# I pit the Chinese language! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 30, 2004, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220 "2004-03-30T01:35:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hemlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Hemlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hemlock)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220/21 "2004-03-31T01:56:29Z")
> [@minor7flat5](#): > > Sorry, but I can’t let this one slip by. > [Egyptian hieroglyphs](http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/Hieroglyphics.htm) form a pronouncable alphabet, contrary to popular belief. > We have Thomas Young (of light wave vs. particle fame) to thank for the breakthrough, back when the Rosetta Stone was found, that eventually brought an end to the “hieroglyphs as picture writing” theory. That’s my point - an Egyptian or Mayan hieroglyph, like many Chinese characters, is a [rebus](http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/rebus). On the subject of Chinese keyboards, I think there are several different approaches to inputting text. Some require the user to input a romanized version of a word, eg HUANG, then click on the specific ‘huang’ character you want. Others (like the one I’m using now) have all the radicals scattered round the place, through use of ‘shift’, ‘ctrl’ etc, and you build up characters from scratch, again clicking from a range of choices on the screen if necessary. (I might be wrong here - but that’s what it looks like when I see other people doing it. I use it as an English keyboard only.) Either way, it’s another point against this writing system. Yet another is retention - people have a terrible time remembering how to write the less common words. Apparently, the short cuts provided by electronic inputting systems is making this worse - people are forgetting how to write with a pen. ---
**Author:** ![Netbrian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71e660/32.png) [@Netbrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Netbrian)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220/22 "2004-03-31T07:50:52Z")
Oh, I know how you feel. I’m currently studying Japanese, and learning the characters can be painful at best. The most frustrating parts for me are those characters that look almost exactly like each other, such as the kanji for “enter” and the kanji for “person”, or the kanji for “body” and the kanji for “vacation”. They all get mixed up for me, and sometimes it’s hard to immediately tell from context. But I do love that it’s almost always “pronounce it how you write it”, is reasonably easy for an English speaker to pronounce (very few sound we don’t use), and has very few irregular verbs. So there are obvious trade-offs. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220/23 "2004-03-31T12:11:03Z")
> [@](#): > > That’s my point - an Egyptian or Mayan hieroglyph, like many Chinese characters, is a rebus. No, it’s not. Egyptian hieroglypic writing is a combination of ideograms (pictures that represent ideas) and phonograms (pictures that represent sounds). The words for “sun” and “mouth” for example, are written with the symbols that look like them. However, most often the signs are combined into words that have nothing to do with the objects the signs represent. The Egyptians indeed used an alphabet of 24 consonants in hieroglyphic. Because there no vowels in Egyptian script, often two words were spelled alike even though they had different meanings. In those cases an extra character called a “determinative,” was added to clarify the word’s meaning. I refer the interested reader to check out _Decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphs_, by Bridgett McDermott, from which I got this information. ---
**Author:** ![ouisey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9fc29f/32.png) [@ouisey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouisey)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220/24 "2004-03-31T18:13:53Z")
Learning to read Chinese is a bitch, I agree. I love the shemme shemme idea though. I read Chinese about four hours a day for a year and got to where I could get the gist of just about all of the Renmin Ribao. I’ve forgotten just about all of it now:(. ---
**Author:** ![RobuSensei](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/919ad9/32.png) [@RobuSensei](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RobuSensei)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2004, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220/25 "2004-03-31T22:35:21Z")
> [@shijinn](#): > > i’m not familiar with japanese, since it’s kanji and the characters are exactly the same as the chinese’s, i would assume that the japanese took them instead. > > yinghang - ginko; dianhua - denwa; yanjiu she - kenkyusha; etc. I was somewhat mistaken. My source (which I’ve just found again) was an article in the March 20, 2003 Japan Times. –[link](http://japanvisitor.com/i_mode/clinic1.html)– It says, in part: > [@](#): > > A similar thing happened in the late 1800s, when Japanese scholars and bureaucrats, after two centuries of isolation, came up with kanji compounds for Western concepts like ‘bank’ (ginkou) and ‘company’ (kaisha). Some made-in-Japan kanji compounds such as keizai (economy) made their way to China, where they are still used. In contrast to Japan, with its reliance on English-based loanwords, China continues to create new words for foreign concepts by combining kanji with appropriate meanings. For example, the Chinese word for ‘computer,’ utilizes the characters meaning ‘electric’ and ‘brain.’ ‘Electric brain’ is easily understood by the average Chinese as it is similar to ‘electric ladder’ (elevator), ‘electric vision machine’ (television), and ‘electric speech’ (telephone). [Of these four terms, only the one for ‘telephone’ (pronounced denwa) is used in Japan; the other three are gairaigo]. ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220/26 "2004-04-01T06:30:28Z")
> [@cromulent](#): > > Why “ **on** the bus” and not “ **in** the bus?” [George Carlin] “ **On** the plane? Let Evel Knievel get **on** the plane! I’m getting **in** the plane!” [/George Carlin] Then, of course, there’s the case of waiting _on_ line or _in_ line, depending on where the store/arena/theater you’re patronizing is located… ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2004, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220/27 "2004-04-01T13:48:19Z")
I love the Chinese language but the characters can bite me. At my best I used to be able to write about 6,000 characters, but they just slip away if you don’t use them all the time. I’m gonna borrow that shenme shenme thing 😃 ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2004, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220/28 "2004-04-02T03:09:52Z")
> [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > That’s my point - an Egyptian or Mayan hieroglyph, like many Chinese characters, is a rebus. > > No, it’s not […] The words for “sun” and “mouth” for example, are written with the symbols that look like them. However, most often the signs are combined into words that have nothing to do with the objects the signs represent. So, in other words, it’s a rebus. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220/29 "2004-04-12T14:27:40Z")
The characters are gorgeous. They’re what made me decide to study Chinese. And have you ever actually read a long text in Pinyin? Even for a very elementary student like myself, it’s harder. Why? Because Chinese has so many homophones. There’s often 20 characters corresponding to a single sound, and you can use context in speech but it’s a lot harder when you’re reading. Plus, a literate speaker of any “dialect” has very little trouble reading something written by a speaker of any other dialect - the non-phonetic writing system makes the dialectual differences much smaller. Just practice. And read. The Chinese manage to do it, you can too. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220/30 "2004-04-12T14:50:59Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > So, in other words, it’s a rebus. No, it’s a word spelled with letters. Read the source I cited for more info. Here’s spme more [info](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieroglyphics). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-chinese-language/237220.md?page=1)