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Search took 0.07 seconds; generated 4 minute(s) ago. Search: Posts Made By: 39degN

Forum: Speaking and Listening 30th April 2004, 11:47 PM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


sure, your writing is a living proof. :mrgreen:...

sure, your writing is a living proof. :mrgreen:
joking. BTW, could you pls kindly to explain to our native fellow and foreign friends what does
the 干 mean here?
is that was just[A] character had...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 28th April 2004, 02:57 AM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


yeah, agree, i m waiting for it too. 8) i'm...

yeah, agree, i m waiting for it too. 8)

i'm just wondering without andio data, how can we get the right ancient pronunciation?
莫非有古人“投胎转世”? :mrgreen: there are several books talking about...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 27th April 2004, 01:37 AM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


抱歉我没交代清楚，同时拜托别开国际玩笑，地道中国土著会不懂中文吗？
:conf ...

抱歉我没交代清楚，同时拜托别开国际玩笑，地道中国土著会不懂中文吗？
:conf 你以为我也受外族影响，语言退化了啊？:mrgreen: :wink:
sorry for that i didnt make myself...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 26th April 2004, 04:23 PM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


it could be in Vienam and Korea, but why japan?...

it could be in Vienam and Korea, but why japan? ppl in india have to speak english before, but why
Germany?

sure without 儿, as
1/ they didnt adopt mandarin
2/ they couldnt pronounce R, that's why...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 26th April 2004, 03:59 PM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


that explains, ala! i dont know any japanese,...

that explains, ala!

i dont know any japanese, but according to the chinse characters in it, and the net translater's
rerult, they adopted characters from 百済 in the first place, as everyone knows, 百済...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 26th April 2004, 03:51 PM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


you mean the natural selections might never...

you mean the natural selections might never happened in no man's islands?



Forum: Speaking and Listening 26th April 2004, 03:35 PM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


come on! then, where were the beijing/north local...

come on! then, where were the beijing/north local ppl? you mean they all die? or up to ppl from
everywhere to change their accent? pls notice this, there were no broadcast and TV stations in
ancient,...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 9th April 2004, 11:52 PM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


yeah, quest, that's a point from an impersonal...

yeah, quest, that's a point from an impersonal perspective.
(but does british have influenced HKers cantonese accent? or the older one, Macao people's accent
have been influenced by Portuguese?...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 9th April 2004, 10:45 PM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


50% agree, but don't you think there could have...

50% agree, but don't you think there could have been other possibilities?

1.they just adopt Chinese writing system, but not the pronunciation system. e.g. Vietnam using
Latin alphabets right now,...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 9th April 2004, 12:02 PM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


ok, eric, lets agree to disagree, i just want to...

ok, eric, lets agree to disagree, i just want to mention one point BTW, the poem wroten in 楚语



Forum: Speaking and Listening 9th April 2004, 11:55 AM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


ala then where the origninal north han chinese...

ala

then where the origninal north han chinese went? i mean the 燕? do you mean they had been
influenced by 洋鬼子, and speaking chinese just like foreign accent? they couldnt do a good job
at chinese,...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 9th April 2004, 02:53 AM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


BTW, the poem has no problem, but the poet's name...

BTW, the poem has no problem, but the poet's name is not correct. SB xiang4 yu3, not xiang1 yu4.
also, if you heard that sounds more softer is not a right feeling, xiang yu 是豪放派诗人,
this poem has no...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 9th April 2004, 02:25 AM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


it may be, but dont forget that, boy, 项羽 is 西楚霸王,...

it may be, but dont forget that, boy, 项羽 is 西楚霸王, and 楚 is nearby today's 湖北,
楚、越、吴语are both south dialects.

And here we can find something could be useful right now, as you know, in史记 or 汉书, we...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 9th April 2004, 01:30 AM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


oh,really then how come i think they sound better...

oh,really then how come i think they sound better in mandarin? i think sometimes changing
ourselve's perspective is very important. :conf



Forum: Speaking and Listening 9th April 2004, 01:23 AM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


ok, i temporarily agree with you unless i found...

ok, i temporarily agree with you unless i found new evidences. i have also read a taiwanese
scholars paper, he thought that the sourth dialets are more similar with the ancient chinese than
mandarin....



Forum: Speaking and Listening 8th April 2004, 03:55 PM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


in addition
约七十万年前：朝鲜半岛开始有人类定居。　　　　　　　　　　　　　...

in addition

约七十万年前：朝鲜半岛开始有人类定居。　　　　　　　　　　　　　
公元前2333年：传说中的檀君王俭建立古朝鲜国。　　　　　　　　　　　
约3000年前：殷商贵族箕子率众来到朝鲜半岛，建立朝鲜半岛历史上的第一个
信史记载王朝“箕子朝鲜”。...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 8th April 2004, 02:50 PM

Replies: 62

Chinese roots in other languages

Views: 7,944

Posted By 39degN


從朝鮮的歷史來看，西元前108年，漢武帝將衛氏的朝鮮（由燕國的亡命者衛�
��所建）滅掉，並設置樂浪等四個...

從朝鮮的歷史來看，西元前108年，漢武帝將衛氏的朝鮮（由燕國的亡命者衛�
��所建）滅掉，並設置樂浪等四個郡。西元前57年新羅建國，前37年高句麗建�
��，前18年百濟建國，當時漢字傳入朝鮮半島，也是儒學思想傳入的時期。高
句麗在小獸林王2年（372年）設立大學。百濟也在近肖古王在位（346～375年）
時設置博士。新羅在統一三國後，於神文王2年（682年）創立國學，之後派遣
留唐學生，獎勵學問。西元七世紀末，新...



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Forum: Speaking and Listening 10th May 2007, 11:34 AM

Replies: 63

Chinesepod.com-Does it really work?

Views: 10,684

Posted By imron


Re: Chinesepod.com-Does it really work?

Unfortunately here, for advanced classes they are providing definitions for new words in English,
or at least they were shortly after they updated their site to the new version. For me, any
learning...



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Forum: Speaking and Listening 1st December 2006, 04:23 PM

Replies: 71

Steve Kaufmann - How good is he?

Views: 9,086

Posted By anonymoose


To me, as a non-native speaker of chinese, I...

To me, as a non-native speaker of chinese, I think his mandarin is not bad, but he doesn't sound
like a native. I'll leave others to comment on his accent and level, but I'd say his fluency is
not...



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Forum: Speaking and Listening 10th February 2006, 10:40 AM

Replies: 77

which chinese dialect(s) do you like most?

Views: 8,451

Posted By LiYuanXi


Ncao: The 95.8Fm used dialects only in specially...

Ncao: The 95.8Fm used dialects only in specially allocated time slots which is maybe 1 hour.

Anyway, I heard lots of formal hokkien in my daily life as I am learning to sing Nanyin.



Forum: Speaking and Listening 8th February 2006, 08:38 AM

Replies: 77

which chinese dialect(s) do you like most?

Views: 8,451

Posted By LiYuanXi


There are many types of hokkien, so far I have...

There are many types of hokkien, so far I have heard 3-4 types. Some are very nice when spoken
properly. My friend once heard a girl reading newspaper in an unknown dialect. He liked the
dialect very...



Forum: Speaking and Listening 7th February 2006, 03:58 PM

Replies: 77

which chinese dialect(s) do you like most?

Views: 8,451

Posted By LiYuanXi


Lots of people around me like Cantonese more than...

Lots of people around me like Cantonese more than the other dialect. Hokkien is considered as a
unrefined dialect here.



Forum: Speaking and Listening 3rd February 2006, 09:12 AM

Replies: 77

which chinese dialect(s) do you like most?

Views: 8,451

Posted By LiYuanXi


I like Suzhou's dialect! :) I also like the...

I like Suzhou's dialect! :) I also like the dialect of Quanzhou. It is close to hokkien but it is
still quite difficult to understand if they speak too fast. Have you heard of Quanzhou and
Suzhou...



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Forum: Speaking and Listening 8th November 2005, 10:55 PM

Replies: 82

How could I get better at tones?

Views: 18,328

Posted By trevelyan


I agree with the importance of learning the...

I agree with the importance of learning the tones, but this is sheer nonsense. I've studied in two
western countries as well as China and have yet to come across *anyone* educated in a Western...



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Learn mandarin - Breakthrough in learning Characters? - Page 3 -

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Breakthrough in learning Characters?
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Daan -

Cecilia Lindqvist's China: Empire of Living Symbols might be what you're looking for. She gave a
lecture here at Leiden University's Sinological Institute last week, which I thought was very
interesting. Check it out on Amazon.com or something



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imron -



Quote:

But claiming 4 dots represents 4 legs and then having that under a fish, cooking pot, and the word
for hot boggles my mind--even if that were true it makes it 10 times harder characters compared to
a logical system.

There is no logical system. For any system you come up with, there will always exceptions and
parts that are illogical. You say you need things to make sense, but you readily accept 'hand' +
'spear' as 'me'? These are the kind of things that only make sense if you decide it makes sense,
because hand+spear=me doesn't make sense to me especially as 'hand' (扌) + 'spear' (戈) also
means 'search/find' 找, (which makes equally little sense to me).

Anyway, the book I was talking about before was called something like 汉字入门 but a quick
search for that doesn't turn up anything.










muyongshi -

I know which book you are talking about...My friend has that...I can't find it either on any
site...check with your school if you are interested.










renzhe -



Quote:

I am probably not alone. In fact, even if the meanings were purely fictitious but systematically
fit the pictures and related to the actual meaning of the character. WOW. That would be genius
indeed.

You are not alone. Everybody who has studied Chinese characters has done this. They are called
mnemonics. Like my example with biting your fist = philosophy. It's certainly not etymologically
correct, but I never forget that character.



Quote:

But claiming 4 dots represents 4 legs and then having that under a fish, cooking pot, and the word
for hot boggles my mind--even if that were true it makes it 10 times harder characters compared to
a logical system.

I have never heard anyone say that the 4 dots represent 4 legs, everyone knows that it is the fire
radical. Perhaps some children get told the four legs story to visualise more easily, but it is
hardly what the four dots "represent".

Furthermore, the fact that horse was originally a pictograph is really well documented and not
disputed. You can trace the development of the pictograph through time. At a certain point in
time, with the standardisation of writing, the fire radical was added. You can explain that to
yourself in a number of ways.

Really, it is common knowledge, and has been for thousands of years, that parts of characters
carry meaning. The professor here seems to think that every part of every character carries
meaning and that every single character was intentionally designed to carry a meaning derived from
these parts. Some of his explanations for this are very far-fetched.










johnmck -

Clearly Chinese characters are not created from random strokes and hence there is a some form of
reason behind them. If you can find out the reasoning behind each character this can help you to
remember them. It is not possible to decode a character if you do not already know what it means,
but it can help for remembering.

Nevertheless purchasing this book sounds like a waste of money. Not because it is not useful, it
sounds very useful, but because the contents are already on the web for free at www.zhongwen.com.
For example:

http://zhongwen.com/d/167/d218.htm




I use this site all the time. It is based on traditional characters (which is good for
understanding the reasoning behind characters). I only use simplified characters so it was not so
easy to use at first but one starts to understand the simplificatoins fairly quickly and the site
becomes easy to use.

Edit: On reflection, if this book is cheap it may be worth buying and reading before studying
characters. Then use zhongwen afterwards for further study.










waynewalter -

renzhe,

I haven't read his book, of course, but on his site, he claims that every character carries a
indication of pronunciation also. So he doesn't say that every part of the character adds to the
meaning necessarily.

Thanks for clearing up the fire radical question. That fits better because I've seen the earlier
symbols for horse which does appear to have legs. Perhaps fire was added more as a pronunciation
guide.

In response to imron:

You make a good point about "hand" and "spear" not making "sense" logically now that you mention
it. Somehow that is sticking in my head quite well. Why?

Apparently, when you attach a movie in your mind to the word you want to remember in a new
language, you are 1,000 time more likely to remember. So I see a person holding a spear to defend
themselves.

Again, an excellent point in this character 找 that includes the SAME two roots. The only
difference I see is that the two root aren't connected. Actually, that sticks in my head also. To
me, it means that the person has thrown the spear and now needs to go find it. Therefore, search!

Whether that was the original intent of the character or not, I just learned ANOTHER character
without effort and without writing it 100 times. Zhao3. So thank you very much Imron. I will
practice it a couple times. Also, I didn't know that word in my spoken vocabulary yet. But now I
do.

Frankly, if I can imagine something that fits in my head as a graphical images then it will stick
in my brain forever. There's some great books on "right brain strategies" for instantly memorizing
things using images. And Chinese characters seems like the perfect subject to fit graphically in
the right brain permanently.

In responses to Daan:

Thanks for recommending that book China: Empire of Living Symbols. It appears to be fascinating.
It sounds very much like it makes the characters come ALIVE. I know my wife and daughter will love
all the connection to the history.

In reality, it's almost irrelevant to learn the true history of how the character came to be
unless you're a sinologist or linguist. But getting ideas to help make visual movies out of them
so the come alive in your head and remember them easier. Now that's my goal.

Sincerely,
Wayne










muyongshi -



Quote:

he claims that every character carries a indication of pronunciation also.

Well that is simply not true. Unless you connect it to maybe other character that happen to have
the same radical and by doing a seventh degree type of thing then associate it to that word...All
you need to do is look at the other example already given and you will see how this is a
preposterous statement!










waynewalter -

Johnmck,

Wow. what a great post to this thread! I love your ideas.

First, I'm my last post, I used Zhongwen.com to lookup the character for 找 to see what it meant
and the breakdown of the symbols.

I think we were posting simultaneously. I just got the idea to use Zhongwen.com as you suggest to
get started studying characters!!

I'm not concerned about the money, like you say, having the professor's book might help. BUT he's
sold out for at least 2 to 3 months which he wants on editing and reprint of his new version.

But Zhongwen also has a book of the contents of the site, I believe. That might be useful. But I
love the site because you can copy and paste.

So here's my plan at the moment....

I want to learn characters in order of most frequently used. So I found a site that has the 3000
most commonly used characters in descending order of frequency.

Unfortunately, it just give the meaning of each without the breakdown like Zhongwen.com

So I have the 3000 in a spreadsheet. Now I'm going to take each character, search it on
Zhongwen.com and then paste the results into the spreadsheet and learn the meaning at the same
time.

That will give me a quick reference in frequency order for studying the characters. Also, I want
to make flash cards.

I'm using Pimsleur to learn the spoken language and I also downloaded the transcript of all the
Pimsleur lessons that has with the pinyin and characters. So I'm thinking of going back to the
first lesson and learn the characters for all the words I already know how to say VIA this
Zhongwen.com method. I will make sure those characters are in my frequently used list and label
them as Pimsleur words.

My feeling is that if I systematically learn the characters at the SAME time as learning the
spoken mandarin words as I go forward, the characters will stick better in my head.

Also, I might order the Zhongwen.com book after checking the reviews. The one imron suggests above
sounds great also.

I have friends who want to learn Chinese, this might turn into a useful collection of tools to use
if it turns out to be successful.

Thanks for your suggestion, Johnmck!!!

Sincerely,
Wayne










renzhe -

waynewalter,

what you are talking about when inventing stories and explanations about characters is a tool
commonly known as mnemonics. It is very useful for learning characters, as you have found out
already.

The only discussion is how groundbreaking this particular research is, as there have been books
teaching all characters through mnemonics for quite a while (take the Heisig system example).

Another mnemonic I've used is for the character bei 杯. If you take the meaning of the individual
components, it means "not wood" or "no wood". For some stupid reason, this stuck in my brain (cups
are nowadays usually not made of wood) and I have remembered it ever since. I honestly don't think
that you can make a credible explanation for why a cup is written as "not wood". It just ended up
that way, languages are organic.

so you're right in trying to understand the way characters are built, and this will certainly help
you learn them better -- in fact, it is essential. But don't expect an all-encompassing system
that explains everything. There are things about Chinese characters which are simply not logical.










waynewalter -

In my plan above, I'm stuck on the very first, most popular character. What does a ladel in the
(rising) sun have to do with genitive as well as simple and composed adjectives? It appears I will
need help in connecting characters ideas into the meaning especially in the case of abstract ideas.



Any suggestions?

http://zhongwen.com/d/170/d186.gif

Sincerely,
Wayne












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Learn mandarin - Mandarin and Japanese - Page 2 -

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Mandarin and Japanese
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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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