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trien27 -

someone posted that in the dungan language, khan yan? or similar means smoke or to smoke, but it
also says the character "khan" above supposedly means "dry" in the Dungan language, but that
certain character is in no way a definition of the word dry in Chinese! So no Chinese would be
able to understand Dungan.



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djwebb2004 -

I don't want to hog the forum. But can I draw people's attention to a fascinating image of a book
written in Latinxua Sin Wenz - a sort of 1930s pinyin that at one stage was going to become
China's romanization system - on p29 of DeFrancis June 2006 article. The book is a translation of
a Russian work of fiction and published in northern China in 1937. The first two sentences read:

"Iou igo shaoje zai Kawkaz dang gynguan. Tadi mingz giao Rhilin. Iou ic cung giali gilailiao gei
tadi ifung sin. Sh tadi mucin - laotaipo sie gei tadi: "Wo iging laoliao, panwang zai wo s ician,
kandegian wodi cin'aidi rz imian..." There is much information on the Sin Wenz at
http://www.pinyin.info/romanization/sinwenz/index.html










djwebb2004 -

Trien, the character 旱 does mean "dry" in Chinese, and 旱烟 is a valid way of saying "tobacco"
in Mandarin, so "khanyan" if pronounced with the right tones would be comprehensible to Chinese.

Thee Dungan language has 3 tones, not 4. It is supposedly a Gansu-type dialect, not a
Beijing-type. It would be interesting to know how intelligible it is to Gansu people. Apparently 1
and 2 tones have become one and the same. But the Dungan language has many borrowings from Arabic,
Persian, Uighur, Kirghiz and Russian, and so is not necessarily best viewed as a dialect of
Chinese...










gato -

Without knowing anything about Latinxua Sin Wenz, I can just about read it. It's not hard because
it doesn't have any classical Chinese 文言文, meaning it's close to the spoken language, not
surprising since it was translated into Chinese from another language. Most translators,
thankfully, don't add classical Chinese to foreign writings they translate.



Quote:

"Iou igo shaoje zai Kawkaz dang gynguan. Tadi mingz giao Rhilin. Iou ic cung giali gilailiao gei
tadi ifung sin. Sh tadi mucin - laotaipo sie gei tadi: "Wo iging laoliao, panwang zai wo s ician,
kandegian wodi cin'aidi rz imian..."

有一个shaoje在Caucus当军官。他的名字叫Rhilin。有一次从家里寄来了("le" not
liao)给他的一封信，是他的母亲，老太婆写给他：“我已经老了（"le" not
"liao")，盼望在我死以前，看得见我的亲爱的儿子一面。“

It's not a radical idea to gradually do away with 文言文 (i.e. words that are only written and
not spoken) in writing. A hundred year ago, many educated people in England still like to add
Latin phrases here and there to everything they wrote. Nowadays nobody does. Few people see that
change as being tragic or radical.










djwebb2004 -

Gato, shaoje is 少爷










Jose -



Quote:


Originally Posted by djwebb2004

Language is not just a tool of communication - it is a fundamental part of culture


I wholeheartedly agree with this.

If characters were abolished, a fundamental part of Chinese culture would be lost. This is not
about efficiency, but about preserving something that makes the Chinese language special, and that
makes Chinese people feel a connection with their cultural heritage.

I also agree with djwebb2004 that the adoption of a phonetic script for Chinese would effectively
trigger a profound change in the language itself. It would probably lead to the adoption of more
two-syllable forms, the loss of many classical-style expressions, and a decrease in the awareness
of etymology (only learned scholars would be able to point out that the "qi" in the word "qiche"
has the same origin as the one in "qigong"). It would end up stabilising as a language with its
own rules, probably developing new elegant styles in the process (this has probably happened in
Korean and Vietnamese), but at the extremely high cost of disconnecting this new Chinese language
from China's own cultural tradition. I wouldn't like to see that happen.










atitarev -



Quote:

Thee Dungan language has 3 tones, not 4. It is supposedly a Gansu-type dialect, not a
Beijing-type. It would be interesting to know how intelligible it is to Gansu people. Apparently 1
and 2 tones have become one and the same. But the Dungan language has many borrowings from Arabic,
Persian, Uighur, Kirghiz and Russian, and so is not necessarily best viewed as a dialect of
Chinese...

My colleague is a Chinese immigrant from Xi'an. He watched some videos with interviews with people
from Dungan. They all tried to speak in their pure dialect (not mixing too many foreign words). He
said he perfectly understood, it sounded like Xia'an dialect.

Dungan has borrowed phonetically a lot of international words via Russian, since they didn't have
to coin new ones tractor, radio, cosmos, etc- Arabic words are mainly to do with Islam - Dungans
are muslims. Dungan people acted a lot as interpreters between Russians and Chinese. Spoken Dungan
is really very close to Northern dialects.










djwebb2004 -

Whereas a speaker of Mandarin may understand Dungan quite well, a Dungan speaker might understand
Gansu dialect welll, but struggle with putonghua. Various articles on pinyin.info discuss the
Dungans, and state that there is not a high level of mutual intelligibility. Intelligibility may
go one way and not the other. Take a look at the page I mentioned with some examples of Dungan.










xichg -

First I apologize for my nasty tone and the little outburst. I should be more polite, and also too
much emotion prevented people from seeing the points i tried to make (yes, i did try to make some
points there.)

But talking about language can be very emotional. As some have pointed out in their posts language
is a big part of a culture and to a great extent defined one's identity and heritage. So it's
natural for people to get emotional when some 'outsiders' tell you that your language (culture) is
stupid and needs to be abolished.

To clarify let me repeat and elaborate on the pointes:

1, Chinese characters are an integal part of Chinese culture and identity. I don't want to see my
identity destroyed.

2, Learning a foreign language is difficult. The wise thing to do is utilize the time you spend on
complaining to study. And trying to change the language/writing system is unrealistic and will
take you nowhere.

3, Reading pinyin is painful, slow and can literally hurt many people's brain. It's a 'dumbed
down' version of Chinese. It's designed to aid the learning of 汉字, not to replace 汉字.

4, Learning pinyin is easier and faster than learning Hanzi. But the school years are not your
whole life. Actually at the 2nd grade you begin to feel the enormous advantage 汉字 have over
pinyin. The extra efforts you made to learn 汉字 will benifit you for your life. Learning pinyin
is easy but for the rest of your life you have to read at a speed of a snail and be accompanied by
the ghost of ambiguity and guessing. Learning 汉字 is an investment that pays off very well.
pinyin is not as efficient and precise as 汉字. 汉字 suits Chinese language very well and
that's why i say it's doing a great job serving Chinese people.










roddy -

I was curious about what actual standard China uses for literacy, so I had a bit of a Google. All
I could find was


Quote:

识字1500个，能阅读简单浅显的报刊，记简单的生活账目

which seems to go back decades without having been changed. 1500字 is roughly equivalent to the
first two levels of the HSK exam - we are not talking about a high standard of literacy. I'd be
very interested to know how many of those classed as literate are even able to understand the
higher aspects of culture that people are worried about losing - are they 简单浅显? I doubt it.

I don't care about the issue from the foreign student of Chinese's perspective, that's a complete
irrelevance as far as I'm concerned. But latest figures have the number of illiterates in China at
100 million - that's a massive number. Add on to that however many low-functioning literates you
have who are only 能阅读简单浅显的报刊，记简单的生活账目, and you've got a
major issue. What's the value of idioms and literary Chinese to these people? Could they read a
list of new regulations posted on the village noticeboard?

I think full literacy in Chinese characters is a matter of time. But I also think it would be a
very good thing indeed if between now and the day that is achieved the status of pinyin is raised
from learning tool for kids to alternative script for the less-well educated, with official
documents, perhaps some newspapers, educational materials, instruction manuals and so on produced
in both. Minority areas do this with minority languages, and I see no reason why it is not
feasible. And if someone produces dumbed down versions of the classics, very good. Better to read
a dumbed down version of something than not read it at all.

I am, of course, not stupid enough to believe this will happen. You'd need to overcome inertia,
you'd effectively be saying that China is failing to educate its people, and you'd leave yourself
open to charges of being UnChinese.












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