what impact does the structure of chinese language have on the character of the people?

Question

i read a book years ago on chinese philosophy and the author mentioned something about the pragmatism and earthyness of the chinese was to do with some inate quality of the language...but i never tried to find out any more about this at the time

Answer 1

I am Chinese and I speak and write Mandarin, the official language that educated Chinese people speak and write. This is an important distinction, because in fact, the majority of Chinese people speak dialects (that cannot be written), but are tonal inflections local to a province.

My family came from the Fujian province in China, and our dialect is Hokkien, but you cannot write Hokkien! Nor Cantonese, which is what most people hear Chinese people speal when they visit Hong Kong or Chinatown in London.

The actual structure of Mandarin is very complex and there is no alphabet. Each "word" is represented by a series of characters which were derived from pictures (pictograms). This means that in order to master Mandarin, you need an incredible amount of patience and peseverence, and I think you could carry on learning something new about it till the day you die! There are just so many different combinations of characters and words and phrases.

So yes, I think that learning Mandarin makes the average Chinese person learn how to really apply themselves, and instills in them a great sense of pragmatism. This ability to apply oneself is also apparent in the strong work ethic in most Chinese people.

Worth pointing out too that there exist hundreds of Chinese idioms which are more than just colloqualisms, but are actually mini-philosophies condensed into a few characters. I don't know whether this has led to the development of the grounded and sensible approach that most Chinese people seem to have, or whether the language was in the first place influenced by the cultural mindset of its people. Probably a bit of both.

The Chinese language is also incredibly "clean" with hardly any swear words (not so for the dialects, I could say some things in Hokkien that would make a nudist blush). It is also very respectful of age, which is often equated with wisdom in many idioms, and this is reflected in the amount of respect most Chinese people have for their elders, very visible in the number of extended families living under one roof. Email me if you'd like to know more.

Answer 2

Language and ethnicity are more intertwined than a lot of people give credit for. It is part and parcel of our overall identity. I studied linguistics and philosophy at university, and specialised in semantics which is the meaning of language. The ways people use language, Chinese or not, have a huge impact on the how other people perceive or identify them.

Also remember, in China there are also many regional variations. It is a vast country with many different dialects.
My partner is Oriental and speaks English very well, but we still have some verbal miscommunication now and again. It is cultural.

Answer 3

A fascinating question. I wonder how many people will have a sensible answer for you.
Let me try.
The Chinese language is one of, if not the oldest, in the world. There are so many differing dialects that each one has its own characteristics and this is possibly the most fascinating part of it all.
I haven't been to China but I have visited Hong Kong where I heard people talking Chinese but without being able to understand or decide which dialect they spoke.
There are so many intonations that there just could be a correlation with the sound in a word and the sense of well being or otherwise.
Just my philosophy.

Answer 4

I've been studying Mandarin for the last 3 years. Mandarin is a very logical, heavily structured language.

Take for instance the days of the week - Monday (Moon-Day) is translated to - 'xing qi yi' star period 1.

Months - January is 'yi yue' - 1 month.

This is just a very small example.

Not to mention that every character (as there are no words and alphabet like we have in the west) must be memorised. Each word has a different character which can have anything from 1 to 32 strokes (which must be written in order for the character to be correct). The poor school kids have to spend years just learning and writing characters over and over! As you can imagine all of this memory will undoubtedly affect a persons memory and quite possibly their mathematical ability.

Others things about Mandarin is that the concept of time is quite different - they don't have our complicated - but useful tense system - they just put a time marker before the sentence.

That would be like 'Tomorrow, I go shopping' - instead of 'I will go shopping tomorrow'.

Answer 5

It's a moot point (probably impossible to determine with certainty) whether any given languages DETERMINES or IS DETERMINED BY the character of the people who speak it. Chinese tends to be less direct than, say, English or even the Romance languages (far less use of personal pronouns, etc.), and in dealing with Chinese people you may find it difficult to determine at times whether they are for or against something.

Answer 6

It's not just Chinese. Any language implies a mental structure, a way to think and see the world.
Which one determines the other? (as somebody said above)... I think it probably goes both ways.

That's the beauty of learning other languages. You can't just translate literally (it doesn't work out anyway). You have to learn to think in a different way. It just opens up your mind. Your world gets wider. Isn't it wonderful?!

Answer 7

the only people who may even start to respond to your question (and that very in part using fact the subject count number is amazingly poorly understood) are "overly convoluted psychological dry dessicated" varieties. sometimes one in each and every of them writes some thing lively and readable (benjamin lee whorf is one) yet then they many times unfold all sorts of incorrect information, advertising their specific view and ignoring what others have arise with.

Answer 8

i don't understand it myself!!