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SChinFChin -

I studied Japanese for a year, and then practiced for a while with my favorite "sushi chef"
speaking it. As my Japanese tutor also studied Chinese, I was taught the lanaguage as a Chinese
speaker rather than an English speaker.

First, Chinese is more casual, and does not contain the caste and sex differentiation as in
Japanese. My Japanese tutor mentioned the worst thing for a "man: is to be taught Japanese by a
girl since he'll start talkiing like a girl.

The one thing to be aware of in Chinese is to be able to refer to others correctly based on their
age. You'll address and older man or woman different from a younger one, or those of the same age.

As to loan words, for me, that's one of the more interesting aspect of Japanese that the tutor and
I discussed being both a Chinese and English speaker. His theory is the Japanese likes to borrow
things from the best. They borrowed from China when China was at it's height. Then it was the
French before the Franco Prussian war, and then the Germans after they won. In the 20th century it
was the English, due to the dominace of the UK and the USA.

As an example, the words for "telephone" (den wa = electric talk) and railroad (tet su - iron
road) are Chinese loan words. It's interesting these were inventions of the 19th century. Note
that the pronunciation is 10th century Chinese, when the words were borrowed, akin to Southern
dialects. Words "Den wa" is a southern pronunciation as compared to "dian hua" the modern Mandarin
pronunciation.

Contrast this the the word for television (terebi), a bad pronunciation of television. The English
"L" becomes the Japanese "R". This word is borrowed in the 20th century, taken from English rather
than Chinese.



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nipponman -



Quote:


Originally Posted by attitarev

I personally, don't find Japanese harder, despite inflections, politeness levels and more grammar
rules. My reason is - it's much easier to break up sentences into meaningful parts and link words
into sentences.

My observation is about reading intermediate to advanced texts. I still have to segment mentally
words, which can be sometimes difficult in Chinese long sentences.

Perhaps my readings skills are slowed down by having to deal with much more characters compared to
Japanese but I feel that after spending more time with Mandarin than I spent with Japanese, my
Japanese is still a little better than my Mandarin. The worst thing that stresses me out about
Japanese, though is some colloquial forms I don't understand, I find it much easier to read formal
or standard texts.


The reason I say Japanese is because I come from an english-speaking background and chinese has
many superficial similarities with english which make the learning process easier for a native
english speaker imo. Japanese oth, has weird sentence order (to an american), particles,
reverse-modifier order ("no" clauses) etc. The characters for me were a non issue. I learned to
read/write Chinese in six months, it took me one year to do that with Japanese.










Mugi -



Quote:

As an example, the words for "telephone" (den wa = electric talk) and railroad (tet su - iron
road) are Chinese loan words. It's interesting these were inventions of the 19th century.

Actually, 電話 is a Japanese coined term which Chinese has since borrowed (along with countless
other terms for modern objects and concepts).
And the word for "railroad" in each language differs slightly: In Chinese it is 鐵路/铁路 tie
lu, while in Japanese it is 鉄道 tetsu dou.










SChinFChin -

>>Actually, 電話 is a Japanese coined term which Chinese has since borrowed (along with
countless other terms for modern objects and concepts).
And the word for "railroad" in each language differs slightly: In Chinese it is 鐵路/铁路 tie
lu, while in Japanese it is 鉄道 tetsu dou.

None the less, they coined them with Chinese terms. But in the later half of the 20th century,
things are coined with English terms. If the telephone was invented in 1960, it wouldn't be called
電話, but something closer to telephone.










atitarev -



Quote:

I learned to read/write Chinese in six months, it took me one year to do that with Japanese.

Characters go hand-in-hand with vocabulary, you can't learn a character if you don't learn at
least a word using it. I just can't comprehend how you can master ALL or 3,000-4,000 (even 2,000)
characters in 6 months.










Mugi -



Quote:

None the less, they coined them with Chinese terms.

In a similar way that English has coined a myriad of words using Greek or Latin 'stems' (Greek, in
the case of telephone). I doubt you'll find too many people that would agree that the word
"calculator" is "borrowed" from Latin. The stem of this word has existed in English for centuries
and become thoroughly internalized. In the same way, 電 and 話 have existed in Japanese for over
a millenia already.

I understand what you're trying to say - that one difference between Mandarin and Japanese is that
where Japanese in the past would have coined new terms based on Chinese stems, these days it tends
to use transliteration, while Mandarin tends to still employ translation - I just think that some
of your comments are a little over-simplified and misleading. The reasons for this difference are
a lot more complex than could be described in a forum like this though.



Quote:

If the telephone was invented in 1960, it wouldn't be called 電話, but something closer to
telephone.

Probably true. Indeed, we have テレホンカード (terehon kaado) for 'telephone card', but
interestingly 携帯(電話) (keitai (denwa)) for 'mobile/cell phone'.










SChinFChin -

>>The reasons for this difference are a lot more complex than could be described in a forum like
this though.

Agreed.

The tutor I used was trying to employ the best methods for me to learn Japanese both as an English
speaker, and Chinese speaker. The purpose was not a "tour de force" exploration of Chinese
influence on the Japanese language, etymology etc, but rather to make sense why some words are
borrowed from Chinese, and some from European languages.

I find it interesting that some Chinese words assumed totally different meanings in Japanese,
others retained the same meaning but in new combinations formed totally different meanings, unique
to japanese. For instance, one variation for wife, 家内, is never used in Chinese in this way,
only Japanese. But the meaning of the words themselves, someone staying at home, makes perfect
sense.

As to Japanese vs Mandarin, actually, the pronunciation from the Chinese is closer to those of the
Southern Chinese dialects. as Chinese was spoken during the tenth century, when this interchange
started.










Mugi -



Quote:

For instance, one variation for wife, 家内, is never used in Chinese in this way, only Japanese.

I wonder if there isn't a Chinese dialect that also uses this term? (閩南語 has 家後
(ke1-au7), which is similar.)










SChinFChin -

>>I wonder if there isn't a Chinese dialect that also uses this term? (閩南語 has 家後
(ke1-au7), which is similar.)

In the Cantonese dialect, one way of saying "wife" is 內人 ( "noi6 jan4" in Jyutping
romanization).

There are dozens of main dialects, and hundreds of sub dialects, and some of them have unique
terms of their own.

For instance, for telephone, while Mandarin and Cantonese calls it 電話, it is called "hom sen"
in the Taishan dialect, a sub-dialect of Cantonese. As it does not have a written language, I can
surmise that "sen" is 線 (wire) while I'm guessing "hom" is 喊 from the word to "yell" or
"call". So 喊線 is giving someone a holler through a wire.

Your observation on cell phones 携帯(電話) is interesting. Originally, when cell phones first
came out, I hear it called 手提電話 in Cantonese, same concept as Japanese. But lately, it's
simply called a "手機".

It may well be that in many of the subdialects, words are simply put together to form new terms
pretty much the way Japanese has done it.










fireball9261 -

內人 (nei4 ren2) is not limited to any Chinese dialects. It is the official and traditional term
for Chinese to refer to their wives to other people.












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