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From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Reading Chinese
Message-ID: <329@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Jul-85 09:39:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.329
Posted: Wed Jul 10 09:39:47 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 12:02:08 EDT
References: <255@jenny.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 76

> I  gather  that  although  one can indeed read a written Chinese text out loud
> one's listeners might well not understand one.  This  is  because  Chinese  by
> which  I  mean  Mandarin)  has  a  very limited stock of possible `words' -- I
> think  about  four  thousand.   (Each  `word'  in  Chinese  is   monosyllabic,
> consisting of three elements: an initial,  a final and a tone.  There are four
> tones and some twenty initials,  which suggests about fifty  finals  --  these
> figures seem about right but I can't promise.)  
> 
> As a result a single `word' has many meanings.  According to the Guinness Book
> of Records the  fourth  tone  of  `i'  has  some  eighty  odd  distinguishable
> meanings.  In  spoken  Chinese  the  resulting  ambiguity is often resolved by
> using words in pairs.  Thus `to eat' is (I think) `chao',  but  if  the  thing
> being eaten is not mentioned one says `chao fan' (`fan' means `rice'),  so `to
> eat' is often translated as `to eat  rice';  likewise  `to  read'  is  usually
> translated  as `to read (a) book'.  Furthermore,  it is not uncommon for one's
> listener  to  interject  with  questions  like  `Do  you mean  "chao  fan"  or
> "chao ..."?'.  
> 
> Written  Chinese  tends  to  have a character for each meaning and so does not
> need to qualify words in this way.  Hence the characters on the  page  may  be
> clear  in  meaning,  but  the  sounds  they represent highly ambiguous.   This
> possibility was made stronger by  the  fact  that  conciseness  in  expressing
> one's  thoughts  was  considered  a  great virtue.  Part of the art of Chinese
> poetry lies in expoiting this ambiguity.  One of the problems of  Romanization
> is  in  developing  a new style of writing the language which is less prone to
> ambiguity than the traditional one, without being completely colloquial.

Actually, the situation with Chinese is considerably more complex than this.
While it is true that the number of distinguishable syllables is very
limited (much less than the 3-4 thousand mentioned above - counting tones, 
DeFrancis estimates 1277), it is incorrect to make the equivalence
character=word on which the above article depends.  The vast majority of
Chinese words consist of two syllables.  When written, they are written
with two characters.  While it is true that spoken Chinese is sometimes
ambiguous (so is spoken English, for that matter), it is not as ambiguous as
pictured above.  Ambiguities are normally resolved, as in English, by the
context, although it is true that ambiguities have to be resolved explicitly
more often than in English.  The most common situation in which people ask
for clarification is when trying to associate a syllable with a written
character (as, for example, when transcribing a name).  Also, it is not
uncommon to see someone "writing" a character in the palm of his hand.  But 
it doesn't happen all the time, either.

It is certainly true that Classical Chinese (Wenyan) is very difficult
to understand when spoken.  Partly this is due to the fact that Classical
Chinese *is* basically monosyllabic (which is probably a major source
of the Monosyllabic Myth).  Partly, also, it is due to the
fact that even Chinese must learn Classical as a second language (as
different from modern Chinese as, say, Modern English is from Chaucerian
English).  Yet the ancient Chinese *did* talk to each other, and my 
Classical teacher (who specializes in the development of the Chinese
Language) says that the classics actually record language similar to the
way people spoke in those days.  So it can't have been *that* ambiguous, 
to those that spoke it!

One of the reasons that more recent written Chinese is sometimes hard to
understand when it is read is because the influence of Classical Chinese
on the written language is still very strong.  People love to show off 
their erudition by using constructions and phrases that you never hear
in spoken conversation.  This is even true on the mainland where there
has been a conscious effort to bring the written language closer to the
spoken language.

There is an excellent book by John DeFrancis, *The Chinese Language: Fact 
and Fantasy* (Univ of Hawaii Press, 1984) that discusses the Monosyllabic 
Myth and other issues about Chinese, particularly language reform.  I highly
recommend it.

-- 
"Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from
	religious conviction."  -- Blaise Pascal

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
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