[lit-ideas] Re: Globalization
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 19:28:21 -0500
----- Original Message -----
From:
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 2/25/2006 2:26:21 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Globalization
<<Mandarin has four (high, rising, broken, falling). >>
I've been sitting in on the class my daughter (12) is taking....it's a group of
home-schooled kids, and they range in age from 4 to 12. It absolutely amazes
me how quickly and adeptly they picked up on the pronounced intonations. It is
a tremendously complicated language, but the children seem captivated by the
characters as opposed to alphabetics/phonetics, and they love drawing the
characters.
The characters are credited with the alleged superiority of Chinese
intelligence. So or I've read. Most likely all this superiority business is
just hype.
Julie Krueger
delighting in the incredible sponge-like quality of kids' minds.
========Original Message======== Subj:[lit-ideas] Re: Globalization
Date:2/25/06 1:12:06 P.M. Central Standard Time
From:john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx
To:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent on:
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
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