[lit-ideas] Re: Globalization

  • From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 04:12:54 +0900

Corrections: "not have" not "have not" and "no surprise" not "know surprise."

John

On 2/26/06, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Just a follow up on how different Chinese languages can be. Consider
> the sentence "Do you have brothers and sisters?"
>
> In Mandarin that comes out as "Ni you meiyou gegedidijiejiemeiei":
> literally "You have [or] have not older brothers (gege), younger
> brothers (didi), older sisters (jiejie), younger sisters (meimei)?"
>
> In Hokkien that comes out as "Li u hia*dijimoai bo?":"You have older
> brothers (hia*--with the asterisk indicating nasalization) younger
> brothers (di), older sisters (ji), younger sisters (moai) or not?"
>
> If these were written in Chinese characters "Ni" and "Li," "you" and
> "u" would be the same characters. "didijiejiemeimei" would be the same
> as "dijimoai" with duplication,e.g., "didi" instead of "di" in
> Mandarin. "Gege" and "hia*, "meiyou" and "bo" are different characters
> altogether, the latter in each pair being more like classical Chinese.
>
> Phonetically the two languages sound remarkably different. Once you've
> learned both you notice not perfect but close grammatical
> similarities. And once you know the characters the fact that "moai",
> for instance, is cognate with "mei" comes as know surprise.
>
> For the sake of simplicity, I have omitted the question of tones.
> Mandarin has four (high, rising, broken, falling). Hokkien has seven
> divided into two sets (high, mid, low, rising, falling for open
> syllables and high and low for closed syllables, i.e., syllables that
> end in glottal stops or consonants).
>
> Cheers,
>
> John
> --
> John McCreery
> The Word Works, Ltd.
> 55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
> Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
>


--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts: