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What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

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Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#151

Post by dwohnitmok »

SeanLuke wrote: post #66
baobrain wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find the claim that dialects in China vary so much that people cannot understand each other very western-centric. As a native speaker, there are shockingly few dialects that are completely incomprehensible. Someone from Shanghai will be able to speak to someone in Chengdu with their own dialect, just slower.

Take Cantonese (or heck, Teochew or Hakka). You really think this language is reasonably mutually intelligible with Mandarin? Or Shanghainese? I'm a (non-native, formerly fluent but now pretty poor) Cantonese speaker and I'd describe the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin as roughly the difference between Portuguese and Romanian. Sure, they're both romance languages, and maybe with a lot of work and hand-wavin…

It's not necessarily a northern Chinese centric view of China as it is a Mandarin (as in the language family) view of China. The vast majority of Chinese dialects in a large band from Heilongjiang to Sichuan (and a bit out to Qinghai and Xinjiang) are more or less mutually intelligible. That mutual intelligibility drops off very quickly outside of that band. In particular a lot of Southeast dialects (Yue, Wu, Min, etc.) fall outside of that zone. But it covers the majority of Chinese speakers. (However, I disagree with the original claim that a Sichuanese speaker could understand Shanghainese).

See e.g. this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps7_NnkL-oM where for almost the entire video a couple is explaining words in their respective dialects (Sichuanese and Hunanese) to one another in their own dialect (i.e. not using Standard Mandarin at all in their explanations). The first half of the entire exchange is fluent and understandable by both people and also a Standard Mandarin audience. Only in the second half when they intentionally start quizzing each other on words they know will be tough for the other person and without additional context do they run into trouble (and occasionally resort to Mandarin).

Also, comparing it to Romance languages masks some complexities of the relationship. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844074

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#152

Post by yongjik »

karmasimida wrote: post #143

Interesting observations. As native Chinese speaker: The Look: 1. Japanese: I like the kanji, it is very recognizable, even the character set is different. Most Chinese will have no problem reading traditional Chinese characters, though somewhat slower. The rest...not so much, kanas are my biggest headache. 2. Korean: First thing I noticed is the presence of circle, which is not part of Chinese radicals until very re…

> For example 부동산(real estate), comes from the Japanese kanji word, 不動産, which in Chinese means 不(not)動(moving)産(assets). Does this inferential aspect of Chinese still apply in certain cases once it is written in Hangul?

It depends. For this particular example, I think most Koreans will treat 부동산 as a single word meaning "real estate", because it's not a very productive combination: the alternative 동산 (moveable properties?) is a legal term which is much less common, and 산(産) as "property" isn't common either.

On the other hand, a word like 고밀도화(高密度化 - densification) is transparently decomposable to 고(高 high) + 밀도(密度 density) + 화(化 -ify). Few people can write it down in hanja (I just copy-pasted from dictionary), but most people will immediately recognize its meaning, even if they've never seen the word before.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#153

Post by dwg »

dwg wrote: post #128

I live in Japan and work at a Japanese company. I can't understand Chinese at all. Even though the Japanese version of the Chinese pronunciation is somehow vaguely familiar at times, there is no making any sense of it. I suspect Japanese folks feel the same way so I turned to my right and asked a coworker what Chinese sounds like to him. His answer was ちんぷんかんぷん (gibberish).

Just to clarify he did not say this in any sort of derogatory sense, nor do I wish it to be interpreted as such. Just that he can't understand! I think the difference is greater than the author states (except written, which is is a little easier to understand because of the borrowed characters).

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#154

Post by princeb »

baobrain wrote: post #47
moogleii wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came across this quote from the Mandarin wiki: > The Chinese have different languages in different provinces, to such an extent that they cannot understand each other.... [They] also have another language which is like a universal and common language; this is the official language of the mandarins and of the court; it is among them like Latin among ourselves.... Two of our fathers [Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci…

I always find the claim that dialects in China vary so much that people cannot understand each other very western-centric. As a native speaker, there are shockingly few dialects that are completely incomprehensible. Someone from Shanghai will be able to speak to someone in Chengdu with their own dialect, just slower.

written cantonese is almost the same as written mandarin.

the problem is that spoken cantonese is not much like written cantonese. it's a combination of pronunciation, accent, idioms, and sentence structures. best advice is for speakers of mandarin or cantonese to learn the other language like a new one. (there's also the written form of spoken cantonese, written spoken cantonese, if you will, that is the written representation of spoken cantonese using a set of special characters of sinitic origin).

if you are from guangdong you will learn all systems of language - written mandarin, spoken mandarin, written cantonese, and spoken cantonese. some hongkongers don't ever learn spoken mandarin correctly, getting them to speak mandarin in front of a camera is always a source of good laughs.

those who argue that cantonese are mutually intelligible with mandarin will typically use cantonese newspapers and official documents as evidence. those who argue that they aren't will point to spoken and colloquial cantonese as evidence. the objective point of view is to accept that cantonese as we know it exists as two separate languages used for two different purposes.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#155

Post by karmasimida »

yongjik wrote: post #152
karmasimida wrote: post #143

Interesting observations. As native Chinese speaker: The Look: 1. Japanese: I like the kanji, it is very recognizable, even the character set is different. Most Chinese will have no problem reading traditional Chinese characters, though somewhat slower. The rest...not so much, kanas are my biggest headache. 2. Korean: First thing I noticed is the presence of circle, which is not part of Chinese radicals until very re…

> For example 부동산(real estate), comes from the Japanese kanji word, 不動産, which in Chinese means 不(not)動(moving)産(assets). Does this inferential aspect of Chinese still apply in certain cases once it is written in Hangul? It depends. For this particular example, I think most Koreans will treat 부동산 as a single word meaning "real estate", because it's not a very productive combination: the alternative 동산 (moveable prope…

Thanks for the explanation. Appreciated.

I think this answers part of my question as how modern Korean create new words/concepts, if not via English loanwords. So those word roots could still be applied in certain cases.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#156

Post by imtringued »

adrianN wrote: post #59
laurieg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A different word order, any different word order, changes language learning from "learn a bunch of substitutions for my native language" to "learn a completely new system". There's a huge mental overhead for the latter.

The effort of learning a different grammar is dwarfed by the effort of memorizing a sufficiently large dictionary to understand everyday speech. To read at an elementary school level you need 5-20k words.

That's not true. People usually learn around a thousand words per year. Someone in their 20s is expected to have a 20k vocabulary but much of that is academic or professional vocabulary. i.e. the overlap between a mechanical and a software engineer might only be 15k words.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#157

Post by jimmydef »

karmasimida wrote: post #143

Interesting observations. As native Chinese speaker: The Look: 1. Japanese: I like the kanji, it is very recognizable, even the character set is different. Most Chinese will have no problem reading traditional Chinese characters, though somewhat slower. The rest...not so much, kanas are my biggest headache. 2. Korean: First thing I noticed is the presence of circle, which is not part of Chinese radicals until very re…

> 1. The kanji based words sound very different from what it would sound like in Chinese

This is because you are probably speaking in mandarin which has deviated a great deal from Middle Chinese ever since the Jurchen Jin conquered northern China.

But if you were to compare it to a more conservative Chinese language like min-nan or some other southern chinese language, the similarities are unmistakable.

examples of pronunciation:

忍者: Ninja (JP), Nin-jia (Minnan), Renzhe(mandarin)

美人： Bi Jin (JP) , Bi Jin (minnan), meiren(mandarin)

簡単: Kantan(JP), Kan Tan (minnan), jiandan (mandarin)

時間: JiKan (JP), Si Kan (minnan), shijian (mandarin)

世界: sekai (JP), Sei Kai (minnan), shijie (mandarin)

速度: sokudo (JP), Sok Do (minnan), shudu (mandarin)

確認: kakunin (JP), Kak Nin or Kak Lin (minnan), queren (mandarin)

区别: ku betsu (JP), ku piat (minnan) , qu bie (mandarian)

人類: jin rui (JP), Jin Lui (minnan), ren lei (mandarin)

and korean: 金 ： Kim (kr), Kim (minnan), Jin (mandarin)

新婦： Sim Pu (kr) , Sim Pu (minnan), Xin fu (mandarin)

學生： hag saeng (kr) , hak seng (minnan), xue sheng (mandarin)

參加：Cham Ga (kr) , Tsham Ka (minnan), Can Jia (mandarin)

Notice how minnan and korean preserves the ending consonants like "t" and "g" sounds while Japanese simulates the ending consonant with a new character. So the character 速 is pronounced Sok but in Japanese is split into So & Ku where ku simulates the ending consonant.

Mandarin just does away with ending consonants completely. Many other changes such as the lack of the "f" and "v" sound in early middle chinese which is preserved in korean and minnan but not in other Chinese languages where many "b" consonants are converted into "f" consonants. Or the lack of ending "m" consonant in mandarin which is still present in minnan and korean.

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#158

Post by [deleted] »

jimmydef wrote: post #157
karmasimida wrote: post #143

Interesting observations. As native Chinese speaker: The Look: 1. Japanese: I like the kanji, it is very recognizable, even the character set is different. Most Chinese will have no problem reading traditional Chinese characters, though somewhat slower. The rest...not so much, kanas are my biggest headache. 2. Korean: First thing I noticed is the presence of circle, which is not part of Chinese radicals until very re…

> 1. The kanji based words sound very different from what it would sound like in Chinese This is because you are probably speaking in mandarin which has deviated a great deal from Middle Chinese ever since the Jurchen Jin conquered northern China. But if you were to compare it to a more conservative Chinese language like min-nan or some other southern chinese language, the similarities are unmistakable. examples of p…

[deleted]

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#159

Post by philliphaydon »

yongjik wrote: post #138
philliphaydon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_phonology > In 2012, vowel length is reported almost completely neutralized in Korean, except for a very few older speakers of Seoul dialect,[14] for whom the distinctive vowel-length distinction is maintained only in the first syllable of a word.[13] So it does have vowel length change meaning but it’s almost kinda died out like tones?

Native Korean speaker here, born in the 70s and grew up in Seoul. We all learned a dozen short-long pairs at school (like 눈 nun being either eye or snow), and of course the education got all of us tricked into thinking that we're making these distinctions (if only we try hard enough). But looking at it objectively, I don't think a single person around me used vowel length distinction. If you have to "think" whether a…

I can't speak Korean, only a little bit of Mandarin :D so I'm really happy to have your reply, thank you! Makes sense!

Re: What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

#160

Post by yorwba »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #147
yorwba wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are ten Shanghainese sentences, four short ones and six long ones: 1. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488406.mp3 2. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485590.mp3 3. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485698.mp3 4. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488621.mp3 5. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/489046.mp3 6. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/489736.mp3 7. https://audio.tatoeba…

To be fair these translations slightly exaggerate the difference between Shanghainese and Mandarin. The speaker is speaking in a more formal register in her Mandarin samples than in her Shanghainese samples which causes greater vocabulary and structural differences than if they were at the same register. In fact I'm a little surprised she doesn't use exact analogs when translating between the two, e.g. 搿就是讲 -> 这就是说 i…

> In fact I'm a little surprised she doesn't use exact analogs when translating between the two

If you check the logs on the sentence page, you'll see that the Shanghainese sentences are actually translated from the Mandarin. So she was going from relatively formal Mandarin to more informal Shanghainese, probably because that's what she's accustomed to speaking.

I didn't really intend these as a demonstration of how different Shanghainese and Mandarin are even when you translate as literally as possible, but more as a way for people on HN who know Mandarin but haven't had much exposure to Shanghainese to try and see how much they understand. I like to think I understood a few words like 自己 and 警察, but maybe that's because I looked at the text first.

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