Why Need To Learn Chinese?
Chinese is used by more people in the world than any other language.
The official language used throughout China is Putonghua
(Modern Standard Chinese; also sometimes referred to as 'Mandarin').
Putonghua is also one of the working languages of the United
Nations.
It is not only spoken in the People's Republic of China,
Taiwan and Singapore but also used in Southeast Asian
countries and other parts of the world where Chinese-speaking
communities are present. Chinese is a fascinating language to study.
The spoken language has a simple structure, and it uses tones
to give different meanings to a word. Chinese character writing
is governed by rules which can be easily learned: it is challenging
but
rewarding. Learning the language is a window into understanding
Chinese
culture and the Chinese way of life.

open the website http://oumei.zhan.cn.yahoo.com
you can see " learn chinese"

<sunprecipice@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:e88b7087-9ad5-4050-88c2-d7edc8d04396@i7g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

I am sure that I am too stupid to ever be able to learn Chinese...
but I was always curious about the language...
Just looking at the letters, the whole thing seemed totally
incomprehensible...

But still, I decided to study the language...
not really to learn it...
but merely at least have a glimpse of it's structure...
and how one could possibly go about deciphering it.

I went to my local library and took home a few books...
and at least got to see how a few simple strokes make a word...
then how more strokes are added, to make additional words...etc.

Anyway, the only way I'd even have even the slightest hope of learning the
language
would be to go to China and live there for the rest of my life.

Now, here is the funny thing I was going to say:

One of the books I brought home from our fine local library
was a Chinese to English dictionary.

When I got home the first thing I noticed was that it was written in 1939.
That was bad enough...but the real kicker was that it had originally been
a Chinese to *French* dictionary that had later had the French , in turn,
translated to English.

Ergo: I you want to learn Chinese, probably best to just move to China I'd
say<G>

On 2008-02-21, philo <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
[...]

æ··ä¹± (with acknowledgement or blame to Babelfish).

Or "China town" in one of many cities around the world )

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

<sunprecipice@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:e88b7087-9ad5-4050-88c2-d7edc8d04396@i7g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
Whilst this is true, my understanding is that outside of China, English is
still the most commonly spoken language.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian

philo wrote:
Japanese (nihongo).
memorizing the "50 sounds" table (Japanese, Korean, and Chinese use
sounds rather than letters in their version of an alphabet) was
relatively easy, while studying katakana and hiragana (japanese written
languages- katakana for foreign words, and hiragana for japanese native
words).
Because Japanese use fewer sounds than Chinese, their kanji is also
fewer (apprx. 22,000 japanese as opposed to almost 60,000 chinese) so i
think should be easier for me to learn.
Also, Japanese are increasingly adopting a number of english words into
their own language/ culture, substituting them from their own native
language!
Previously they had "chiisai, hutsu and okii" sizes- now when going to a
resutoran (restaurant) they order size by "s, m, l"- or more formally,
"small, medium, lage".
Now getting into kanji is harder- while each knaji itself has meaning,
when placing them together their meaning may be altered depending upon
the neighbouring kanji.
Each kanji is attributed to a sound, or combination of up to three
sounds- but there are many kanji to each sound (50 sounds- over 22000
kanji).
I know 4 kanji currently- and all of them can be read by chinese for the
same meaning....but the SOUND attributed to them sometimes varies.
For example, the japanese kanji "inochi" (life), may be read as "life by
chinese- but given an entirely different sound.
It is important to note too that this particular kanji also reads the
same in korean "han- mun" (korean kanji)- the same meaning, and yet
again a different sound.
The kanji "hana" (flower) is same for chinese and japanese- and also the
same sound.
It is easier for me right now to memorise kanji by their name and sound,
than to learn how the various parts of a kanji may be identified by
their radicals, etc., and therefore to deconstruct the kanji into its
aprts....besides this deconstruction of the kanji is what led to the
creation of hiragana and katakana in the first place!

Whiskers wrote:
イã€�ã�¾ã�Ÿã�*ï¼�

Brian Cryer wrote:
i have no opinion on whether English is spoken throughout the world- but
it has become evident that the lazy-tongued 'American' equivalent
appears to becoming the predominant language.
What that portents for linguistic communication in the very near future,
is daunting to begin contemplating!
Mayhap one may consider anything longer than acronyms to belong in the
literature category- to be stuffed on a shelf gathering dust!

On 2008-02-21, catchme <someone@somewhere.net> wrote:
The fish says;

There is Iyo! My Japanese valve it stays. Japanese connected taking stripe
line of conversation -. Don't you think? � イ, in addition!

Gurer'f abg n ybg V pna fnl gb gung.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

"catchme" <someone@somewhere.net> wrote in message
news:UYivj.67261$FA.35572@pd7urf2no...

Yes, I also got a few books on Japanese too.
It seemed even more complicated that Chinese , if anything.
The one thing I did notice is there there are a lot of subtly different
vowel sounds such as: ru, ri, ra

I have a number of friends both Chinese and Japanese but I'd never be able
to speak to them in their
native language.

Once, when I was at a friend's house I picked up a letter he had sitting on
his desk and was just staring at
all the Chinese characters in utter amazement.

Then my friend came running over and snapped the letter out of my hands
and said: "Hey, that's private!"

Before I could explain anything, he realized that of course I could not read
it...
and we both started laughing!

"Brian Cryer" <brian.cryer@127.0.0.1.ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:4ICdnShviqlKLSDaRVnyggA@pipex.net...
Yes, English is often considered a universal language.
It's my understanding that all air traffic communication must be done in
English

"catchme" <someone@somewhere.net> wrote in message
news:4cjvj.60461$Ly.28559@pd7urf1no...
Whiskers wrote:
?????!


NYC, China town is some place I go whenever I can get a chance.
It's absolutely wonderful and amazing!
Also San Fransisco

The one in Chicago is smaller

<sunprecipice@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:e88b7087-9ad5-4050-88c2-d7edc8d04396@i7g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
Absolutely irrelevant to anyone wanting to learn another language.
You learn another language for a reason, not because of some
population count. If you are going to get stationed in a job or
military in a foreign country then maybe you want to know the language
there. Well, if that place is Germany, Costa Rica, Guam, France, or
Norway then learning Chinese would be a complete waste of time.

philo wrote:
bias towards japanese because i married a japanese.
i consider that i married not just a person, but also into another
culture and therefore, why not learn all there is to know about her
language, culture...and her?
but i have many resources available in assisting my learning.
i have a conversational book with excercises written in romanji (the
english equivalent of japanese sounds),
a book detailing the katakana and katakana in an easy to read chart,
an english-japanese dictionary...i learn quickest by converting the
romanji book into katakana by using the second book, methodically
writing every sentence string after i conclude a chapter. thus i learn
from repetition.
an electronic translator (translates both ways)
on my computer, i have MIME japanese installed
foxlingo on my ff browser
and coworkers who either teach english and know some japanese, have
lived in or were born in japan
and then there is my wife, and our friends.

"sunprecipice@gmail.com" <sunprecipice@gmail.com> wrote in
news:e88b7087-9ad5-4050-88c2-d7edc8d04396@i7g2000prf.googlegroups.com:

In one *country* maybe, and that's due to force of government. There
*used* to be loads of dialects and the chinese government said you can
*only* use mandarin now. The most commonly used language in the world is
English and probably *always* will be.

--
(setq (chuck nil) car(chuck) )

"catchme" <someone@somewhere.net> wrote in message
news:zDqvj.61862$Ly.20522@pd7urf1no...


I've taken several years of several different languages...
but never learned much.

One needs to actually converse in the language on a daily basis to
actually learn it!

On 2008-02-22, chuckcar <chuck@nil.car> wrote:
.... languages even, and probably still are when The Party isn't around.
Languages are remarkably resilient.

It was the variety of spoken languages throughout their empire that led
Chinese rulers to encourage (or enforce) the development of a written
language that is essentially unrelated to any spoken language - so that
decrees and official correspondance would only need to be written in the
one language. The EU with its army of translators and tons of paper in
umpteen languages demonstrates the difficulty of the alternative approach.

Surely that was Greek, or was it Latin or French or Spanish or Arabic?

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

Whiskers wrote:

it was from the Han dynasty that kanji ("Han- Sign") was born- and from
China scribes were sent into Korea and Japan to introduce the written
language, and it was adopted in each, to some varying degree.
Korea calls their Kanji "Han-Mun", but essentially means the same.
A WRITTEN language introduced to a culture that didnt have one before
has certain technical advantages- one doesnt have to "enforce" anything.
fwiw, japanese has at various times tried to reform their various SPOKEN
dialects into a "standard" japanese- to some extent, there is still an
"official" dialect- but this last one was imposed upon the Japanese
during American Occupation!

On 2008-02-22, catchme <someone@somewhere.net> wrote:
Provided the written language is kept seperate and no-one tries to impose
a new spoken language.

Written English, using the Latin alphabet to represent sounds that don't
exist in Latin, results in a confusing orthography; but written Japanese
sounds as though it makes written English look logical.

Americans can't really cope with regional accents of British English, let
alone the dialects; I can imagine they'd have a really hard time trying to
cope in a language they didn't even /think/ they already spoke )

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

²»ÎªÊ²Ã´£¬ÒòΪÖÐÎĺܺÃÓÃ

<zyyfriends@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:fe504079-dbf4-4148-8ce0-0129de793500@s37g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
Very witty.