The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin
From: | Cheng Zhong Su <suchengzhong@...> |
Date: | Thursday, December 6, 2001, 21:19 |
During recent days, I have said too much drawback of
English. Yet it is still many prblem of tone
languages. An early issue of Chiese/ mandarin is that
current four to five thousands characters was carried
by only 1200 phonetic types. It means that about four
characters share one phonetic type. If we collected
all the fifty thousands characters from all Chinese
history, it could be forty characters sharing 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. these two words are single
oral actions. They have never been adopt by chinese
phonology. To introduce these two words means to
introduce eight phonetic types to the language. the
rest six can be used for other meanings. Mandarin has
21 consonants, 35 vowels and 4 tones, multiply them
together, it could be about 2800 phonetic types. Yet
only 1200 in use, it's ridiculous. I believe that an
international language shall never be invented by a
single person, it need hard work for linguists arround
the world. Or we may say every language has to
contribute the so called international language some
thing, step by step. The target may be 1, learning
less knowing more. 2, having the fast thinking speed.
3. the best copy for all cultures.
Su Cheng Zhong
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