Divided by a common language

[no_name]

That's not what I'm implying. Kids are excellent pattern observers and mimickers.

A person's mind becomes inflexible as he ages.
Just ask yourself who has more tendency to stuck to ideologies and fixed way of doing things - Kids or adults?

Infact alot of brain developments takes place when youngsters learn language. I generally don't really buy the which ethnicity is smarter stuff but if you have to have me offer an explanation on why (as mentioned in a previous thread) east asians tends to have higher IQ scores I would put it down due to the language they learn and general cultural influence.

Which is why I want chinese and even better some traditional chinese to be taught in school and that China should not completely westernise their education.

 

[Tractor]

Not tendency but ways of thinking is what i mentioned above.

 

[CardSharp]

A factor that contributed to the development of chinese characters is the use of a brush as a writing equipment, so you may say part of the characters' form is affected by brush strokes. These then become features of the writing system.

Actually the japanese hiragana characters came from the chinese 'grass script' during the Tang dynasties, when I first saw examples of these work I thought they were made by japanese authors. It is not until later that I found out that it was the other way round.

You can almost draw chinese characters as if they were pictures. In fact despite some people complain about it being an abstract expression the chinese language is not abstracted away like the alphabetical systems used by most languages today.

I was going to agree with you because Chinese calligraphy uses brushes and the western alphabet language descended from linear A and Linear B

but then I realized that the earliest known Chinese writing is actually scratched on to bones and not written using brushes...

 

[Tractor]

That's not what I'm implying. Kids are excellent pattern observers and mimickers.

A person's mind becomes inflexible as he ages.
Just ask yourself who has more tendency to stuck to ideologies and fixed way of doing things - Kids or adults?

Infact alot of brain developments takes place when youngsters learn language. I generally don't really buy the which ethnicity is smarter stuff but if you have to have me offer an explanation on why (as mentioned in a previous thread) east asians tends to have higher IQ scores I would put it down due to the language they learn and general cultural influence.

Which is why I want chinese and even better some traditional chinese to be taught in school and that China should not completely westernise their education.

For sure that east asians tends to have higher IQ scores but as I know the exam was taken by American within US.

 

[no_name]

but then I realized that the earliest known Chinese writing is actually scratched on to bones and not written using brushes...

Which is why they have no where the aesthetic values of later characters, quite stiff and all that. You will find it hard to carve complicated characters on bones easily

 

[Tractor]

Which is why they have no where the aesthetic values of later characters, quite stiff and all that. You will find it hard to carve complicated characters on bones easily

Maybe you can say using complicated characters is a improvement to carve on bone,but it's even harder write complicated characters on papers than write down symbols like western characters or what our ancestors carved on bones.

 

[no_name]

The oracle bone script I think is limited by the number of characters that can be expressed. I think alot of the strokes in chinese characters are to make it easier for writing with brush, that and the fact that it is evolved from the oracle bone system largely determines the present form of chinese characters.

Of course I'm no expert and these are just my opinions.

 

[lcloo]

The beauty of traditional Chinese writings is that it is same as the ancient Chinese writings way back to Qin Dynasty. Qinshihuang standardised the writings by burning scriptures of other Chinese nations so that only Qin version was to be used.

I support that traditional writings should be keep alive, for academic purpose.

 

[CardSharp]

The beauty of traditional Chinese writings is that it is same as the ancient Chinese writings way back to Qin Dynasty. Qinshihuang standardised the writings by burning scriptures of other Chinese nations so that only Qin version was to be used.

I support that traditional writings should be keep alive, for academic purpose.

It is pretty neat that Chinese is the only language where a proficient modern reader can read and understand (somewhat) a text from 2000 years ago. Try giving an English person a text in Old English (700 years ago).

 

[no_name]

Chinese people held their history to high importance, they are not just a set of records but also act as guiding documents and sources for retrospection. This might be a factor why chinese characters are well preserved and passed down without much change.

Other cultures have their bibles and holy text. We just record history and use them.

 

[dingyibvs]

Min Nan hua is popular in Taiwan and Fujian but I still find Mandarin to sound better. But I don't really like the Beijing dialect with the tongue curling thing.

I'm from Beijing and I don't like the Beijing dialect either. The official Mandarin sounds the best IMO.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

I'm from Beijing and I don't like the Beijing dialect either. The official Mandarin sounds the best IMO.

I love the Beijing dialect!

I love the fact that they say "nar" instead of "na li", and they say "zhei ge" instead of "zhe ge". It makes it so unique and interesting.

My native dialect is Cantonese, but I am learning how to speak Mandarin.

Also, I agree with you that Standard Mandarin sounds the best out of all Chinese dialects.

 

[no_name]

Isn't beijing dialect the official dialect, or am I a bit outdated here?

Certainly in alot of histroical films they have people speaking beijing dialect

 

[CardSharp]

Isn't beijing dialect the official dialect, or am I a bit outdated here?

Certainly in alot of histroical films they have people speaking beijing dialect

Standard dialect is based off of Beijing dialect I believe. They are close with differences. What you hear on CCTV is what is the official dialect.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

It is pretty neat that Chinese is the only language where a proficient modern reader can read and understand (somewhat) a text from 2000 years ago. Try giving an English person a text in Old English (700 years ago).

I agree with this.

It's great that we can still read documents that were written thousands of years ago in Traditional characters, by people like Sun Tzu and Lao zi.

Wheras the "Bible" has been translated into SO many different languages... Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Germanic, Old English, etc. and that has happened within a much shorter timespan.

I also like the fact that I can read parts of Japanese sentences, because they use a lot of Kanji, i.e. Han characters. Koreans also used to use a lot of "Hanja" too, but not much nowadays.