Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Friday, December 7, 2001, 19:36
Quoting Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>:

> Cheng Zhong Su wrote: > > . . . about four characters share one phonetic type. > > . . . and it always cause mistakes. An > > extreme example is that all the three words 'he, she, > > it'in mandarin sound like 'ta' with the same tone, > > that no one can distinguish them from speech. I > > believe the best solution is borrow the English word > > 'he' and 'she' directly. . . . > > Many languages use the same word for `he' and `she'. (Finnish and > Swahili come to mind.) It's not a "mistake", merely an extreme > example of the simple fact that different languages classify the > universe differently.
Certainly, but why is it even extreme? How is it more extreme not to include that category than some languages whose deictics include lots of categories like plant/nonplant, animal/nonanimal, human/nonhuman, shape, size, and whether it's a force of nature or not? ===================================================================== Thomas Wier <trwier@...> <http://home.uchicago.edu/~trwier> "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n / Dept. of Linguistics mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..." University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought / 1010 E. 59th Street and not complete one road that has no turn" Chicago, IL 60637 Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

Reply

Cheng Zhong Su <suchengzhong@...>