In the Philippines, ethnicity is not national. You have Aklanons who are different in ways from Capiznons (Both from the same island). It’s very much tied with language there. So an Aklanon, a Tagalog, and a Cebuano are all Filipinos, but they all will look very similar, but all will identify with a different ethnic group. Facial features there make little sense in determining ethnicity.
No, that’s not true. I don’t know you Mike in HK, but either you’ve been listening too much to the average HKer rambling on about communism, or you’re assuming you know too much. A lot of foreigners seem to do that in Asia (are you a foreigner?)
Anyways, most of the mainlanders I met didn’t have much trouble reading traditional characters at all. They couldn’t write it out after they read it for the life of them, but they can read it easily enough. Traditional chracters are also making a comeback in the mainland, just because it looks so much better. Sorta the fad right now.
As for people raised on traditional characters trying to read simplified, just from personal experience I’ve seen a mixed bag. My mother never formally learned simplified in the least, but she picks it up very quickly and can figure out most of the characters even if she’s never seen them before. Some others I’ve met says it’s almost incomprehensible to them. I’m only learning the writing system now, and was forced to switch to simplified after I switched schools, and it wasn’t that big of a jump to me. A lot of it made even more sense than the traditional characters and I could figure them out and write them easier.
As for telling Asians apart, one of the previous posters is correct. There’s a noticabel difference between Asian-American and Asians. Even within Asian-Americans however, there’s clear differences in body langauge and dress style (along with facial and body structure ofcourse). I can tell Asians apart in real life with what I would say about a 80 - 90 hit ratio. In that website however, I have a much harder time. Telling Asians apart to me is 60% intuition, 40% physical.
As for language, most Cantonese speakers seem to speak English to Mandarin speakers here in America and vice-versa. There’s a huge HK and Taiwanese population in my school, and that’s what usually ends up happening. When I was in the mainland however, most of the HKers would speak really bad Mandarin.
As for the written language, it’s true that HK, TW, and the mainland use different writing systems, but I dunno, most people I’ve met can easily jump between them after a few tries. The biggest jump seems to be from the mainland to reading an HK newspaper. The mainland and Taiwan FOR THE MOST PART write the way Mandarin is spoken. Hong Kong writes the way Cantonese is spoken. At the same time, standard Chinese is taught to Hong Kongers so they can read standard written papers with ease. My ex-gf is Taiwanese, and even though she doens’t speak a lick of Cantonese she can read the newspapers because she’s smart enough to know where they’ve replaced standard Chinese words with native Cantonese characters and usually can figure out the slight grammar cahnges.
I have pretty much the same history as you, and I scored a 3.
Ths a is lough bery eggemple of the deffirnce bitwiin tridatoinel chinese and smiplefeid chinese to one who’s flewnt iether in. It not may mkae any snese at solo galnce but it is not so hard mxyztplk the msesgae with a little eforft.
or what WonJonSoup said.
“putonghua” is a post revolution word and not a historic word for “Chinese”. As if one’s language could be considered “ordinary speech.”
Mike, with all due respect, the Chinese communists simplified the Chinese writing system primarily to raise literacy levels from a single digit to something like 70-80% today. There may have been secondary considerations, but it was overwhelmingly to raise literacy levels.
If I, a non native speaker of Chinese, can learn both simplified and traditional writing, then most native speakers can do so as well with a little bit of effort. Somewhat akin to an American learning British spelling.
Post 1949 China, the simplification process went in 2 stages. The first stage was to adopt the style that was commonly written. These commonly simplified characters were also in use in Japan (look at a japanese passport and the what that “guo” or country is written in the simplified form).
The second stage occured IIRC in 1956. This was where the radicals or the pieces that make up a character were simplified. A liguistic or scientific approach to simplifying the characters. Such as the speech radical 言 which is the left hand component or radical of 语. I don’t have the traditional font set can’t show you a side by side comparison. Generally, one just has to learn the common radical difference to be able to read the simplified versus tradional character.
Of course, there are exceptions such as “rang” / to let or to allow. Simplified is written 让 and the long form is unrecognizeably different.
Some of these simplifications are asthetically not pleasing. Also some of the simplifications have removed the symbolistic link between the character and the idea it represents. For example, “ai” / love 爱 no longer has the “heart” radical.
My understanding is that Putonghua is more specific than Mandarin. It’s kind of like the standard mid-western accent used by news anchors in the US.
well i do. had to enlarge it as the normal font is too small to display the traditional character properly. you may need to download fonts to view.
traditional - simplified
語 - 语
讓 - 让
愛 - 爱
my understanding is putonghua (common speech) is mandarin in china, guoyu (national language) is mandarin in taiwan and huayu (chinese language) is mandarin to me. naturally there are differences.
cool. The above shows the simplifications.
- is an example where the speech radical is simplified and the rest of the character remains the same. Chinese readers only have to learn the simplified and traditional radical and can easily read both.
- is an example where the character is changed significantly, and most like a reader of one version would not be able to read the other. Cases like this require learning the other version.
- Is an example of where the character is more or less the same, and readers could probably figure it out in context. However, the simplified version no longer has some of the root component to help remember the symbolic meaning. In this case, the “heart” radical is missing. Therefore the simplified character for love no longer contains “heart”.
Putonghua is mandarin. Perhaps you are mixing up “Beijing Dialect”, broadcast Mandarin, and Mandarin.
Beijing hua or Beijing dialect or 北京话儿 is often referred to synonomously with Mandarin. However, these are not quite the same thing. Beijing dialect has a very strong “R” sound at the end of many words. This is often taught as Mandarin.
“Broadcast Mandarin” is essentially the Beijing dialect without the “R” sound. There is quite a pronounced difference between the two. I much prefer the Broadcast Mandarin.
I think the Beijing dialect is disgusting and assualting to the ears. Except in movies. I’m so used to Mandarin language movies being in that accent that I actually think it should be done as the standard there, haha. It atleast makes it sound more dramatic.
And yeah, phonetically, I do think Mandarin spoken without the harsh accents sounds one of the most beautiful. I think the Taiwanese often speak it nicely, especially some of the girls, when they aren’t using the whiney-wannabe-Japanese voice, hehe.