back

by danieltanfh95·4y ago·view on hn ↗
I think the written Chinese language is way more flexible than what most people think it can be.

The most extreme example of this is Japanese Kanji, and while Japanese is its own language, native chinese speakers would note the similarities between it and Hainanese/Cantonese dialect, and with some 文言文 knowledge, one can read Japanese without much effort, even if one cannot speak it.

Contemporary Chinese has roots in the version used among the masses, it deliberately eschews the official version used in the palace to make it easier for the masses to understand and learn it. One may notice the difference between Taiwan official language and Mainland official language in official declarations, the Taiwanese one is considerably more ... "poetic" but comes at a cost of understanding for the masses who may not be educated as highly, like most of the villages in Mainland China, likewise for Hong Kong.

However, one might notice how written Chinese has relatively little "hard" grammar rules that must be followed to ensure legibility. As a translator I find it easier sometimes to translate something into Chinese, which is not my first language, and then to the target language, especially for Sinitic languages, because the written language can capture most of the meaning while being flexible enough to be restructured in the target.

The converse, on the other hand may be tougher, for example if Hong Kongers were to use Cantonese as a base to understand other dialects they will face a lot of problems in doing so because its not flexible enough to fit in the quirks of other languages, which is why in this sense written Putonghua is a successful invention because its minimal enough to convey meaning while being able to fit it all the weird quirks for various "dialects", which is why its used widely across the world.

4 comments
> The most extreme example of this is Japanese Kanji, and while Japanese is its own language, native chinese speakers would note the similarities between it and Hainanese/Cantonese dialect, and with some 文言文 knowledge, one can read Japanese without much effort, even if one cannot speak it.

This is slightly misleading. Kanji (lit. Hanzi i.e. Chinese character(s)) is the Chinese writing system. The native Chinese speaker observes not any similarities in the languages beyond picking out logograms which are familiar and used in the same way. Of course, there are a large amount of logograms which are not used the same way, on top of the divergence caused by the different simplification schemes used in the two countries, so it is by no means straightforward to read Japanese as a Chinese speaker. The existence of languages as diverse as Turkish, Serbian, Finnish and English all using latin script does not imply that "the written Latin language is flexible".

Just as an example, I've taken a paragraph from a recent news article from NHK and converted the kanji to kana. This is of course legible to native Japanese speakers but completely unintelligible to even a scholar in classical Chinese.

そうこ から およそ3 キロ はなれた ばしょ に すんで いる と いう60 だい の ふうふ は「 さくや は すごい あめ と かぜ で、 たつまき を しらせる サイレン が なった の で じたく の ちか-しつ に いそいで ひなん した。 とても こわい おもい を した。 こんな ふう に たてもの を はかい する なんて、 ほんとう に ひどい」 と はなして いました。

With the Kanji in place, a Chinese speaker may pick out individual words but the whole sentence would still be unintelligible. As an analogy, I can replace the kanji with roughly equivalent English words, and what an average English speaker gets out of the sentence is what a Chinese speaker gets out of the original. The English speaker doing this should not be under the illusion of "understanding" the language thus.

Warehouseからおよそ3キロdistanceれたplaceにliveんでいるという60yearsのcoupleは「lastnightはすごいrainとwindで、tornadoをinformationらせるサイレンがsoundったのでhouseのbasementにhurryいでescapeした。とてもscaryいthinkいをした。こんなwindにbuildingをdestroyするなんて、reallyにひどい」とsayしていました。

As someone who speaks Mandarin, my personal experience can attest the difficulty in reading Japanese through many years of learning it.

But I do note that it looks familiar a lot of time. But the meaning often is not what it appears to Mandarin speaker.

The meaning is what it means usually from a 文言文 point of view, so it's not as familiar to the Chinese now. Japanese more or less maintains the meanings as it should during the Tang and Song dynasty.
> I think the written Chinese language is way more flexible than what most people think it can be.

I wish I had enough time to properly learn a couple of CJK languages.

I find the characters cool, and while I only know a few of them it is really fun to accidentally figure out the meanings of written words without being able to read or speak them.

Like how fire and mountain when written together becomes volcano: 火山

Cantonese is as flexible. But I think Japanese is very flexible. In fact most and still many of the chinese phrases came from japan.

What base you are on?

"Chinese phrases" that come from Japan attests to how flexible written Chinese is to accept and use a foreign language while still being understandable to the native speaker once the lexicon is understood.