Re: Mixed writing systems (WAS: Newbie says hi)

Florian wrote:
>
> >If homophones are such an obstacle to writing Chinese alphabetically,
>then
> >how is spoken Chinese intelligible? (I'm NOT being sarcastic here; what
>you
> >say seems truly strange to me and I'd like to be enlightened.)
>
>         Spoken chinese is... not always understandable. Well, that's not
>so bad, but it is true that there are often many ambiguities, and you have
>to ask your interlocuteur what he exactly mean.
>         Also note that spoken language almost always involve sentences,
>even simple ones, expet for some situations like greetings, warnings, or
>other situations involving excalmatory sentences. For written language, it
>is not the same, for example, just look at a computer screen, and notice
>how many words are not included in a sentence.
>
Ok.

> >Also, there's nothing to say that an alphabetic writing system has to be
> >entirely phonetic (indeed, they practically never are). Different
>meanings
> >could be distinguished by silent letters, empty diacritics or variant
> >spellings of the same sounds; the system would hardly have to be as
> >byzantine as the "phonetic guides" in Hanzi writing to achieve that.
>
>         Well, the curent roman system for writin chinese is entirely
>phonetic. Indeed, it was design as a phonetic guide to try to teach a
>uniform mandarin all over the country.
>         alphabetic writing system are almost never entirely phonetic when
>they are native (or have been used for a long time) of the language. Non
>straight-forward spelling allmost allways comes from historical variations
>of the language.
>         Creating lot's of irregularities (because of the number of
>homophones, yoou really need lots of) a priori is not only a headache for
>the one(s) who design the system, but also for the one who wants to use it.
>French or english are known to have complicated spellings, but those system
>do have a logic.
>         Those allmost random spelling rules would be much harder to learn
>than the actual system, because this one has an internal logic.
>
> >(Also, I'm told that for a non-Mandarin speaker to learn to write under
>the
> >present system involves learning Mandarin more-or-less as a foreign
> >language. Is this wrong?)
>
>         Partly. Cantonese, for example, write with hanzi, but don't write
>mandarin. The sintax is clearly distinct, and they also include specific
>hanzi that mandarin does not have.  Some other languages are not usualy
>writen (as the Wu language, from shanghai and the region). So learning t
>write is learning to write mandarin. But it is not hidden, people learn
>mandarin, oral and writen, and to not pretend to learn to write their
>language.
That sound pretty hard on the Shanghainese - getting taught to speak your L1
is widely considered more-or-less a human right in this corner of the globe.
And if Mandarin and Cantonese writing are that different, then the hanzi
system don't provide more unit to languages than sharing the Latin alphabet
does to, say, English and German.

>         Mandarin being the official language of china, i see nothing bad
>in having allmost every body learn mandarin. Actualy, every british learn
>english, right? I consider the linguistic situation in china to be more
>free than in europe, because the offical language does not replace all the
>local speech, but cohabitate. Bretons in france, for example, did not enjoy
>such a tolerant situation.
I don't  consider it bad teaching all inhabitants of China (including
Tibetans, Uighurs etc) Chinese as a L2. I do consider it bad not to teach
people to write their L1. And I don't think that you really can speak of the
linguistic situation in Europe - conditions simply vary so much. France, as
you say, is pretty big on having everybody use Standard French (tm), while a
country like Finland has two official languages. And if local forms of
speech are keeping ground better in China than in Europe, I suspect that may
have alot to do with less media penetration in China.

>         I am actualy quite jalous of this country where the vast majority
>of the population is bilingual.
I'm not in a position to share that jealousy, because in my country almost
all younger people can speek English on a functional to excellent level.


                                                     Andreas

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