Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

 --- Patrick Dunn wrote:
> Take Chinese, for example.  One of the most annoying
> things about Chinese
> is the writing system (at least, for those of us
> learning the langauge as
> a second or third language).  Yet it's this very
> frustrating, illogical,
> seemingly random writing system that gives rise to
> much of the power of
> Chinese poetry, which is what -- for me -- makes the
> language worth
> learning.
>
> Ambiguity in language is not a flaw, and all
> languages with ambiguities
> can avoid them if necessary.  If you manage to
> remove ambiguity, you
> create a language incapable of playful poetry, and
> therefore -- to my
> mind, at least -- devoid of fun.
>
> --Patrick
Answer:Yes, it's a trouble for the Chinese writing
system. It was improved by simplified characters, in
mainland China. Yet I don't agree that leave the
ambiguities alone. The fun of mind is to compose some
thing not to remember words. For poetries may be not
important but for a scientific student, things will be
different. For instance, the chemical element table,
must be learn by heart in chinese school, for it's not
to hard to do it, and if you learn it by heart, you
know the most property of all those elements. While in
English school, students don't need to learn it by
heart, whenever you need it just find a book and look
what is the position of that element. I think in most
case students just guess the property of that element
by an ambiguous image.
Su Cheng Zhong


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