Re: "My name is spelled with..."
- From: berk <bayareaberk@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2009 13:27:18 -0700 (PDT)
On Aug 31, 3:14 pm, Doug Jacobs <djac...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Nobody <nob...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From living not-too-far from New York City, where there are *three*
Chinatowns (lower Manhattan, Flushing Queens [mixed in with "Little Seoul"]
& Brooklyn), it has come to my attention that Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese
Chinese and Japanese use the same kanji. It's just that the meanings are
diffrent. I remember seeing the 30 minute video that came pre-packed with
one of the Lunar games from Working Designs. The Lead Programmer from the
company, Peter *something-or-other*, holding up a book with literally
tens-of-thousands of Kanjis in it and flipping through the pages so the
camera could get a good shot of it. In the passed, I had slewed through all
the pages of Kanjis that are built into the Golden Finger I own for my PS1.
However, until Peter held up this book and showed it, I really had no idea
how extensive the Kanji system really is. For people who may not be aware,
there is also a system that can be used to write Standard Chinese (See
Wikipedia) using Roman characters. Its called Pinyin. For this, I suggest a
visit towww.pinyin.info
Actually, the meaning is always the same, but the pronounciation will be
different, depending on if you're using Japanese, or a dialect of
Chinese. Even Korean uses Chinese characters on ocassion, but then puts
the Korean reading in ()'s.
Unfortunately, romanizing Chinese is a mess. The current pinyin system is
horrible if you ask me, as it was created for linguists, and not for
English speakers which is why you have "xi" being pronounced "chi" BUT
"ci" is prounced more like "sih". Very confusing. Worse, you have the
old romanizations which tried to be more intelligent (if you ask me) which
is why you have "Szechuan food" in the "Zhechuan region" but it's still
called "Shanghai" and not "Xianghai"... Ugh, very confusing!
--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.
I have to agree; it need a phonetic reformation project.
I have a _very_ good ear for other languages and music in general, and
I have always read a lot over the years, but they don't overlap well
because what is often written out in English spelling to describe an
Asian pronunciation Has Absolutely No Basis on how people actually
_speak_ the words.
Maddening.
berk
.
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