English vs Chinese: Which Is Easier? -continued

This is a sequel continuation of the a previous essay about the comparison of English and Chinese comparison (http://www.italki.com/notebook/entry/95755.htm) . In this part, we will talk shall touch on about the script and pronunciation the oral aspects of these languages.

Unlike English word, which is made up of 26 alphabets, Chinese is not alphabet based.  English uses 26 letters of the Latin alphabet while Chinese characters is more like a block miniature is based on logograms. In English, you spell. In Chinese, you draw. This may leave you the impression that Chinese is more difficult to write than English in terms of scripting. But 1 that's wrong  - a mistaken conclusion. The amount of Chinese characters enough for daily use is For daily use, only Chinese uses one-third less than English words in equivalent characters. And Chinese calligraphy is not a bunch of strokes arbitrarily laid together. It has structure. The basic building block of Chinese character is the radicals (equivalent to a root word in English). There are around 200 such radicals. Once you mastered the 200 radicals them you can easily assemble them into compound characters easily. Finally, Simplified Chinese greatly reduces the number of strokes of found in traditional Chinese characters2. So take all Taking these factors into account, I dare to say that scripting 3000 well-structured simple Chinese characters is actually an easier task than spelling 10000 English words.

Now let turn our focus to the As for the oral aspect of the two languages, . All Chinese characters are of single syllable monosyllabic. Easy to pronounce. However, don't get be fooled by the this superficial devious simplicity. Different Chinese characters often share the same or similar pronunciation3. Each sound may range from 4 to 8 tones depending on the dialect.  Mandarin has 4 while Cantonese may contain up to 8 or 9 depending on which school of linguists you follow.  Listeners must be able to distinguish the sound tonal subtlety and put them in context in order to really to understand what the speaker is talking was spoken. Another difficult part of oral Chinese is its variety plelthora of dialects. In the English world, there are different flavors varieties such as British, Australia and or American English. But after all, Their differences are still manageable minor and result in no real barrier for inter-communication.4 In Chinese, the dialect issue is much more severe. People living in 300km apart areas may speak totally different dialects and cannot understand each other orally.5 That's why the government prompts Mandarin as one the official "dialect". So in oral aspect, English is much easier than Chinese.6

1.  Don't begin a sentence with "and", "but".  These are conjunctions to connect two sentences together with their position in the middle.  If you want to begin a sentence with a conjunction, use "however", "since", "even though" etc.

2.   By the same token, much information is also lost.  This information is cultural and the logic behind.  For example, using the character for wind, 风 (simplified) and 風 (traditional).  One can see that the simplified is easier to write.  This is good for texting (where in English abbreviations are used) but not in formal writing.  The traditional form encodes more information.  This is because inside the "wave front" is the character for an insect with a slant representing the wing of the insect.  Ancient Chinese believe that wind is created by the beating of insects.  Another problem with simplification is that they merge different characters but similar looking ones to become the same word.  For example, the character for "to swim" 游 and "to travel" 遊.  One has the radical of water and the other for movement.  There is not much reduction is there?  By the same logic why not merge 大太犬 to become the same thing.  However some simplifications are justified.  It is better to write "coarse" as 粗 rather than the complicated looking of 3 deer grouped together as in 麤. I believed that simplification should occur when at least 1/3 reduction can be achieved.

3.  Not good enough a reason!  Look at Japanese.  They have at most 60 sounds to share for the entire language.

4.  I bet you have never listened to a Scottish, Irish or a Yokshire speaker!  Go watch this movie, 窕窈淑女 http://www.tudou.com/playlist/p/l2350485.html a musical on speaking proper English and see if you can understand what the hell she was speaking in the beginning.  Sir Winston Churchill once said, "Two nations divided by a common language" (ie the US and Great Britain).  Actually there are many more kinds of English.  The main problem is the accent very similar to Chinese dialects eg, Singlish, Spanglish etc.  However there are major differences in the terms used.  For example, flat vs apartment, biscuit vs cookie, trunk call vs international call, eraser vs rubber (condoms in the US, so you can imagine the mystified look on US faces!)

5.  By the same token, one can read easily with no problems.  I can read Japanese, or Korean signs when written in Kanji or Hanja.  Chinese characters are ancient equivalents of icons on your computer!

6.  This I would beg to differ.  There are sounds in both languages that if you are not grown up with are hard to detect and reproduce.  Most Chinese don't seem to able to pronounce the "es" or the "th" sounds correctly.