Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (Full Version)

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BossGnome -> Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 4:49:00 PM)

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 5:19:15 PM)

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 5:21:14 PM)

[X(]

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



Oliver Heindorf -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 5:27:31 PM)

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 5:28:44 PM)

quote:

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 6:11:53 PM)

[:D]



patrickl -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 6:14:52 PM)

Hi,

[:D][:D]



BossGnome -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 6:42:48 PM)

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 6:59:23 PM)

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 7:00:22 PM)


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



Mattremote -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 7:04:17 PM)

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 7:19:13 PM)

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 7:28:25 PM)

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



patrickl -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 7:30:32 PM)

Hi,

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



Mynok -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 7:41:22 PM)


quote:

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 7:50:14 PM)

Hi gunner333! [:D]
quote:

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 7:51:13 PM)


quote:

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 8:05:49 PM)

Hi AmiralLaurent
quote:

ORIGINAL: AmiralLaurent


quote:

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 8:24:19 PM)

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 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 8:29:37 PM)

Combined with Morse code for multitasking purposes...



Zebedee -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 8:48:36 PM)

I spent a few months living in Japan and play a lot of online games with Japanese gamers, so I know odds and ends of Japanese. Certainly wouldn't consider myself anywhere near fluent.

My gf is Chinese (ethnic minority Manchurian to be precise) so it was only fair that I learnt the language. To be honest, her English is still far better than my Chinese though.



BossGnome -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/23/2005 11:56:45 PM)

ah yes that was my question: what do you call your ideogrammes in chinese?

The word Kanji in japanese actually means chinese ideogrammes which have been "japanified" and are slightly different from their original chinese form. But yes kanjis are originally chinese and not japanese.

So ahh! you explain the pronounciation in Romanized script! See, japanese explains the pronounciation in their own phonetic scripts, hiragana or katakana!

And you only have to learn 1000 characters to communicate fluently in written chinese? Amazing! For Japanese the Japanese government has designated 2000 kanjis as everyday use, and that is on top of their two phonetic scripts!

about the japanese forum, I am not sure how well a game like WITP would take up in japan. Although I have been living in Saitama (1 hour north of tokyo) for the past 6 months, I have only seen one WW2 game in a store so far... the japanese are not very proud of that part of their history, and they prefer not to talk about it. In fact that is one part of the japanese character i do not like; they seem incapable to accept, like germany, grave mistakes like WW2. Whenever they make a WW2 movie or television series or such, it always focuses upon the suffering of a few individuals, and gives us the impression that "all war is bad", period, and not that a war (like WW2, could possibly be justified.

And heh, four tones? 6 tones? Japanese has only 2! Of course that language's pronounciation is dreadfully easy! I actually recommend to anyone who wants, to try to learn japanese. Its not a language as hard as you'd imagine. Exept for the writing it is quite a bit easier than, say, french for example.



Terminus -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/24/2005 12:10:31 AM)

Thanks, BG. Very informative![&o]



RUPD3658 -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/24/2005 1:32:56 AM)

My Japanese is limited to what I had to know for my black belt test. If the converstaion is limited to body parts or names of kicks/punches/blocks/stances/commands I am fine. Can't talk about much else without falling back on English or a bit of German. [;)]



patrickl -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/24/2005 2:07:20 AM)

Hi, I am estimating as 1,000 - I think that will do for basic conversation and writing. Certainly I don't expect my 12 years old daughter who is sitting for her primary 6 exams next month to know more than 1,000 for her punishing exams.[:@] And she writes better chinese than me. Ahh, let's see : one, two, three,...me, you, they...[:D]



patrickl -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/24/2005 2:12:59 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: BossGnome

ah yes that was my question: what do you call your ideogrammes in chinese?

The word Kanji in japanese actually means chinese ideogrammes which have been "japanified" and are slightly different from their original chinese form. But yes kanjis are originally chinese and not japanese.

So ahh! you explain the pronounciation in Romanized script! See, japanese explains the pronounciation in their own phonetic scripts, hiragana or katakana!

And you only have to learn 1000 characters to communicate fluently in written chinese? Amazing! For Japanese the Japanese government has designated 2000 kanjis as everyday use, and that is on top of their two phonetic scripts!

about the japanese forum, I am not sure how well a game like WITP would take up in japan. Although I have been living in Saitama (1 hour north of tokyo) for the past 6 months, I have only seen one WW2 game in a store so far... the japanese are not very proud of that part of their history, and they prefer not to talk about it. In fact that is one part of the japanese character i do not like; they seem incapable to accept, like germany, grave mistakes like WW2. Whenever they make a WW2 movie or television series or such, it always focuses upon the suffering of a few individuals, and gives us the impression that "all war is bad", period, and not that a war (like WW2, could possibly be justified.

And heh, four tones? 6 tones? Japanese has only 2! Of course that language's pronounciation is dreadfully easy! I actually recommend to anyone who wants, to try to learn japanese. Its not a language as hard as you'd imagine. Exept for the writing it is quite a bit easier than, say, french for example.


1st question - don't know. Just call chinese[;)]

Kanji - originally chinese[&:]. That is interesting[X(]

Jap WITP - just a suggestion[:D]. But japanese PBEM players are always in short supply[;)]

Japanese 2 tones? Heh, Japanese is easy![:D][:D]

Glad you started this thread - helps promote mutual understanding[;)]
Cheers
Patrick Lim



ChezDaJez -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/24/2005 2:36:48 AM)

quote:

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 took 3rd year Spanish and 1st year German at the same time in high school. Major mistake... "Jawohl, senor! no, no that's not it.... Si, mein Herr!, no, that's not it either.... eins, zwei, tres, cuatro, funf... Is that it?"

Ten years later, when I was stationed in Spain I got passably good at speaking basic Spanish. I went on a "show the flag" trip to Nimes Garon in southern France. The hotel manager didn't speak English, I didn't speak French but we both spoke some Spanish. We had many a hilarious conversation!! I'm sure he's still wondering why that crazy American thought there was a donkey is his soup!

Chez



Terminus -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/24/2005 2:46:20 AM)

Possibly it was donkey soup?



patrickl -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/24/2005 3:23:10 AM)

Hi
quote:

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

I'm sure he's still wondering why that crazy American thought there was a donkey is his soup!

Chez


ROTFLMAO[sm=00000280.gif][sm=00000280.gif][sm=00000280.gif]

You have just invented a new soup. Who knows, it might be delicious! [:D]



ChezDaJez -> RE: Slightly OT... who here speaks chinese and or Japanese? (9/24/2005 4:16:27 AM)

quote:

Possibly it was donkey soup


Gawd, I hope not!!! I had ordered the soup of the day at the hotel's restaurant and didn't recognize some of the contents so I tried to ask what was in it and the manager thought I was asking about a donkey in the soup.

My wife still kids me about it whenever I ask what kind of soup she's making. She always says "donkey soup!" I never should have told her about it!

quote:

You have just invented a new soup. Who knows, it might be delicious


Actually, Patrick, it was quite good!

Chez



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