When Chinese children forget how to write

Re:When Chinese children forget how to write by rahimnathwani on Thursday August 28, 2014 @02:01AM (#8236064)

- The Chinese language does not have a single universal pronunciation standard. You may have heard of different Chinese 'dialects' such as Mandarin and Cantonese. The same characters are pronounced differently in different dialects, and it's more than just an accent: someone who speaks only Mandarin may follow something like 20% (ish) of an overheard conversation in Cantonese, if they concentrate hard.

- Even in a single dialect, many words sound exactly the same, but mean different things. Using a phonetic system would harm comprehension. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone... for an excellent illustration of this point.

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Re:When Chinese children forget how to write by wodenokoto on Thursday August 28, 2014 @02:45AM (#8236162)

But you don't choose the same characters for the same words in Shanghainese as in Mandarin as in Cantonese.

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Re:When Chinese children forget how to write by mchaver on Thursday August 28, 2014 @05:01AM (#8236462)

Actually, Mandarin is the only one with a standardized written form. Hong Kong people (Cantonese speakers) write formally in Mandarin and pronounce the characters with Cantonese, but they way Cantonese is spoken has different grammar and lexicon. Written Cantonese is non-standardized and often requires new characters that are not found in Mandarin. I don't think there are many people writing Shanghainese because the language is actively discouraged by the government.

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