Just had a few more thoughts, Hans...
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write
Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
No tenses (you, for example, indicate past tense by adding a little word 了LE or 過了GUO LE or just simply yesterday).
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did write
will write
Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
Verbs never change. You have no cases, no conjunctive (again, just denoted by a adding a simple word).
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I
write
you
write
he/she/it writes
we
write
you (all)
write
they
write
I did
write
you did
write
he/she/it did
write
we did
write
you (all) did
write
they did
write
I will
write
you will
write
he/she/it will
write
we will
write
you (all) will
write
they will
write
If one is not obliged to be 100% grammatically correct and/or elegant, English isn't necessarily wildly different from what you describe.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
Some characters (like the above 過 GUO and 了LE), have no English word equivalent at all.
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Why not read "了LE - did" and "過 GUO 了LE - have had"?
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Without meaning to suggest that it would be a sensible idea to do, I increasingly think that Hanzi could be learned reasonably by assigning (context-dependent) English meaning(s) to characters, without Chinese language pronunciation.
The result would not be fine Shakespearean (or even modern) English, but a sort of very un-English-like English that speakers of western languages would probably perceive pidgin-like... but it does seem to me it ought to be comprehensible enough.
The task ought to be even easier in other languages whose grammatical structure is more similar (as you yourself alluded).
Also, you wrote earlier:
Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
Sure you could, but you never would get past words to whole sentences. The languages are too different. Let us take a whole sentence "Ma, ni hao"
"媽, 你好" Three simple words. Mother, you, and good. In this order it means "Mother, hello". Next up, "Ni ma hao""你媽好" Now it means, "Your mother is good" (better style would be "你的媽很好", before someone corrects me!, but still it makes perfect sense like this, too). And there is "你好,媽?" "Are you ok, mother?". Again, before any rebuttal comes, "你還好,媽?" or "你好不好，媽?", would be better.
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I actually don't see the problem...
你 - "you"
好 - "good"
媽 - "mother"
你媽好 - "you-mother good" (Your mother is well.)
Take the first two characters to form a unit, and it's perfectly clear.
媽,你好 - "mother, you good" (Mother, hello.)
This is not all that bewildering a colloquialism. If you added a question mark, it would practically be English slang.
你好,媽? - "you good, mother?" (Are you ok, mother?)
This *is* English slang.
Or even the more proper form you noted:
你好不好，媽? - "you good not good, mother?"
But for the lack of an "or" that is implied well enough, this is also something entirely intuitive.
The biggest problem I foresee to trying to remain non-Chinese-phonetic is with names. Names that you are supposed to recognize, that is.
Hard to turn "卡尔扎伊" into "Karzai" without knowing the Mandarin pronunciation of the first three characters... albeit, without additional context, I suspect it is difficult to turn it into "Karzai" even if you do know the pronunciation.
But it wouldn't be a problem with names you did not need to immediately associate with a western name... assuming you could accept that Hanzi written names are weird in their own unique way.
Anyways... like I said, I find this interesting mostly as a thought experiment in what is possible.
- Ahi