Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)

From: Comm (no_at_spam.com)
Date: 03/30/05 

Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 01:20:42 GMT

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:4249DE93.1AED@worldnet.att.net...
> Comm wrote:
>>
>> "Lee Sau Dan" <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message
>> news:87d5tiaa7n.fsf@informatik.uni-freiburg.de...
>> >>>>> "Comm" == Comm <no@spam.com> writes:
>>
>> > It's absurd that you define what is "one word" in language A by basing
>> on the writing system of language B.
>>
>> You still fail to grasp the simple idea. Using a total monotone, no
>> emphasis, no modulation of pitch at all, like a B movie robot voice, if I
>> say in English, "I object to that object being in my kitchen," it is
>> perfectly understandable. You can NOT use a monotone in Chinese at
>> all.
>> "Will I be subject to queries involving that subject?" Said with no
>> raised
>> voice to imply question, said in a total monotone like a robot voice - it
>> is
>> STILL understandable in English and clearly understood to be a question.
>> You can NOT do that in Chinese.
>
> Why do you keep pointing this out? Do you feel that this is a flaw in
> the Chinese languages?

Not at all. But apparently someone is EGO PROJECTING that kind of rubbish
when I never implied it at all. I said - I found Chinese to be AWESOME.
>
> Yet somehow it doesn't keep more than a billion people from
> communicating quite successfully.
>
>> Comm> English is not, even if people modulate their speech when
>> Comm> they talk.
>>
>> > You do modulate your speech with more than a dozen vowel sounds.
>>
>> I don't have to modulate anything. I can speak in a robot voice, in
>> fact,
>> one person I know who had throat operation has a machine that makes
>> words.
>> It sounds funny, but it is 100% understandable. There is no emphasis on
>> words, like OBject or obJECT, there is no tone, not even a raised tone to
>> imply it's a question. It's 100% understandable.
>
> What LSD has been trying to get you to understand is that the tones in
> Chinese are exactly as functional as the vowels in English.

Fine and dandy, but the fact still remains that Chinese is a MUSICAL
language - is that better? English can be non-musical, spoken in a dry
monotone. Chinese and English BOTH have functional vowels and consonants.
It's still NOT the same. Chinese word meanings are DEPENDENT on the -
MUSIC - it's almost as if they SING their language. Hence the analogy -
cats SING. Dogs do not. (unless they howl).

>
> Splork. (BTW I don't see what his example "second" is supposed to
> indicate.)

Neither do I - but he's absolutely incapable of seeing HOW different Chinese
is - and as I first said - HOW AWESOME that is to people.
>
>
> Why are you unable to understand that ma1, ma2, ma3, and ma4 are as
> different in Mandarin as bet, bit, bat, beat, and boot are in English?

>From what I'm assuming is meant here, the ma - the M and A are staying the
same - but the TONE is varying. With the words bet bit bat, the vowel is
changing - the words do not need any tone to them. Ma glissando up is not
the same word a ma glissando down, or ma wavering up and down glissandos.
But from what I can see, the consonent and vowel are still pronounced the
same way. Dr. Lu said the same identical word - the consonent and vowel
sound was identical. The TONE was different. They were all different words
in Chinese. So they have consonants, stress, vowels (like all languages)
AND IN ADDITION - TONES. Is that clearer?

If emotional defensiveness is acting up - then I can see WHY people are not
reading the text in front of their faces and mixing things up. I never in a
million years would imagine anyone would think "they sound like cats" would
be insulting - it's NO insult to me if a person says I LOOK like a cat.
What the hell, man - I FREAKING DO. It's a subjective thing the human brain
does. Like Edward G. Robinson looks like a FROG.
> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)
    ... >> on the writing system of language B. ... You can NOT use a monotone in Chinese at ... >> words, like OBject or obJECT, there is no tone, not even a raised tone to ... Chinese and English BOTH have functional vowels and consonants. ...
    (sci.anthropology)
  • Re: A beautiful Gaelic song by Wiliam Ross
    ... The advantage of a phonetic language is of course beyond rubies, ... When speaking English the only rule is that to be understood, ... The Chinese languages, of which there are many, with variations spoken ... Get the tone wrong and you ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • Re: A beautiful Gaelic song by Wiliam Ross
    ... The advantage of a phonetic language is of course beyond rubies, ... When speaking English the only rule is that to be understood, ... The Chinese languages, of which there are many, with variations spoken ... Get the tone wrong and you ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • Re: intrinsic advantage of Latin alphabet over bopomofo (for Chinese)??
    ... system is not usable as a way to write Chinese; it can only be used to ... annotate characters with their phonetic values, ... spoken language as primary, and the written language as derived, has ... for a rising tone, after the syllable, and italics ...
    (sci.lang)
  • For more finance executives, working in China means taking up Mandarin
    ... on a pen and discussing financial terms - in Chinese. ... "Say 'tongji,' " chimes his language teacher, Elena Jiang, crisply ... the era when executives from overseas could rely on ... "An executive can probably get by without speaking Mandarin, ...
    (soc.culture.china)