll give you a million bucks if you really claim that you don't understand the following sentence:

"Wo jinzao dei ba-pengyou song feijichang qu, zhenshi mafan!"

or, if you will,

"Wo jinzao(3) dei(3) ba(3)-pengyou song(4) feijichang qu(4), zhenshi(4) ma(2)fan!"

See, you don't even need tone markings everywhere to disambiguate meaning. By the way, I also want to point out that the word "ba-pengyou" is one of the reasons why people mistakenly think of Chinese as monosyllabic. "ba" is a morpheme that is a prefix making the noun accusative. Both "peng" and "you" convey a semantic meaning of "friend," but neither is a complete word in itself! (though "you" is used in other compound words involving the meaning of "friend" without the syllable "peng" in front of it). So "ba-pengyou" means "friend (accusative)." There you have it: 3 syllables for a word that has one syllable in English. "Feijichang" has three syllables; "airport" has two. Sure: "Fei" means "fly," "ji" means "machine" and "chang" means "place," but "feijichang" is a single unit of thought. When people say this word, they don't really mean, or have a mental image of, a "flying machine place," just as in English, we don't think of the "air" we breathe, and a port where ships dock.

Yeah. It's worth noting that some of the characters which have "meanings" today were given them solely due to the nature of the Chinese writing system. I mean, if English used Chinese-style characters, and we wrote the "ing" in "eating" or "watching" with a character of its own, people would soon would soon probably start to give it a shadowy meaning by itself.