The Official Languages Thread

[Lalaith]

Are you now starting to show off with your german knowledge, Lin?

Do the Chinese have the same ? as we?

[Linaewen]

Originally posted by Lalaith
Are you now starting to show off with your german knowledge, Lin?

Do the Chinese have the same ? as we?

Of course not. I've always showed off my Deutsch knowledge for as long as I've had any.

Yes, we use the same question mark [?] and exclamation mark [!]. The other punctuation marks are different, though. The full stop is hollow, the comma is a bit larger, and they are both in the middle of a line, not at the bottom (like this: . ,) We also use square brackets for quotations. (I can't seem to work out how to type them right now though).

[Lalaith]

Originally posted by Linaewen
Of course not. I've always showed off my Deutsch knowledge for as long as I've had any.

Yes, we use the same question mark [?] and exclamation mark [!]. The other punctuation marks are different, though. The full stop is hollow, the comma is a bit larger, and they are both in the middle of a line, not at the bottom (like this: . ,) We also use square brackets for quotations. (I can't seem to work out how to type them right now though).

Hmmm, the question mark looks rather funny in between these cool chinese letters.
Did they have that for a long time or is it a rather new thing?

[Nerdanel]

Chinese looks so beautiful! I was trying to pronounce them too, it sounded pretty funny.. And the direct translations are the best!

And poor Jonathan. He's no torsk!

What's torsk in chinese?

[Jonathan]

Originally posted by Nerdanel
And poor Jonathan. He's no torsk!

That was the most intelligent post of the day

Please post some more Chinese, Linaewen. How many Chinese symbols does the average Chinese know to write?

[Linaewen]

I would love to hear all of your pronunciations.

I've only just checked the 'now' sentences and realised that I put the wrong character in. Here is the new 'Now'. Before that I had put in the 'zai' that means 'again' instead of the 'zai' that means 'currently' in this context (and 'at' in another).
I believe 'zai' is pronounced as per German, except with Chinese tone, förstås.

I take it I didn't butcher your language too much, Nerdanel? Not too many corrections?

To show you the difference in pronunciation between my main dialect & Mandarin, here is approximately how those sentences are pronounced in De Jieu:

Le ji jung mwoah mi gai? Wo ji jung seng dian nau. (I have a habit of pronouncing 'dian nau' the Mandarin way, because they have different tones). That spelling is really bad, by the way.

[Linaewen]

Originally posted by Lalaith
Hmmm, the question mark looks rather funny in between these cool chinese letters.
Did they have that for a long time or is it a rather new thing?

Does it? I suppose it would to someone who's not used to it.
I don't know when they started using it, but I'll find out for you.

Nerdanel- thanks for loving my languages(s). I think they're beautiful too. Would you like me to scan my writing next time? Writing it comes naturally for me; it seems strange for me to hear about learners who don't know stroke order and such!

Jon- I believe it's about 8000 characters, perhaps. And of course you have to learn how to pronounce every single one. Sometimes there are hints though. See the 'ma' I wrote before? The presence of the radical on the right always means a word is pronounced 'ma' (With different tone- don't want to mix up 'horse' with 'mum' ). The radical (word part) on the left, by itself, means 'mouth'. The radicals are very interesting to learn!

[Jonathan]

Originally posted by Linaewen
The radicals are very interesting to learn!

Sounds like chemistry . But yes, that's very interesting.

[katya]

Chinese sounds really difficult. The dialects alone are enough to confuse me. Does Chinese has a phonetic alphabet?
As I've said, I'm learning Japanese, and I wouldn't be able to write much at all without hiragana!

[Linaewen]

Yes, it does. Check out this attachment. It's got the Roman and Chinese Pinyin (phonetic alphabet) at the bottom. I'm used to the Chinese one, which explains why I'm so crap at writing the Roman one. It evens shows the tone. I just realised that you can sort of pronounce the other sentences with wrong tone, but if you say simple 'Ni hao' wrong, it sounds awful. Something for you to ponder.

Hehe. The dialects are fun! Jon's just seen me write the pronunciation for that last sentence out in 3 dialects- tell me, do they differ much?

I found a fantastic site about the Chinese characters. Zhong Wen. It's literally 'Chinese [language]' dot com.

[katya]

Yeah, the whole tone thing sounds hard. I'd be afraid of making a horrible mistake. I remember hearing something about how in French "please repeat after me" is "please pass gass again" if you leave out an accent.

[Nerdanel]

Lin, you treat my language very well! Not many corrections at all.

8000?! Wow.

I love the look of the characters and things like when computer means electronic brain! That's really special.

[Linaewen]

Ok, I remembered wrong. Apparently an educated person would usually remember 6,500 characters. My bad.

This is the next part of conversation that I'm posting before I have a little break from the Moot and hopefully never return .

Pronunciation/Translation:

Ni you ta de shu ma?= Do you have his book? (You have his book ah?)

Shi me shu? =What/which book?

Yi ben zhong wen de shu= A Chinese (language) book. (One [classifier] Chinese book)

A! You a!/Mei you le!= Ah! Yes, I have it! / No, I don't I have it. Ah! Have ah!/ Not have eh!

[Linaewen]

I was trying to think up of a very simple conversation that would explain some grammar points.

1) The genitive (Alex's book, Lin's friend) is expressed by putting a 'de' after the pronoun/owner. Hence; Alex de shu = Alex's book. (Whatever Alex is in Chinese).

2) Chinese uses 'classifiers' before nouns. 'Yi ben shu' - One (classfier) book. You cannot talk about objects (unless preceded by a possesive pronoun or the owner) without the classifier. 'Yi shu' (Without the 'ben') does not make sense. Different objects have different classifiers.

I sure hope that made sense. I tried to explain to my cousin that it was interesting that Japanese 'ben' is book, when it is Chinese classifier for book, but he just got confused.

3) 'De' is also used for adjectives. (almost always when attributive but not necessarily in the predicate). 'Zhong wen de shu' = 'Chinese 'de' book. Sometimes it can be left out, like in names of things.

4) Negation of verbs- most of them are negated by 'bu' but some are negated by 'mei'.

Sorry if I made that more complicated than it is, and that I didn't confuse anyone with linguistic jargon.

[Linaewen]

Here's some more stuff. (I want you all practising your Chinese and knowing this all by the time I get back )

The numbers, written exactly the same as Japanese, but with pronunciation differences. (apart from number 3)

-Yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu shi

[2nd line]'Bu shi'= not ('Bu'- negative particle, 'shi' - 'to be')
[3rd line] Wo ai Sweden hen Ao Zhou! = I love Sweden and Austalia! Ao Zhou = Australia.
[4th line] Zai jian! = Bye! Again see!

The most important line being the last one! Zai jian!

[Linaewen]

Darnit, I can't edit it to put the attachment in.

[Valandil]

Originally posted by Linaewen
2) Chinese uses 'classifiers' before nouns. 'Yi ben shu' - One (classfier) book. You cannot talk about objects (unless preceded by a possesive pronoun or the owner) without the classifier. 'Yi shu' (Without the 'ben') does not make sense. Different objects have different classifiers.

Linaewen... it's been awhile since I learned the tiny bit of Chinese I had, but the only 'classifier' I remember was 'ge' ... how many are there? Or is 'ben' a classifier for Cantonese or something and 'ge' for Mandarin??

Yi ge chi dan = one count chicken egg (my teacher used the word 'count' to describe a 'classifier')

Thanks for the 1-10... for some reason, I could only remember 1-5 + 10.

'Shu' (book) - I remember that (or would it be 'shue') also meaning 'study'... or is it a different tone?

As I understand it, any Chinese person writing the language would use the same exact characters... but with the dialects may be using entirely different sounds for the words. Is this correct? I imagine the written portion must be extremely old then... and that as people were cut off from one another, they began to speak things differently. Unless I'm way wrong, of course.

[Nurvingiel]

Lin, are numbers in Chinese the same as Japanese kanji?

[Lalaith]

Originally posted by Linaewen
Does it? I suppose it would to someone who's not used to it.
I don't know when they started using it, but I'll find out for you.

Tack, min vän, tack.

Oh, all these characters and pronunciations scare me. I wonder if I will be able to learn it. That will be a task of a lifetime.

[Linaewen]

Originally posted by Valandil
Linaewen... it's been awhile since I learned the tiny bit of Chinese I had, but the only 'classifier' I remember was 'ge' ... how many are there? Or is 'ben' a classifier for Cantonese or something and 'ge' for Mandarin??

That's because that's probably the most common one - 'Yi ge ren' -'One person', but no, there are measure words in Mandarin (e.g. kuai, tiao, zhang) and in the other dialects also.

Yes, shue is part of the word for study. (Not shu)

As I understand it, any Chinese person writing the language would use the same exact characters... but with the dialects may be using entirely different sounds for the words. Is this correct? I imagine the written portion must be extremely old then... and that as people were cut off from one another, they began to speak things differently. Unless I'm way wrong, of course.

That is correct, we all use the same writing system. It is in the way that words are pronounced that the differences occur. For example, Mandarin uses 'Wei shi me?' for 'Why' but my other dialects use 'Ji Ni?' and 'Dor Mi?', but it is all written as 'Wei shi me?'. The mutual unintelligibility occurs soley in the spoken, not written language.
Read more about it in the link I posted. I'm not a very good explainer.