A simple explanation of Chinese characters

Re:A simple explanation of Chinese characters by cageface on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @04:34AM (#10743237)

I've been living in Vietnam for years now and watched many foreigners struggle to learn the language, which depends even more on tones than Chinese. Tonal languages are very unforgiving, and the differences between tones are very subtle in common conversation. Even when Vietnamese completely mangle the grammar and pronunciation of English you can usually understand what they're trying to say. But if you don't absolutely nail the tones and pronunciation of Vietnamese all you'll get are blank stares back in response. That is, if you haven't accidentally said something wrong or vulgar by mistake.

The saving grace of Vietnamese is that the grammar is trivially simple compared to English. No plurals, tenses, cases, verb conjugation etc. And it uses the Latin alphabet so reading and writing it is vastly easier than Chinese.

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Re:A simple explanation of Chinese characters by titanix2 on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @07:31AM (#10743818)

Sure the alphabet is a big plus for someone who doesn't know any Chinese (nor Korean or Japanese). In the contrary the old writing system (chữ nôm) could be extremely useful for learning vocabulary given how many words are from Chinese origin.

I was working with a Vietnamese-French dictionary (Đại Nam quốc âm tự vị hợp giải Đại Pháp quốc âm 大南國音字彙合解大法國音) and I was struck by how many words I can understand without reading at the definition because they were writing in Chinese characters; of course when it was nôm character this didn't happen. The reading of this words also weren't that surprising compared to Japanese On readings or Mandarin Chinese.

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Re:A simple explanation of Chinese characters by cageface on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @09:32AM (#10744433)

I don't speak any Chinese at all but people tell me that there are still a lot of similar words in modern spoken Chinese and Vietnamese. You can still see remnants of the old, pre-latinized writing system here.

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Re:A simple explanation of Chinese characters by polymatter on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @06:01AM (#10743488)

as someone currently learning Vietnamese do you have any tips for learning the language? I've learnt some Mandarin so I am no stranger to tones - but the tones in Vietnamese seem quite different.

I've been using Pimsleur which I highly recommend, but I find I end up atuned to their particular voices and can not understand genuine Vietnamese speech. Also I am using memrise to learn vocabulary, but without example sentences and the like I find it of limited use until I find the same word in a real life context.

Interested in your thoughts.

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Re:A simple explanation of Chinese characters by cageface on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @06:08AM (#10743512)

There's no substitute for one on one tutoring with a native speaker. Get somebody to drill you on the tones and the alphabet. Once you have those down you can work on vocabulary on your own.

If I'd done this when I first got here I'd be a lot further along now.

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Re:A simple explanation of Chinese characters by polymatter on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @07:35AM (#10743835)

Thanks for the reply. I will do that.

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Re:A simple explanation of Chinese characters by contingencies on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @10:00AM (#10744611)

If either of you feel like visiting Yunnan up the Red River, hit me up!

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