On 05/23/2011 10:55 AM, Nikola Smolenski wrote: > On 05/23/2011 10:33 AM, Milos Rancic wrote: >>> In Chinese writing a character shows a word, irrespective of how the >>> word is pronounced. So if we would use a Chinese style writing system, >>> you could write [your] [dog] [is] [dead], and a Frenchman would write >>> exactly the same, even though he would pronounce [your] [dog] [is] >>> [dead] as "Votre chien est mort". Thus, different languages might >>> write the same sentence the same in Chinese script. This does not mean >>> that there are no differences - someone who spoke Latin would probably >>> spell this line as [dog] [your] [dead] [is], and perhaps in yet >>> another language this would be immensely crude, and the right thing to >>> say would be "[prepare for bad news] [honorific person] [your] [dog] >>> [is] [not] [alive]", but the mere difference of being in a different >>> language with totally different sounds is not enough to conclude that >>> in Chinese writing the actual written text will be different. >> >> Andre, that's not accurate explanation. Chinese script is not purely >> logographic, but logo-syllabic (or logo-phonetic). There are *phonetic* >> parts inside of the writing system. > > But different Chinese languages will still use the same character for > different but related phonetic component.
That's living process in Chinese languages. While for phonetic transcription of an old word Classical Chinese knowledge is required (or learning pronunciation as-is), it is possible to create a dialectal compound. However, I can just guess is it true or not. And our fellow Chinese Wikimedians could give to us some information regarding that. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
