Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin At Tsinghua University In Beijing 217
HughPickens.com writes Abby Phillip reports at the Washington Post that that Mark Zuckerberg just posted a 30-minute Q&A at Tsinghua University in Beijing in which he answered every question exclusively in Chinese — a notoriously difficult language to learn and particularly, to speak. "It isn't just Zuckerberg's linguistic acrobatics that make this a notable moment," writes Philip. "This small gesture — although some would argue that it is a huge moment — is perhaps his strongest foray into the battle for hearts and minds in China." Zuckerberg and Facebook have been aggressively courting Chinese users for years and the potential financial upside for the business. Although Beijing has mostly banned Facebook, the company signed a contract for its first ever office in China earlier this year. A Westerner speaking Mandarin in China — at any level — tends to elicit joy from average Chinese, who seem to appreciate the effort and respect they feel learning Mandarin demonstrates. So how well did he actually do? One Mandarin speaker rates Zuckerberg's language skills at a seventh grader's speech: "It's hard not see a patronizing note in the Chinese audience's reaction to Zuckerberg's Mandarin. To borrow from Samuel Johnson's quip, he was like a dog walking on its hind legs: It wasn't done well, but it was a surprise to see it done at all."
7 Year Old, Not Seventh Grader (Score:5, Informative)
"One Mandarin speaker rates Zuckerberg's language skills at a seventh grader's speech:"
The linked article is headlined "Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin Like a Seven Year Old." Significant difference between seven years old and a seventh grader.
Re:7 Year Old, Not Seventh Grader (Score:5, Funny)
Re:7 Year Old, Not Seventh Grader (Score:5, Funny)
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to be fair, that's still bragable
when it's said that someone is at "X year old level" in a language, they mean sentence complexity and vocabulary, not complexity of thought or level of intelligence
YMMV, but in my experience, you only need 2 verb tenses and maybe 300 words of vocabulary to be "yourself" in another language...most human uses simple words to make complex thoughts so you don't need that much to have an identifiable "personality"
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YMMV, but in my experience, you only need 2 verb tenses ... to be "yourself" in another language...
That would explain why Chinese is so difficult then -- not enough tenses. How can you be yourself in a language that only has one tense?!?
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YMMV, but in my experience, you only need 2 verb tenses and maybe 300 words of vocabulary to be "yourself" in another language...most human uses simple words to make complex thoughts so you don't need that much to have an identifiable "personality"
I have to disagree. I'm German and live in Spain since seven years now, and there are still many moments when I can not be myself because the languages are too different. Languages also expresses a mindset of a people, and when you touch a point where the mindset between your culture and that of the other language is different, then you will have difficulties to be yourself in that other language.
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I have to disagree.
do you? what are you disagreeing with?
YMMV means "your milage may vary"...it's a way to qualify your statement so pendantic people won't respond the way you have
so are you disagreeing with me when I indicated YMMV? do you NOT think the phenomenon varies by person?
or do you disagree that what I said was what i experienced? are you saying that I was NOT able to 'be myself' within the constraints I laid out?
if you are sure then you should have more detail...i said "2 tenses" and so if not 2 then how many? how
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Given that his wife speaks Cantonese natively, and speaking Mandarin with his wife might have been the bulk of his practice, that rating might be par for the course.
Some Mandarin speakers would rate any attempt of a Cantonese speaker at Mandarin at about 7-year old level (think of how a stuck-up French journalist might rate a person's speech who learned French from a Franco-Canadian, yeah)...
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
A guy worth many billions of dollars can pay for someone to teach them a language, and has time to learn the language. Who'da thunk it possible? What a grand and glorious day for all of the people of the world.. er wait a minute...
The proceeding message was brought to you by a cynical old guy who learned to read/write and speak 2 1/4th additional languages (German, Spanish *and currently working on Russian*) on his own time without billions of dollars to do so. All while raising a kid as a single parent and working full time. Sorry, he's nothing special in terms of intelligence and definitely lacking in morals. Being high on his ego does nothing for me.. Next!
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the totalitarian synergy (Score:5, Insightful)
China and it's totalitarian, authoritarian government and lack of individual rights make great synergy for facebook.com
also: his wife is Chinese
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also: his wife is Chinese
I couldn't find what citizenships she holds, if any. But she is the US born child of an immigrant from Vietnam.
nationality/race of wife (Score:2)
i read she was Chinese somewhere...hmm...
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i read she was Chinese somewhere...hmm...
She is a native born American citizen. Her parents came to America from Vietnam. She is ethnically Chinese. Calling her "Chinese" makes as much sense as calling Barack Obama "Kenyan".
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Actually many ethnically Chinese people from Vietnam prefer to call themselves Chinese or Chinese-Vietnamese or Hoa [wikipedia.org]... They often speak Chinese (often Cantonese) and sometime speak Vietnamese poorly if at all and refuse to fully integrate with the local Vietnamese population. Many of them were came to the united states during/after the Vietnam war as they were often the local "capitalists" in the Vietnamese economy (by some measures controlling 70% of the GDP prior to the Vietnam war) and thus were quite
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calling her "Chinese" makes as much sense as calling Barack Obama "Kenyan"
so you're criticizing the dumb Time article or w/e it was that I read?
are you saying I'm wrong somehow for saying "i read she was Chinese"?
i demand an explanation
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Re:the totalitarian synergy (Score:4, Informative)
actually his wife is a US citizen born of a Chinese-Vietnamese refugee. Source: Forbes
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Lets ask Tibet.
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You're mistaking isolationist tendencies with benevolence. China is pathologically afraid of meddling in other countries' affairs because it's afraid that it could be used as pretense for other countries to do the same to them.
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why would they be afraid? They have the largest standing army in the world, and they have the largest amount of weaponry that could ever potentially be brought to bear by any one Government.
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why would they be afraid?
Because the ruling party has loads to lose. Namely, the most populous country on the planet.
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Maybe they saw what we did to Japan in 1945.
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The last time China brought it's military to bear in a major fight (Korea), they didn't do THAT well.10,000 US troops were able to resist 40,000 Chinese troops for several days. And quite comically, 20 Canadians in sneakers were able to hold off 14,000 Chinese for three days. Granted, those Canadians were led by probably the most bad ass soldier in WW2 and the Korean War, it's still kind of sad.
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That's flat out wrong. Other countries have been and continue to meddle in Chinese affairs.
China does not have a history or culture in meddling in other countries' affairs, at least not the type of meddling that's associated with Western powers over the past five centuries. This is quickly changing as China's adapting to the needs of the 21st century, but it's largely ingrained in the philosophical underpinnings of Chinese culture. The cultural tenets that reinforce this begin with not pointing out the faul
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They don't speak out in favor of intervening in countries with human right's crises, because they're afraid it'll happen it to them. They don't speak out against disarming countries' nuclear armaments because they don't want it done to them. You're right on many levels. I just simplified the notion.
civil rights + history (Score:2)
what is the point of this question?
are you saying that we should compare China and the US on issues like human rights, pollution, civil rights, democracy, and compare the military actions of the countries throughout history? How far back do we go?
is that what you're implying here? that if we did some sort of "side by side" comparison that China would ***NOT*** be a totalitarian, authoritarian state?
China is a teeming, polluted, authoritarian clusterfsk of humanit
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Well, the U.S. only goes back to about 200 years, so we don't have to go back very far...
Read some History and get some perspective.
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how many countries has China bombed recently?
Due to the massive size of their own population, they have yet to extend much oppressive power outside of their boarders.
That's your measure? (Score:2)
Really, you have to come up with something better than that, because that is a horrible way of trying to measure a country. DPRK has not bombed anyone since the 1950s, but in your book they are okay right?
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Re:the totalitarian synergy (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I don’t see China playing the geopolitical game.
Then either your head is in the sand or you're just blind. Just because they're not aggressively using their military abroad doesn't mean they are not playing the geopolitical game. They've been doing it pretty aggressively in the Pacific for at least the last decade. Plotting down oil platforms in other country's waters, blockading other countries' military forces at sea, claiming other countries' territory as their own, etc etc.
analogies. (Score:2)
To borrow from Samuel Johnson's quip, he was like a dog walking on its hind legs: It wasn't done well, but it was a surprise to see it done at all.
Maybe his language ability is like a mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it.
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News for Nerds eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Who gives a shit? Seriously? Mark Zuckerberg did a thing that has nothing to do with tech or anything important, are we going to get reports of him hang gliding or surfing next? Oh boy, a person in the tech world has a reasonably impressive but totally uninteresting life skill, lets make a big deal about it for no reason.
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Well I for one want my name in the news for being able to speak grade schooler French!
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*Ba dum dish*
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Exactly.
Next in the news! Mark Zuckerberg takes a shit. News at 11 !!
Impressive (Score:5, Informative)
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>Yes, his accent was horrible.
Yeah. I flinched at it. And his sentences were pretty basic. (Wo tai tai shi zhong guo ren, for example.)
That said, it's a nice gesture. When I went to China, people were constantly surprised at seeing a foreigner speak their language. It's a really diplomatic move on his part.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
Mark's wife speaks Cantonese, not mandarin.
My wife speaks Mandarin, I speak a little Cantonese. We generally have to communicate in English...
Did he have a mysterious hump on his shoulder? (Score:2, Interesting)
Like the one W had?
http://www.salon.com/2004/10/09/bulge/
remember Mark was Harvard material (Score:3)
Re:remember Mark was Harvard material (Score:4, Informative)
Wife speaks Cantonese, not Mandarin.
Translation needed (Score:2)
How do you say "Dumb fucks" in mandarin?
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"mei guo ren"
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As my Chinese teacher said (Score:5, Funny)
"The best classroom is the bedroom."
Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
To borrow from Samuel Johnson's quip, he was like a dog walking on its hind legs: It wasn't done well, but it was a surprise to see it done at all
Hmm. Well, few Chinese speakers ever learn to speak English very well either. Not without intensive, lengthy immersion, anyway. But it's no longer socially acceptable to make fun of them for it, nor very logical, for that matter.
I Don't Like (Score:2)
Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg has a face that looks like it needs to be slapped, but damn this is a tough crowd.
Good for him for putting effort into that.
News With a Bullet (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. [White] Anglo guy come to China and speaks Mandarin ("Holly Shit! Look, THE DOG'S DOING CALCULUS!!11"), but a Chinese tech CEO (Jack Ma? Charles Chao? Robin Li? pick one) coming to The USA and speaking English in a meeting... well, obviously that's not news-report worthy. Hell, everyone important in the world speaks English without question, right? And, if not - what's their excuse??
Holly crap Anglo world, get over yourselves, will you? Of course Mark Zuckerburg speaks Chinese... in China. What would we expect him to speak, French?? Notice how everybody focusing on how he spoke, rather than what he said.
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Well, basically, yes. English is the lingua franca of the world, and if you don't speak it, you're cut off from global culture. Mandarin is neither culturally nor commercially very important; having traveled to China many times, I can't think of anything I'd have missed out not speaking Chinese. In part that's because of a long history of self-imposed isolation, stagnancy, and xenophobia in China, in part because China destroyed much of its remaining culture and fell into poverty when it adopted communism.
B
To speak Chinese is not to know China (Score:4, Interesting)
"To speak Chinese is not to know China. Many examples can be found of people who speak Mandarin to a high level but who do not understand how China works. They may have learned their Chinese shut up in their study reading the Analects."
I think the Chinese regard this as an irreverent amusement more than anything meaningful
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"They may have learned their Chinese shut up in their study reading the Analects."
I had a professor who literally did learn his Chinese reading the Analects. He couldn't speak a word of the language. When he took a taxi in China, he had to write on paper to communicate with the driver.
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It's common for foreigners to go on game shows and speak a little Chinese. For some reason, this is very entertaining to some of the locals, but I never opted to do anything like this during my stay in China as I felt it was like being a performing monkey, and somewhat degrading.
However, in this case, I think that in the case of Mark Zuckerberg, it's more than just being a performing monkey. I think this effort might serve to increase awareness of our attempts to show that Americans and other western nati
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To speak Chinese is not to know China. Many examples can be found of people who speak Mandarin to a high level but who do not understand how China works.
So? That sounds like a pointless thing to say either to make the Chinese seem somehow more mysterious or because the target is a complete idiot.
In other news:
USA is not England
Brazil is not Portugal
Mexico is not Spain
Canads isn't England or France.
The DRC REALLY isn't France.
From this it ought to be blindingly obvious that merely knowing a language gives yo
Is Sugarhill the new Jobs? (Score:2)
And every time he farts we get to hear it as news?
'Notoriously difficult' - really? (Score:2)
... notoriously difficult language to learn and particularly, to speak.
Is that so? I would be interested to hear what that assessment is based on - having learned the languages myself, I didn't find it hard, on the contrary.
Chinese is notable for having probably the simplest syntax of any language, pronunciation, this is no harder than are other languages, and the national transcription system, pinyin, is very consistent and accurately represents the pronunciation of the words, unlike for example English - for an illustration, see Mark Twain's famous satire on a similar subje
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English is not my native language (French is), but as virtually anyone in engineering has to, i learnt it. It didn't take that long or much effort, no real format training...just guessing at the word's meanings when playing video games and watching TV and eventually I picked it up... now I live in the US and most people can't tell I'm not a native speaker unless they see my first name. My writing could be better, as you probably can see, but I'm even worse in French, so its more that I suck at writing in ge
Re:/. is getting more and more unbelievable !! (Score:5, Informative)
If the Chinese language is really such a notoriously difficult language to learn (and to speak) there ought to be no one using it anymore, right?
I dunno about you, but I do think /. has gone way too hyperbole !!
Actually, it is considered a notoriously difficult language for westerners to learn. I don't think that is hyperbole. "The hardest language and nearly impossible to learn" would be hyperbole. As someone who did learn Mandarin and spent a couple years in Asia speaking Mandarin with people on the streets pretty much all day every day, I can tell you it's about as different from English as you can get. Having also studied French, I can tell you it's much more difficult than picking up a Romance language. If you wanted to pick apart a section of the quoted text as inaccurate, it would be "particularly, to speak". You could pick apart the fact misplaced comma, or you could just look directly at his meaning. That implies that of the parts of learning the language, speaking is the most difficult. This couldn't be more wrong for Chinese. If you break language into four tasks: speaking, listening, reading and writing, then speaking is by far the easiest. Reading an writing in Chinese is something that most foreigners I met in Asia never even attempted.
Re:/. is getting more and more unbelievable !! (Score:5, Informative)
If the Chinese language is really such a notoriously difficult language to learn (and to speak) there ought to be no one using it anymore, right?
I dunno about you, but I do think /. has gone way too hyperbole !!
Actually, it is considered a notoriously difficult language for westerners to learn. I don't think that is hyperbole. "The hardest language and nearly impossible to learn" would be hyperbole. As someone who did learn Mandarin and spent a couple years in Asia speaking Mandarin with people on the streets pretty much all day every day, I can tell you it's about as different from English as you can get. Having also studied French, I can tell you it's much more difficult than picking up a Romance language. If you wanted to pick apart a section of the quoted text as inaccurate, it would be "particularly, to speak". You could pick apart the fact misplaced comma, or you could just look directly at his meaning. That implies that of the parts of learning the language, speaking is the most difficult. This couldn't be more wrong for Chinese. If you break language into four tasks: speaking, listening, reading and writing, then speaking is by far the easiest. Reading an writing in Chinese is something that most foreigners I met in Asia never even attempted.
Totally agree. It's the same in reverse too. If you started with Chinese as your native tongue, then romance languages are very difficult too. This is due to the way sentences are constructed. I was doing some translation the other day and found that I often had to reverse the order of different phrases in the sentence to get the sentence to flow. There is one upside of starting with Chinese first and that is understanding the different tones within Chinese. Most of the westerners that I know who is learning or trying to learn Chinese struggle with tones. The words for mother, numb, horse, and to insult have very similar sounds as they are simply the 4 different tones for the same pinyin combination. Most of the time, if a native mandarin speaker says those for words (in mandarin) in quick succession, most westerners wouldn't be able to tell which is which. I know someone will now point out that a lot of Chinese can't distinguish between r and l, so learning Chinese first is not any better. But I want to point out that's because they were taught incorrectly and they think it's the correct pronunciation. Both the r and l sounds exist in mandarin so there is really no reason to get them wrong except if they weren't taught correctly.
Of course, if you learn both languages young enough then both languages are "easy". It's all perspective and when you are trying to learn each of the languages. Therefore, the statement aimed at the western audience is correct, it is notoriously difficult. But if the same statement were aimed at the Chinese, they will laugh mercilessly at you because it's pretty darn easy.
Re:/. is getting more and more unbelievable !! (Score:4, Interesting)
If you started with Chinese as your native tongue, then romance languages are very difficult too
I am a Chinese. Mandarin is my mother tongue
I do not know what you mean by "Romance Language" but the western languages, starting from the Latin to its derivatives (Spanish, Italians, Portugese, and French, and in some way in English also) at least, to me, are not difficult to learn
I would agree that any language would be difficult to master (For example: I haven't yet master my own mother tongue, the Mandarin Language, as it is a language with thousands of years of history and the ancient texts were written in a more condensed form) but it shouldn't be difficult to learn any language to the point that one can read, speak and write in that language
Re:/. is getting more and more unbelievable !! (Score:5, Informative)
Google is your friend. The Romance languages are those that came from common (everyday/"Vulgar") Latin.
From Wiki [wikipedia.org]:
The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish (386 million), Portuguese (216 million), French (75 million), Italian (60 million), and Romanian (25 million)
English is not a Romance language (it's derived from Old Low German), but due to many accidents of history, it has accumulated an incredible number of words directly from Romance languages or derived from words in Romance languages (as well as other families of languages).
Hope that helps. You seem to be doing quite well with English! Keep it up. :)
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Uh... what?
"Old English" is just as accepted as "Anglo-Saxon". In fact, many prefer the former, since it refers exclusively to the language, while the latter also refers to people.
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Random tidbit, though I didn't think of this when I was posting: my username is from Old English (the modern English would be 'wellaway', though it's archaic at best). I found it in the OED during an etymology course years ago and it's stuck around. I often have people ask me if it's Chinese or something. Ah, well...
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Google is your friend. The Romance languages are those that came from common (everyday/"Vulgar") Latin.
Id est, the Romans.
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Just go home with your Roman.
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English is basically West Germanic with a Romance verb system tacked onto it. And heaps of vocabulary from all over mixed in. If the Normans hadn't invaded, modern English would likely look and sound a lot like Dutch.
Re:/. is getting more and more unbelievable !! (Score:5, Funny)
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I know someone will now point out that a lot of Chinese can't distinguish between r and l, so learning Chinese first is not any better. But I want to point out that's because they were taught incorrectly and they think it's the correct pronunciation. Both the r and l sounds exist in mandarin so there is really no reason to get them wrong except if they weren't taught correctly.
Thank you. Someone who actually knows. I've always been extremely annoyed and insulted when people use the tired old joke of "Herro. I rike you velly much." in performing a caricature of a Chinese person, entirely ignorant of the fact that Chinese has a clear distinction between the r and l sounds.
Factoid: It is the Japanese whose language cannot properly distinguish between r's and l's.
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Protip: Any time you want to pronounce something with either an L or an R sound, substitute with a D sound. (not perfect, but close enough)
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I found this Wikipedia page with an audio clip of someone pronouncing "ma" using those four tones. [wikipedia.org] Is he pronouncing mother, numb, horse and insult in that order?
Yes
Re:/. is getting more and more unbelievable !! (Score:5, Funny)
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What?
Japanese is Subject-(wa)-object-(predicate), with verb terminator. You have wo and ga following direct and indirect objects; vocalized punctuation from ka and ne; and context-implied elements ("Run!" instead of "You run!" because no shit I mean you).
German is S-V-O until you get to questions, then it's V-S-DO-V instead of S-V-DO-V.
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German is actually SVO[V] for indicatives, VSO[V] for interrogatives, and SO[V]V for subordinate clauses.
Ich möchte in die Bibliotek gehen.
Darf ich in die Bibliotek gehen?
Ich glaube, daß meine Freunde in die Bibliotek gegangen sind. / Ich glaube, daß meine Freunde in die Bibliotek gingen.
And leading off with a predicate forces a switch from SV to VS: Gestern bin ich in die Bibliotek gegangen. / Gestern ging ich in die Bibliotek.
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You know why aisle has an 's' in it? It's because isle has an 's' despite being derived from the old English ile because the Latin word isula also means island and it has an 's' in it so ours might as well have one too.
Um, no. The Old English word came from Old French, OF île > Vulgar Latin isle > Latin insula. The circumflex often denotes where an s used to follow the vowel, but later became silent. As in hôtel > hostel, côte > coste ("coast"), château > chastel ("castle"), même > mesme ("same"; cf. Portuguese mesmo, Spanish mismo). The s got added back in the 16th Century in French (which at that time was both becoming standardised in its modern form and was also becoming *the*
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Writing is a royal pain in the ass but the spoken language is pretty easy.
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You can divide learning Chinese into two parts, really. Learning to speak is one thing. Learning to read and write the characters is quite another.
Personally I didn't find the spoken language all that difficult - I found the sentence structure and the grammar fairly straightforward. Some westerners have difficulty with the tonality - I guess I think of it as being that there are just certain ways you pronounce things. In English you can screw up pronunciation by putting the emphasis on the wrong syllabl
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Actually, it is considered a notoriously difficult language for westerners to learn. I don't think that is hyperbole.
Not just Westerners! Chinese is just as hard for Tanzanians or Indonesians. Chinese an awful language, not just the tones but full of homophones and other pitfalls. The only worse language I know is Cantonese. Maybe Khoisan?
In comparison, Swahili or SE Asian languages are a piece of cake, at least at the beginner level.
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If you break language into four tasks: speaking, listening, reading and writing, then speaking is by far the easiest.
I'd say that depends on what you consider "reading and writing". For Westerners, Mandarin is difficult to speak and listen to because of the tones--it takes a lot of practice for them to pronounce the tones properly, and also a lot of practice to distinguish the tones. Reading and writing is difficult because of the large number of characters that need to be memorized. However, if you're allowed to have computer assistance, reading and writing becomes much easier; I'd say easier than speaking and listening.
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Mandarin is not hard to learn though. That's a dumb statement.
Most people want to learn a language by learning vocabulary. That's why we mock Asians for their stupid accents, and why everyone in Europe mocks the American tourist for talking like a retarded kid with a hatchet stuck in his skull: people just learn words, and try to force them into grammar structures that are familiar to them, and just remember sentences.
Languages are about sounds. I find all languages equally easy to learn--the more d
Re:Also notoriously difficult for westerners: (Score:4, Interesting)
English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over, and rummages through their pockets for loose grammar. - Paraphrase of a quote by James Davis Nicoll
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An amusing quote I read once:
English doesn't borrow from other languages.
English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over, and rummages through their pockets for loose grammar.
- Paraphrase of a quote by James Davis Nicoll
AND their words.
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I've posted two lengthy responses in this thread already, so this one will be brief: You're an idiot. No, really. :)
easier to speak, harder to read (Score:2)
Not so easy (Score:2)
Wrong.
When we're young, we benefit from massive plasticity in our language learning skills, and of course any child who learns Mandarin (and sometimes Cantonese as well) is going to make a much better native speaker than I am ever going to make, despite the fact that I've devoted years to it and am highly motivated.
It's not just learning words. It is how things ar
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You're kind of exaggerating here. There are 50,000 characters estimated to have been used in all of history - this has nothing to do with learning Chinese anymore than learning that yegg, thorn and ash were once English characters. You can be fully literate in Chinese without knowing the vast majority of extant characters. My language coaches are native speakers and while I can recognize/write characters they've never seen. Like the old form of "da2/ta4" not to mention HKCS and a few Japanese characters
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I didn't say you had to learn them. I said they were there. The implication -- true -- that there are many more to learn to get to higher levels of literacy. I also pointed out that 2000 was a specific level of literacy.
Try not to get too carried away with your imagination. Just read what I said. Not what you think I said.
As for a simplified character vocabulary, take a trip to Taiwan, why don't you. See how that works out for you.
Your experience is only your experience.
Anyway, whatever.
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I didn't say you had to learn them. I said they were there.
Sorry the likely case is you are backpedaling. The whole post, in fact the whole portion of this thread is about learning Chinese and you thought adding something that has zero to do with it was a good idea to throw in. That's what you want readers to believe? Let's look at your quote shall we?
About 2000 of them constitute (approximately) high school literacy. But there are about 50 thousand of them. Bad enough?
In order for your "they are just there" be what you really meant you would have had to switch from talking about words you need to learn for literacy to words that have no impact on literacy whatsoever in the space