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Facebook article thoughts
Wednesday, 19 May 2021 14:59Just a couple of articles I read on Facebook but decided to comment here instead of there, because, Facebook.
An Open Letter to White Expat Men that I have met while living in China
Nothing much. Just more showing off on my part. Yes, in general, people keep saying Chinese is so difficult to learn, and this, and that. They all keep talking about the four intonations in mandarin, and how each intonation makes the word different. And then people question me, saying that "if you speak Cantonese then you should be able to speak Mandarin!"
Well. No. NO. Mandarin, as mentioned, has 4 intonations. Cantonese, has 9. Also, Cantonese has some consonants and nasal tones. So. No. If you speak Cantonese it doesn't mean you speak Mandarin. Also, while it happens in any language that "there's a written form, and there's a spoken form," while in Mandarin the written and the spoken are different, the base structure and word usage is basically the same. In Cantonese, not really. You speak very colloquially in Cantonese, heck, some things said in Cantonese can't really be written because there is no such character for that.
And if one more person tells me that, "If Mandarin has 4 intonations and Cantonese has 9, it means Mandarin is easier! Shame on you that you are not learning it!"
WELL!
Let me try to provide an example. Super-simplifying things.
Assuming there are the same number of words (characters) in Mandarin and Cantonese. For the sake of simplifying the calculation, let's say there are 1000 words with the base pronunciation Ma. Since in Mandarin there are 4 intonations for words... so it makes it that there are 250 Ma's that have the exact same intonation. Meaning, the word Ma(1) can have 250 meanings. Meanwhile, in Cantonese, there are 9 intonations for Ma. So, there is a significantly lower rate of exact same intonation words. 111.11 different meanings to the word Ma(1). Now if you are not reading, but speaking, and you have to guess what people are saying by context, I think it's a lot easier to understand someone speaking Cantonese. Of course, the caveat is, you need to know Cantonese very well to be able to speak it too.
I personally am of the opinion that Cantonese is waaaayyyy harder to learn than Mandarin. And I grew up speaking it, so it wasn't really a feat of excellence or what. I am doubly impressed by those who actually really learnt it later in life.
The other day I had to arrange something for my Boss in China. China side called me and well, I really wasn't able to communicate with them in Mandarin. I managed to stutter out if we can communicate in WeChat, and there you go, I was able to communicate with them by writing. (And I stubbornly kept using traditional Chinese characters to show my self-assessed superiority LOL) (honestly all I had to do is to press a button on my phone and it would convert all traditional characters to simplified Chinese characters)
I hope people will quit bugging me about Mandarin.
Macau Greyhond "shot, barbecued" in the US
What the actual F*CK??????? That poor dog! Finally escaping the racetrack, going to the US, everyone thinking how lucky the dog was, and now THIS!???? WTF? WT actual F? Who's that guy even? Was he some sort of Expat in Macau and returned to the US? WTF? WTF??????
Really upset by this new.
An Open Letter to White Expat Men that I have met while living in China
Nothing much. Just more showing off on my part. Yes, in general, people keep saying Chinese is so difficult to learn, and this, and that. They all keep talking about the four intonations in mandarin, and how each intonation makes the word different. And then people question me, saying that "if you speak Cantonese then you should be able to speak Mandarin!"
Well. No. NO. Mandarin, as mentioned, has 4 intonations. Cantonese, has 9. Also, Cantonese has some consonants and nasal tones. So. No. If you speak Cantonese it doesn't mean you speak Mandarin. Also, while it happens in any language that "there's a written form, and there's a spoken form," while in Mandarin the written and the spoken are different, the base structure and word usage is basically the same. In Cantonese, not really. You speak very colloquially in Cantonese, heck, some things said in Cantonese can't really be written because there is no such character for that.
And if one more person tells me that, "If Mandarin has 4 intonations and Cantonese has 9, it means Mandarin is easier! Shame on you that you are not learning it!"
WELL!
Let me try to provide an example. Super-simplifying things.
Assuming there are the same number of words (characters) in Mandarin and Cantonese. For the sake of simplifying the calculation, let's say there are 1000 words with the base pronunciation Ma. Since in Mandarin there are 4 intonations for words... so it makes it that there are 250 Ma's that have the exact same intonation. Meaning, the word Ma(1) can have 250 meanings. Meanwhile, in Cantonese, there are 9 intonations for Ma. So, there is a significantly lower rate of exact same intonation words. 111.11 different meanings to the word Ma(1). Now if you are not reading, but speaking, and you have to guess what people are saying by context, I think it's a lot easier to understand someone speaking Cantonese. Of course, the caveat is, you need to know Cantonese very well to be able to speak it too.
I personally am of the opinion that Cantonese is waaaayyyy harder to learn than Mandarin. And I grew up speaking it, so it wasn't really a feat of excellence or what. I am doubly impressed by those who actually really learnt it later in life.
The other day I had to arrange something for my Boss in China. China side called me and well, I really wasn't able to communicate with them in Mandarin. I managed to stutter out if we can communicate in WeChat, and there you go, I was able to communicate with them by writing. (And I stubbornly kept using traditional Chinese characters to show my self-assessed superiority LOL) (honestly all I had to do is to press a button on my phone and it would convert all traditional characters to simplified Chinese characters)
I hope people will quit bugging me about Mandarin.
Macau Greyhond "shot, barbecued" in the US
What the actual F*CK??????? That poor dog! Finally escaping the racetrack, going to the US, everyone thinking how lucky the dog was, and now THIS!???? WTF? WT actual F? Who's that guy even? Was he some sort of Expat in Macau and returned to the US? WTF? WTF??????
Really upset by this new.
