Chinese is the most complicated "language". How do they communicate?

Question

Non-phonetic, thousands of characters, indiscernible differences, how do they even communicate? Why has such a rudimentary, neolithic writing system been allowed to continue for so long? Chicken scratch is what it is!

Intelligence is in creating a logical language. Chinese is old, true, but it is not sophisticated. Sophos... Greek is sophisticated.

Answer 1

China is going to be the next world power, they have a billion people, better education and technology, and collective ideology that has made them successful wherever they go. Its already been stated by social scientists that the world may have to learn Chinese instead of English in a 100 yrs

Answer 2

Yes Chinese is a language so those quotations aren't needed. How do they communicate? They speak Chinese!

You know, Chinese ppl could say the same thing about English. They could say with all the rules and exceptions to those rules (and on occasion, the exception to the exception) English is the hardest language. In fact, the could call it a "language" because there are a vast amount of words in the English language that are from or derived from other languages. There is almost nothing in the language that is specifically English aside from slang. On top of that this language has been changed (or "bastardized" as some would say) so much that if someone from the past (who spoke early English) came to the present they might have a hard time understanding their own language cause it's changed so much.

Chinese on the other hand has been around for a VERY long time and (seemingly) hasn't changed all that much.

Answer 3

Sorry you're having such a bad day. English written characters must look like chicken scratch to Chinese people too. They probably think the English language is very rudimentary with only 26 characters -- how can you possibly write down everything you need to say. They have 1000s of characters and people have to study very hard to learn them. And speaking of rudimentary -- America still measures in inches, cups, teaspoons, etc. -- and that's tolerated by the rest of the world. Imagine that!

Answer 4

Do you actually know anything about Chinese? Its very phoentic. It has four different tones like many wetsern languages (/ \ -- \/). Cantonese (used in Hong, Macau and Guangzhou province) has eight ones. Most people in China speak a local language plus Mandarin and English. It has three hundred characters not thousands. The characters are also very logical--they look like what they mean mostly. Japanese has a similar style of writing as do most Asian languages. It is much more expressive and beautiful than Western letters. Asian countries make most of the products western countries use including a lot of complicated electronics that very few westerners have the expertise to make.
Most of the tonal differences are difficult for someone who speaks english to hear right away but once you are used to hearing it its simple. the same for any language. If you aren't used to listening to it it all sounds the same.
Chinese is definitely not the most complicated language. It is very logical and perhaps easier than English. Definitely the grammar is much easier to learn than English, French or Spanish grammar.
I'm not going to tell you how ignorant your question is because I'm sure someone else will handle that. Until you can speak in at least three languages you shouldn't criticize people who can.

Answer 5

Okay, how can you call Chinese 'complicated'?The Chinese people can easily call English complicated, what with all the exceptions to all the main spelling rules, several different pronunciations of the same letter combinations, and the confusing way to pronounce the words.

But, that's besides the point. If you look really carefully, a little less then half of the Chinese characters look like the real thing. For example, the character 木, mu, which means 'tree', vaguely resembles a tree. And then there are symbols that show what it means, such as the character 上, shang, which means up. Then the vast majority of the characters made of two parts, one that gives you the 'category' it goes into (like 氵for water-related things, and 釒 for metal-related things). For example, 餃, jiao, dumplings, is made of 飠, shi, food, signaling food; and 交, jiao, for pronunciation.

Answer 6

LMAO...you actually want to benefit extra into the historic previous of China in the previous you should also carry close how they got here to be what it really is at present. For more beneficial than 4000 years, the area you spot on the map as China at present were occupied through 1000's of tribes through dozens of dynasties. The language had lengthy surpassed through 1000's of generations of evolutions. What you spot at present in both simplified or classic writing is a present day progression, a infant in historic time period. similar with the spoken dialects, at the same time as mandarin or "Putonghua" is targeted to be the authentic dialect, there's a dozen different important ones plus many dozens of minority dialects. The written ideograms were traced to 6 important origins of reasoning in the back of the layout. (They prepare this at grade college over there, ought to correctly be you should sit down down in) there's a very prevalent poster or calender that they typically promote round chinese language new 12 months that's coming up in 2 months. that's observed as a "hundred good futune" or "??" that's the single personality "good futune" or "?" written in 100 chosen varieties from chinese language historic previous. and that is no longer even the entire sequence. Admit it, on the time of this writing, 20% on the international's populations continues to be scratching in a unmarried way or yet another, actually. the proper social gathering is taken into consideration in chinese language poetry. they're literal carry close creations fusing paintings, craft, math and phonics. I have no longer all started to go back across yet another language which have a similar complexity in be conscious play. BTW, the chinese language have a nickanme for English too. They call it "hen intestines" or "??" because the hand writing coils round like a pile of stretched out inards.

Answer 7

The older a language is the more sophisicated it becomes. This is a fact. That is partially why English is such an inconsistent language. English is my native language. Before you criticize something you know nothing about you should try to learn a little of it. It takes a lot of work to be able to read and write Chinese ---you should have the intelligence!!!

Answer 8

Dude, I am a French Canadian (white) but i love Chinese. Have you ever lived in an Asian country? I bet you haven't! Chinese characters are very much aesthetic rather than logical- they are almost artisitic. You can see from famous writers' caligraphic styles their emotion and soul. My advice to you: don''t always try to generalize people and culture, because you sound very stupid in the eyes of someone who has seen the world beyond North America. If you must criticize or even make negative comments, go live in Asia first (or simply step outside of your little room, maybe?) before you BS about your prejudiced remarks. At least that will make you sound a little smarter.

Answer 9

Most people say that English is the most difficult language to learn. No other language with our alphabet has 26 different pronunciations of the letter "A". In Chinese ,each character is a word, not a letter.

Answer 10

They communicate very well. There are advantages in using characters instead an alphabet. An alphabet works very well when you have one language, but it doesn't work very well when you have many languages. For example, look at something written in French or German, it makes no sense, but if Europe used characters instead of an alphabet, you would be easily able to understand it. Characters work very well with different languages, provided, of course, they all use the same character system.
Think of China as you would Europe. Europe has many countries, China has 29 provinces; Europe has many languages and so does China. If the European Union puts out a press release, they have to do it in almost one language for each country, when the Chinese government puts out a press release it is sent out in mandarin and it can be read by many people who aren't fluent mandarin speakers.
I'm not sure if your browser renders Chinese characters, but if it does then 他在大学工作 means (literally) "He does University Work" (there are two characters each for "University" and "work").
Addition: In regards to intelligence, I suggest you start learning to use chopsticks. The Chinese measure intelligence by looking at how well you use chopsticks. To difficult? Never mind!

Answer 11

I am Chinese. First of all,I don't think Chinese is the most complicated language. You are just alien to it. English is also difficult for we chinese people.

When you speak your native language,it's just something biologically,pretty easy.
When it comes to writing. It's ture that the characters are more complicated,that's why I come to Yahoo answer in English. Anyway,we can avoid obscure characters when we are writing something. Unfortunately, middleschool in china force all students to take ancient chinese lessons. That's awesome.I will never understand it.

ps:some of your comments showed your ignorance of human civilization.