Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
Your old favorite subject. I never said that it is impossible to learn written Chinese without learning spoken Chinese. I just believe that if you miss the sound component you will find it difficult to remember. And it makes little sense to me, since you can learn the spoken language in months, but it will take many years to master the written language! And speaking it will make it much easier to learn and remember the writing. So the whole matter really doesn't make sense, if you want to learn the Chinese written language, learn both at the same time.
Just for your info, the other Chinese languages are more difficult to learn than Mandarin. The main reason they did pick Mandarin as the standard is because it is easy to learn.
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I'm interested in the question as a hypothetical matter, not as a practical one, Hans.
The reason I brought it up is because it doesn't jive with me that (1) you say that the written stuff has different (basically arbitrary) pronunciation depending on the reader's native language/dialect, but (2) you also suggest that it would be problematic to have the arbitrary sounds be the Hanzi characters' English meanings. Do you just feel so because of the existing set of associations those English words would have (that wouldn't always be compatible with the semantic cover of the Chinese concepts) or am I missing something bigger than that? (Or am I altogether misinterpreting what you wrote in one or another message?)
- Ahi