Anybody Understand Chinese Written Language?

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
Programme on about China at the moment gave the briefest introduction to the ideograms comparing ancient writings with modern equivalents. It appears that, as a general principle, one character represents one word.

The question this raises in my mind is whether there is any clue to the spoken pronunciation of the word in the ideogram. In a letter-based language system, the characters (roughly) represent sounds, so one can have a reasonable stab at vocalising an unfamiliar word, and newly invented words can be converted to writing by following the pronunciation rules.

How does this work in ideogrammic languages? If a reader comes across an unfamiliar character, are they completely stumped as to what it might mean or how it is pronounced, or is there some system that would allow a good guess?
 
I'll ask my friend :)

An interesting parallel: when my (Singaporean) friend and I worked in Tokyo, we found he could recognise lots of words, since the Kanji used are shared between written Chinese & Japanese. But he couldn't necessarily pronounce the words...

Of course, you have to look it up in a dictionary. That then raises another question: how do you order pictorial shapes (ideograms) in a dictionary?

Turns out that there are basic strokes to the shape, called radicals. A Japanese dictionary is ordered by the stroke count of the radicals, and compound ideograms are based on their associated radical.

or something... :)

I was able to successfully use a Japanese->English dictionary to work out how to use my A/C remote, and washing machine, when I arrived. Although the toilet proved more complicated than either...

I'll get a proper answer from him; unless someone else chimes in with a better answer beforehand.
 
I was able to successfully use a Japanese->English dictionary to work out how to use my A/C remote, and washing machine, when I arrived. Although the toilet proved more complicated than either...
Was that one of those space-age loos with an electronic control pad to operate a retractable nozzle, which fires a carefully-directed water jet? A Japanese home version of 'The Golden Shot' - up a bit, down a bit, left a bit, fire!
Back to the thread, I do know that, for example, both Mandarin and Cantonese speakers can understand the same text, but the oral languages are very different. There must also be a fair bit of redundancy in written Chinese: the PRC uses a simplified character set, while the former European colonies, Hong Kong and Macau use the more traditional extended character set. The simplified character set has both fewer characters and the characters themselves have been simplified to require fewer pen strokes to write them. It gets even more complicated, as apparently since reunification in 1999, Hong Kong has added extra characters to represent specific aspects of Cantonese in the written form!
 
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This is getting worse! It sounds to me like the written form is a substitution code on a (more or less) word-by-word basis (maybe it could provide "universal translator" abilities if all languages provided a look-up table). What does a Chinese dictionary look like? OK, so you have to organise the ideograms into some kind of sensible order, but then how is the definition and pronunciation guide represented???
 
I have often asked the Japanese guys I worked with how they know how to pronounce a symbol and the answer is 'it depends on which alphabet you are referring to', the Japanese have 3 main alphabets, Hiragana is phonetic and is used to write words that don't have a physical presents, e.g. a thought, Katakana is also phonetic (I think) and is used for writing foreign words like London, these two alphabets are added to Kanji which is basically Chinese (although there are differences), Kanji is used to write physical things e.g. book, water, sun etc.

So the answer to the question ?, well if the question is how do you know how to pronounce a Chinese or Kanji symbol, the answer is usually, a pause and a smile, followed by 'You just have to know'
 
That's what I was thinking. So there's no chance of learning by correspondence course!
Many years ago (when Hong Kong was still 'British') my Army brother-in-law was going to be posted to HK working in intelligence. He was sent on a two year, full-time course to learn Chinese.
I'd be surprised if there aren't on-line or 'correspondence' courses, but if you did it in your spare time I think the course might outlive you :)
 
I was being very specific with my intention of the term "correspondence". What I was driving at is there is no way somebody with a working knowledge of the idiogrammatic language can school somebody else entirely through the medium of the idiogrammatic language, even if they had a working knowledge of it also. Clearly it requires another channel of information in parallel - be that a voice channel, or a phonetic symbology.
 
I was being very specific with my intention of the term "correspondence". What I was driving at is there is no way somebody with a working knowledge of the idiogrammatic language can school somebody else entirely through the medium of the idiogrammatic language, even if they had a working knowledge of it also. Clearly it requires another channel of information in parallel - be that a voice channel, or a phonetic symbology.

Isn't that true of English, too?

e.g if you were to try to explain the pronunciation of a new word to someone, you might write it in a way they would understand how to pronounce - but isn't that just a phonetic symbology? It's just less obvious, since many informal phonetics use the same character set as English?

Or perhaps some ideograms can function as sounds, e.g be their own phonetics?
 
Isn't that true of English, too?
Not in the manner that I have in mind. I can make up a word in English, using "standard" pronunciation rules and adhering to pronunciation limitations (such as not putting a string of consonants together with no vowels) and you could have a good stab at how to say it, eg "kwisp".

e.g if you were to try to explain the pronunciation of a new word to someone, you might write it in a way they would understand how to pronounce - but isn't that just a phonetic symbology? It's just less obvious, since many informal phonetics use the same character set as English?

"borough" - "bu" as in "but", "ru" as in "rut" - the smallest area of local government. I have not needed to leave the system of 26 letters to explain the meaning and pronunciation of a word that may be unfamiliar to somebody.

Or perhaps some ideograms can function as sounds, e.g be their own phonetics?
This is the core of my original question: is there a subset of ideograms which, once learned, can be used to define all other ideograms. I find it difficult to see that there is, in that individual ideograms represent concepts rather than phonetics (English language symbols represent phonetics rather than concepts) - unless there is a specific set of ideograms which represent the concept of phonetic elements.

Either way, it seems to me that Chinese is two languages - written and spoken.

And what about grammar????
 
Either way, it seems to me that Chinese is two languages - written and spoken.

Yes, that's the key point, really. Well, one written language, and several spoken languages corresponding to it. So each spoken language, e.g. Mandarin, Cantonese, Hunan, etc, would need its own set of phonetic ideograms. Or differing pronunciations of each, at least. Madness :)
 
If it's not too late, here's the detailed reply from my friend.

Code:
for chinese, korean and japanese, there are no such rules :-(

        How does this work in ideogrammic languages? If a reader comes across
        an unfamiliar character, are they completely stumped as to what it
        might mean or how it is pronounced, or is there some system that
        would allow a good guess?


yes, completely stumped :-) ... from the context, we can guess what the
the word means, but we cannot know how to pronounce the words ...

in Japan, when kanji (chinese ideograms they inducted from china) is used
in the newspapers, there will be hiragana next to the kanji, to teach the
pronunciations ...

oftentimes, the japanese pronunciations of the same chinese word,
is different.

Korea, is different, again ;-)

Korea invented a new writing system; in modern history,
the only culture that has done so (i think).

they still use some chinese words ... sometimes on
street signs, menus, mostly in period dramas ;-)

again, they pronounce most words differently as well ...

sometimes though, the japanese and korean pronunciations,
sounds similar to chinese dialects ...
for chinese words, sometimes we guess .. a little more on this later ...




can only provide anecdotal explanations, not academic or scholarly :-P


    I was thinking along the lines of complex compound ideograms (or combinations) being based on simpler ones, that everyone knows, but that does extend to pronunciation?


this is the guessing part mentioned above :-)

and you're right, we can infer to some extends but never sure.

    or do you have to look it up in a dictionary?


we usually/always do ;-)

i have a dictionary on my bed ;-)
sometimes to put me to sleep,
other times, to look up words ...

some very basic words are formed from symbols, like water (水), fire (火) or wood (木),
(please google how the symbols became words/radicals ... i cannot type it out ;-P)

which would then form radicals to compose words, eg:

木 wood
森 forest
树 tree
柏 cypress
板 plank

from the radicals, we can guess that the words are related to something woody,
but we cannot guess the sounds.

but among chinese, we have a saying that -- when we don't know the pronunciation,
if there is a left or right radical, say it, else say the component in the middle ;-)

most of the times, we'd be wrong, but (only) sometimes right ;-)

dictionaries are the only sure way to go, because there are some
words that are identical, but have different pronunciations and meanings:

角 (jiao) meaning: 1. corner, or 2. contest [of strength]; tussle,
角 (jue) meaning: role.

sometimes, different words can have the the same pronunciations:
(jiao, at the third tone):

角: as above
脚: leg
饺: dumpling

sometimes, the same word have "similar" meanings, but used in different contexts:

降 (jiang) : reduce, lower;
降 (xiang): cut-down, as in one is nemesis of another ...

削 (xiao): reduce, eliminate
削 (xue): peel, pare down ...

this must sound really confusing; but most of the times, we infer
from the contexts, what the words means or how they should
be pronounced (from prior knowledge)...

    and related question: are Chinese dictionaries ordered by radical, and those by stroke count, as in Japanese dicts?

yes, like the japanese dictionaries, although japanese dictionaries most
likely adopted the methods from chinese dictionaries, because, china
simplified chinese characters/words, and the dictionary lookup
methods were most likely formalised during that time ...

<aside>
the chinese were very vigilant in documentations throughout history ...

during ming dynasty, emperor yong-le (永乐) commissioned the compilations of
all known knowledge at the time, into a huge encyclopedia: 永乐大典...
medicine, astronomy, philosophy, farming, construction methods, mathematics etc ...

and more "recently", in qing dynasty, emperor kang-xi (康熙) commissioned the
compilations of chinese words and verses: 康熙字典, 康熙辞海;
later his grand-son qian-long (乾隆), commissioned the compilations of
all known [major] works of literature.

point is they have been doing these for a long time :-)
</aside>

the lookup methods follow the following steps:

1. identify a radical, sometimes there are more than one (all can be used to locate a word),
2. lookup radical in radical section, which are grouped by stroke counts,
3. from there, follow link to section where all words with the same radical are listed,
4. these words will be grouped by stroke counts.
5. from there, find the the page number where the word is described;
6. for very complex words where radical is not obvious or present,
    there is a section where these words are organised by stroke counts.

in simplied chinese dictionaries, the pronunciation of the words are described using
a romanised system; eg: for sounds like:

b : sounds like  the bo, in bo/ring
p:  sounds like  the po sound in po/or
m: sounds like the mo sound in mo/re
f:  sounds like the fo sound in fo/r
...
...

the tones for the pronunciations are also listed above the "dominant vowel",
like diacritics ... there are 4 tones in mandarin (cantonese has more tones).

dictionaries for traditional chinese, the words are listed purely by stroke counts
-- at least the hong kong dictionary i saw -- simple, but brute-forced, not very efficient.

the pronunciations are composed of cryptic squiggles (most likely from ancient
times ;-)

Hong Kong and Taiwan use the traditional chinese writing system,
although it is likely that Hong Kong may be converting to simplified chinese,
now that she is "re-united" with china.

the chinese characters/words used in Japan and Korea are also
traditional chinese.

China and Singapore use simplified chinese.


note: scroll down in the CODE box above, there's lots more :)
 
Gaaaa.....

And I thought trying to find anything in a Welsh dictionary (where word beginnings mutate rather than just word ends) was difficult!

Many thanks to your friend, I'm sure there is enough there to satisfy my curiosity.
 
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