What to Revive?

[Mark Yong]

amhoanna wrote:
If what U have is really just a page, would U like to have it posted on the web as a webpage? My websites are in a shambles, but it would be cool to post your mini-glossary once I have everything set up right.

Sure, why not. Give me a couple of days to dig my brains for all the terms I used in my previous work life (it has been 8 years), and I’ll put something decent together for you. To bear in mind that strictly-speaking, it will not be a 電子辭典 tian-cu su-tian per se, as my work was more a peripheral support for the electronics industry, i.e. in the mechanical and automation side of things.

[Yeleixingfeng]

Haha, can't stop the urge. >.<

Ah-bin wrote:
...and 克隆 (China) 複製 (Taiwan HK) ...... although 摩托車 seems universal.

LOL, I have long thought that I was the only one prescriptively against transliteration and direct translations. Just to share some opinions regarding the Chinese language as a whole. Btw, I am not specifically aiming to satirize any government; My comments are not professional in any sense, and based only on my observation in/from Malaysia.

1. Overloadedness
Some characters are too overloaded, like 中. (Hanji seems to lack of characters related to 'middle'.) 中 itself, could mean middle, secondary, China, centre, hit a target, punch(verb), intermediate, and inside.
韓中災情 - Reports on the disaster in the middle area of Korea.
韓中關係 - The relationship between China and Korea
The above examples are by no means carefully worded. This is very confusing, especially when 韓中 itself could also mean 'in Korea' for new-learners - grammatically it is correct.
I can think of 機 as another example, but I think I made my point...?

2. Naming
The Chinese way of naming countries just sucks. Nonetheless, I like 檳城 very much, honestly - although Aokh seems to prefer 庇能. I don't mean to back-stab Aokh, since I did not really voice my opinion when we were debating. 檳城 sounds naturally Chinese, unlike 雪辟(Sprite) which sounds forced. Aokh says that 庇能stands for 庇佑萬能, nevertheless - again I'm sorry Aokh for not stating this earlier.. - I think it makes Penang sound like some commercial product that needs to have a prosperous meaning, albeit implicit, to be marketable. I am lousy at describing, but don't you think 檳城 is more original? It was named exactly as how the Malays named the island - factual, straight to the point. I disagree with the 威's though - 威南 威中(again the 中) 威北; I think they are named after their British names.
Similarly, I support 獅城 than 新加坡, as the official Chinese name of Singapore.

However, for the naming system to be ideal, I recommend that every country on Earth to be given its own character. It's really easy - just add a 邑 (right 阝) to the character which pronunciation corresponds to the country's local one. Like, US should be 美阝. At least the distinction between 美中貿易 and 美中不足 is obvious now... Of course, whenever possible, I still think that the semantic way is better - just pick a rarer character to be the symbol character of the country. 檳, 獅, 韓 and 臺 are rare enough. 中 and 日 are not though, but they can't be helped I guess...

With our technology, I seriously doubt this though.

3. The weakening of characters
For example, 針對 was once a verb; it means to aim at. Yet nowadays it is weakened to mean just 'regarding'. The same applies for 應該 too - I am glad that Hokkien is not influenced as severely. 應該 was once an adjective to describe that something should happen like that.
“伊著先生駡了。”　”應該啦，伊直直無做功課仒。”
But now 應該 is reduced to just 'should'. I don't understand why - we have 宜 from Classical Chinese which can substitute 應該 in almost every situation. Besides, to suggest something, Hokkien uses 較好: "汝去做功課較好. 免直直與儂駡. "
The reason all of this is bad, is because... I argued with Aokh over this too. This time I stated my point clear. Hehe.
Imagine. We had 嚴重 for serious. Then came English and its 'seriously', so under its influence 嚴重 is reduced to become an adverb - 嚴重受損. And, since seriously doesn't necessarily equates with severity, English uses 'I seriously agree with you.' Thus in Chinese we have, "我嚴重同意你的看法." while we actually already have 拍案叫絕 which also gives a vivid image of 'seriously agree'.
The case of 嚴重同意 actually illustrates two examples of weakening - both 嚴重 and 同意. Nonetheless I can't say anything about 同意, since I can't think of a Classical Chinese counterpart that means to agree. But, as for 嚴重, we can always use 十分, 極為. (非常 means un- usual, its adjective meaning is still used today, so I try to keep it pure.) At least, we can save 嚴重 for the negative ones... If we let this continue, one day 嚴重 would be so diluted that it means only, 'slightly', as the initial meaning for 嚴重 would be 嚴重至極地無藥可救.

What do you guys think?

[Mark Yong]

My two-cents:

Yeleixingfeng wrote:
韓中災情 - Reports on the disaster in the middle area of Korea.
韓中關係 - The relationship between China and Korea

This one has to do with the Chinese language’s obsession with keeping to a meter - in this case, the 4-character meter. That is part of the reason why I find reading 梁啟超’s essays refreshing. He uses the Literary Chinese lexical and grammatical model, but is not bound by meters.

I considered the possibility of a not-too-wordy disambiguation by re-writing the above as 韓中二國之關係, but it is still not perfect, as it could mean “the two countries within Korea”. Nope, no two ways about it - you either have clarity or elegance, not both.

Yeleixingfeng wrote:
...I like 檳城 very much, honestly - although Aokh seems to prefer 庇能.

I believe aokh1979’s philosophy is to capture the sounds as accurately as possible. My bias is more towards literal correctness, which would mean that I am in your camp. That said, I am willing to compromise and go for 檳榔. The sound does not run too far off, and yet from a literal standpoint, it remains faithful to the origin of the name.

Yeleixingfeng wrote:
I support 獅城 than 新加坡, as the official Chinese name of Singapore.

On the basis of my previous post suggesting that Australia should rightly be called 異南洲, yes I fully agree. It’s also semantically-accurate, as it maps correctly to the Sanskrit components of the name Singapore, i.e. ‘Singa’ (lion) and ‘pore’ (city).

Yeleixingfeng wrote:
...we have 宜 from Classical Chinese...

Love that word. Use it a lot for ‘should’ in my own writings.

Yeleixingfeng wrote:
...under its influence 嚴重 is reduced to become an adverb...

I feel that this has to do with the limitation in Chinese not being an inflected language, in this case, lacking the equivalent of the -ly suffix for adverbs. The best that they could do was throw in a 地 as a suffix.


Off-tangent: Many months ago, I posted this on my blog, which I think partially-relates to what you are talking about (please mind my atrocious Chinese - 我是讀紅毛册):

溝通不佳 Poor communication

我認爲大致上馬來西亞華人 (尤其年輕代) 關鍵缺點之一、係溝通不佳。何如？ 例: 辭彙不純淨、文法不正確、說話不準確、描述含糊、疑問答覆不具體、欲一需十問、不伸其眞意。

結果、誤會多甚、欲東得西、浪費珍貴時間資源、效率降落。

諸讀者: 君等同意上述否？ 若然、君等認爲此乃文化之問題、抑或教育之問題？ 有一位從前同事回答說、「環境造成文化與教育問題」。 我對曰、「環境又何原乎？ 乃政治造成也。」

I believe our current generation of Malaysians are plagued by poor communication skills as a result of a bad language culture – adulterated vocabulary ("code-switching"), atrocious grammar, vagueness and inaccuracy, and lack of detail. So much time is wasted clarifying and rectifying Q&A's that could have been done correctly right off the bat, if only we have the discipline to.

Simple example: When I call a person whom I know is on his/her way to see me, and I ask him/her “Where are you?” (which, in full-style, obviously means “Where along the way from your point of origin to my current location are you?”), the response “I am coming” does not tell me Jack Sh*t.

[amhoanna]

I like Aokh's Pi-neng over Pinsiann. Pinsiann has a Mandarin or Mando/Canto feel. But 檳榔 is even cooler. The word pin'nng was borrowed from Malay, and now the old Malay word has punji in kanji.