Chinese languages

Hi all!

For a western guy like myself, pinyin is THE way to get to understand Chinese. Not just the pronnunciation of the characters, but also the four different tones.

But my Chinese girlfriend has great trouble with pinyin, because to her it seems quite unlogical. For "dog" she would write "kou" rather then "gou". For "photofilm" she would write "tjowtjwan" , rather then "jaojuan".

How do Chinese in general deal with pinyin? It's the official manner of transscribing Chinese, but do they actually use it when dealing with foreigners? Do they study it at school, like we study Spanish of French? Why would China be concerned acceping pinyin as offical transcribing language in the first place, while it's generally a western's tool to understand Chinese (mandarin)?

It would be nice if Chinese readers could give me an awnser.

Kind regards,

~Michiel~

depends where ur gf comes from and wad kind of phonetic symbols system or keyboard input system she uses. pinyin was initially promoted in mainland china but not in hk or taiwan.

I am looking for a dictionary that has the english word, mandarin writing, pinyin w/ roman characters, and then the pinyin characters like those I see on my girlfriend's handheld electronic dictionary. I like learning to pronounce the words w/ the chinese pinyin characters better than using the roman characters.

wtf? Pinyin and roman characters ARE THE SAME THING.

I do belive he means bopomofo (Taiwanese phoneticization).

to the Andrew: I'd look for a dictionary out of Taiwan, and I would recommend one but I can't

Additionally, it may be well worth your while to learn pinyin; the substitution process shouldn't be incredibly difficult as the bopomofo symbols have direct roman equivalents. Additionally, there is a great deal more literature available in pinyin as it is the standardized phoneticization method.

To Ichi:

Generally that's true, as Zhuyin is used mostly in children's books and learners' material, and you'll have a hard time finding any real literature in Zhuyin.

Maybe I can tell something. First, pinyin is the official roman systems for
Chinese language in mainland China, while in Taiwan it is a different system
called Zhuyin Fuhao. Second, Everybody in China knows pinyin, and every
student learns it as early as from primary school. So there is no problem
that anybody in China does not recognize pinyin. Pinyin to Chinese students
is not like French or Spanish to English-speaking students. It is a roman
system for the same language rather than some other languages.

The last thing I have to tell you is, the pinyin system only represents the
sound of the Chinese characters, which means that it lost the structure or
the picture of the character itself, which is the most important and meaningful part of Chinese language (and also its culture). Also only using
pinyin will cause a lot of ambiguities, because a pinyin word may represent
several characters. That's the reason that China will never use pinyin as
a replacement of the characters, as some radical people suggested in
early 20th century, because it would have caused much more problems
than the problems it could have solved.

I am a native Chinese Mandarin speaker, and anyone interested in
Chinese language or literature is welcome to contact me via email:
lailai@ustc.edu

That's interesting, Lailai.

I have a question: as a native speaking you are saying that if you would use pinyin instead of hanzi, there would be a lot of ambiguities and misunderstanding. Then when Chinese people talk, they wouldn't be able to understand each other. You don't ask another person how he spells what he just said. You understand by the context, by the word order or by using clearer or longer words to avoid misunderstanding. In French they use sometimes extra signs above the letters to differentiate between synonyms (not always they are pronounced differently).

Other languages also have homophones, maybe not as many as Chinese and in other languages they have joke about it.

I am not advocating changing to pinyin and abolishing characters. It's only in my view that this change more problems than create new ones. I saw a discussion somewhere where people learning Chinese say that Chinese is only for Chinese and not for all even. It's so hard to learn because of the writing system, even Chinese kids spent years at school. Chinese language could become more popular among non-Chinese people.

I respect Chinese culture and like to learn foreign language, my Chinese is very basic. At the moment I am concentrating on Japanese though.

modern chinese terms are usually made up of 2 characters/words, some 4(yeah, chinese is sometimes obssessed with pairing things up), unlike ancient chinese, where single character terms are common. so by linking up to different combinations and also context of the conversation, chinese speakers usually would not misunderstood each other. this has to do with chinese sentence structure too. certain terms, i make an example, 2 chinese terms 'ab' and 'cd', may sound identical, although they are made up of different characters. but one is a verb and one is a noun. from the rules of common sentence structure, chinese speakers will know which fit in best. even if both are verbs, people will know which one to fit in by looking at the context of the sentence. just like if i say this man is a 'phreak' in english, people will relate to the word 'freak' and not 'freight'.

to put things simple pinyin and zhuyin symbols gives only the pronouciation of chinese characters but doesnt include the meanings. it is a tool for learners to know the pronouciation of different words, like the phonetic symbols in an english dictionary. its not a vocab builder.

Anatoli,

There are two kinds of Chinese: spoken and written. The spoken language can be very colloquial, and not even written in this way at all. On the other hand, the written language is very much like an art, I guess you can call it rhetorical. If you read a sentence aloud, it will not sound like the way people speak. And people should be familiar with what is being read in order to understand. There is also a lot of abbreviation in the language, usually into 4 or 2 syllables. There are many 4-character sayings I haven't learned yet, and when I hear them, I cannot understand their meaning. I have to see it written to understand its meaning. But, what if we used pinyin? Then I still wouldn't understand its meaning, it would just be a copy of what was just said.

In addition, the way Chinese is, it is not necessary for children to use a dictionary past elementary/high school. Most dictionaries are for children, and there are hardly any for adults or college students. Only on this website do we mention sometimes and discuss these specialty dictionaries.

Mandarin has many fewer sounds than Ancient Chinese or other languages such as Cantonese or Min. So, it is actually easier to understand the spoken forms of more literary terms in these languages than it is in Mandarin. But there is one complication in Min is that there is a colloquial pronunciation and a literary pronunciation for everything. So actually, even if you speak the language well, does not mean that you could understand something being read aloud using literary pronunciation.

So if special words are difficult to understand in spoken Chinese, then how do we spell them out in speech, or over the telephone? How do you tell an operator, or a hospital attendant your name over the telephone so that she can look up your records? Basically, you have to use the word in context (context is everything!), one that the other person would know. For example, my name is ya-ke, but how do you write it? I use a chengyu to describe: wenren-yake de yake. Just by saying this, then people know how to write it. Some people's names have special radicals and may not appear in any literature that people would know, then we just say add such-and-such a radical to the rest of the character we might be familiar with.

James