Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese?

[BossGnome]

I have noticed several people on these forums seem to speak chinese (well at least 2 that I know for sure) and I was wondering how many people there were in total. Myself I don't speak chinese but I speak japanese relatively well. When it comes to reading it I am not very good I only know 700 out of the 2000 kanjis required for everyday reading, but I can speak it well enough to get by without a dictionary in Tokyo. I was also curious how the heck people come to learn chinese?? The whopping 6000 kanjis required to read the thing (no hiragana or katakana in chinese![:(]) kind of puts me off trying to learn it.

[patrickl]

Hi BossGnome,

You are talking about me?[X(] [:D]. I am Chinese and I speak and write English, Mandarin (Chinese is a langauge written rather thanspoken). The Chinese people is not homogeneous - with many 'dialects" or slangs if you can call them. This dialects are not only based on regions eg Pekinese speaks Mandarin dialect while Canton & Hong Kong people speaks Cantonese dialect- but also clans (surnames) but all still write Chinese.

To learn Chinese.. takes years. Chinese langauge, you would be surprised, relies quite a bit of diagrams and drawing!s Take the case of the chinese word for mouth. It is written just like you would drawing a square. Don't ask me why. So you learn mouth and slowly other words, by writing and pronuncing them and memorisng them. Pronouncing them.. this is where the han yu pin xin comes in. Any Chinese word has 4 tones, just like music do-ra-me. Except Chinese has only 4 tones while music has 8. You change a tone, it means a different word! Eg pronounce "ma" - Highest tone of ma means mother, 2nd tone means numb, 3rd tone means horse and the lowest tone means scold.

Perhaps that is enough for now.[;)]

[Speedysteve]

[X(]

People think English is hard?!? [:-]

[Oliver Heindorf]

heh, I have already heard about the ma story...."you have just called your mom horse" he stated [:D] I was really surprised ! Thats why these languanges last in the other half of the brain - music is the answer [:)]

[Lord_Calidor]

ORIGINAL: patrickl
Any Chinese word has 4 tones, just like music do-ra-me. Except Chinese has only 4 tones while music has 8. You change a tone, it means a different word! Eg pronounce "ma" - Highest tone of ma means mother, 2nd tone means numb, 3rd tone means horse and the lowest tone means scold.

Perhaps that is enough for now.[;)]

So I take it eunuchs can't speak Chinese well? [;)][:D]

[Speedysteve]

[:D]

[patrickl]

Hi,

[:D][:D]

[BossGnome]

japanese is very similar. "Ame" pronounced in two different ways (raised or lowered) can mean either rain or hard candy, for example. Patrick I know about the kanji learning basics (what do you call kanji in chinese?), since I study them myself, but I am daunted by having to learn and memorize the 2000 japanese kanjis, and I have the help of the phonetic hiragana and katakana scripts. I was wondering how little chinese children learn your language? I mean, a chinese dictionnary would be written only in kanjis right? So how does a little kid who wants to check up a kanji he doesn't know in a dictionnary do, if the explanation contains another 4 kanjis he doesn't know? Ask his parents? In japanese I am ok because I can read the explanation in hiragana, but chinese just boggles me.

And I know about the chinese dialects. It was funny I lived for a year in a dorm with a hong kong Cantonese speaking guy and a mandarin speaking Taiwanese. Sometimes when they were trying to converse in mandarin (which the hong kong guy spoke badly), they would confuse words. I remember that the hong kong guy accidently confused the word for what (pronounced somewhat like sama i think), with towel[&:]... Of course when I spoke about this to the other chinese living in my dorm they just laughed and said he wasn't very bright![8|]

But yes you are right about the kanjis looking like pictures (the kanji for hill (oka in japanese) really looks like a hill), but anything a little more complicated gets very hard for me... any tips? I especially have trouble on kanji combinations...

[gunner333]

The best way to learn kanji is to write it(first with PC).
You input using hiragana than hit space and here you go you have a kanji. Setting a Japanese fonts is not a problem
even on English OS.
The problem is what to write up. Maybe you can start to post on Japanese Witp
forums. [;)] How about that?

[Mynok]

That is why we stupid, barbarian westerners threw out heiroglyphics...... [:D] Pictures are a pain, even if they are wonderfully concise!!

[Mattremote]

Ugh! Both Chinese and Japanese sound horribly intimidating to me! I'm thinking about where to live after S.Africa, and SE Asia looks attractive... except for learning their languages (and they aren't as hard as Chinese or Japanese).

[patrickl]

Hi BossGnome,

Good questions. Actually, the "tradtional" chinese dictionary normally contains 3 sections. The 1st section contains the basic kanji enumberated by the number of strokes. The chinese word for one is the 1st entry in the one stroke subsection under this section, etc.
Now it gets complicated. Eg the word mouth in chinese is written as a square - not four strokes but 3. Once you identify this 3 strokes "mouth" kanji in the 1st heading, you then proceed to 2nd section to find the heading of the mouth basic kanji - under which you will then find many Chinese words using this mouth basic kanji to form other words eg kiss, quarrel, eat, etc. This 2nd heading will also give you the page number for you to go to the 3rd heading to find the actual word be it eat, kiss, etc to find the meaning and pronounciation (in romanised character - mouth is pronoun as "hou" 3rd tone).

Young children won't know how to use the Chinese dictionary till say 10 years old when they are able to write not just one to ten but quite simple sentences. I wish I can of more help. Chinese is difficult to learn quickly. I don't know about Japanese. But the fact that you know Japanese deos make your job much easier. The average number of chinese words one commonly use is about one thousand characters. The rest of the other 3 thousands - don't bother, you won't use them unless you want to be a Chinese scholar![:D]
PM me if I can of help.
Cheers
Patrick

[Terminus]

The Chinese use kanji script too? I always thought it was the Japanese only...

[patrickl]

Hi,

You are right, I mean chinese character writing (I don't really understand the word kanji).[;)]

[Mynok]

The average number of chinese words one commonly use is about one thousand characters.

Interesting. One thing I learned from curiousity web-surfing is that Chinese is a analytic language rather than a synthetic. See this wikipedia page.

I can't imagine the amount of syntactical rules required for that kind of language.

[patrickl]

Hi gunner333! [:D]

ORIGINAL: gunner333

The best way to learn kanji is to write it(first with PC).
You input using hiragana than hit space and here you go you have a kanji. Setting a Japanese fonts is not a problem
even on English OS.
The problem is what to write up. Maybe you can start to post on Japanese Witp
forums. [;)] How about that?

An absolutely brialliant idea! Imagine what a Japanese WITP website could do :

1) Bohdi, Gunner333 and BossGnome will be the moderators and BossGnome can learn Japanese real quickly!
2) Overnight 100 million potential Japanese PBEM players with Mogami, PZB and the rest as special consultants!
3) Fantastic sales for Matrix and 2by3!
4) Expertise to patch up WITP for good!

What say you! [:D]

[AmiralLaurent]

ORIGINAL: Mattremote

Ugh! Both Chinese and Japanese sound horribly intimidating to me! I'm thinking about where to live after S.Africa, and SE Asia looks attractive... except for learning their languages (and they aren't as hard as Chinese or Japanese).

Are you kidding ? Vietnamese has seven tones whene Chinese has only four.

For people not used to them, tonal languages are very hard to learn. You can't hear all the differences between the tones (if you didn't during your prime years) and so you will always confuse words.

IIRC Thai language has 5 tones. I remember reading in a travel book a phrase written like 'han han han han han' (not this work, can't remember now) and pronouced like 'Han hAn HHHan HaN haN' and really meaning a phrase you may say in today life. Thailand has been the only country I have visited where I was unable to say 'Hello', 'Good bye' and 'Thank you' in local language when I left.

[patrickl]

Hi AmiralLaurent

ORIGINAL: AmiralLaurent

ORIGINAL: Mattremote

Ugh! Both Chinese and Japanese sound horribly intimidating to me! I'm thinking about where to live after S.Africa, and SE Asia looks attractive... except for learning their languages (and they aren't as hard as Chinese or Japanese).

Are you kidding ? Vietnamese has seven tones whene Chinese has only four.

For people not used to them, tonal languages are very hard to learn. You can't hear all the differences between the tones (if you didn't during your prime years) and so you will always confuse words.

IIRC Thai language has 5 tones. I remember reading in a travel book a phrase written like 'han han han han han' (not this work, can't remember now) and pronouced like 'Han hAn HHHan HaN haN' and really meaning a phrase you may say in today life. Thailand has been the only country I have visited where I was unable to say 'Hello', 'Good bye' and 'Thank you' in local language when I left.

You are not as bad as me. Although I stay relativley quite near to Thailand (2 hour flight), the way I said good morning in Thai sounded like " please give me 3 bowls of stewed pig legs" in a chinese dialect![:D][:D]

[CaptDave]

Languages have always fascinated me, but I've never had the time to study any properly (at least, not since it was required in high school -- BTW, lapsing into Spanish doesn't work when trying to communicate with a hotel desk clerk in Nagoya!). I think BossGnome should take up a REAL challenge -- the clicking language the bushmen use in Africa!

[Terminus]

Combined with Morse code for multitasking purposes...