Video: The BIGGEST Advantage of Mandarin Chinese

[kankan326]

Will Mandarin become world language due to this advantage?

 

[kankan326]

Chinese is the language for human being's future. Chinese vocabulary is stable meanwhile English vocabulary is becoming bigger and bigger. People from different professional background can communitcate and exchange ideas with Chinese while English speakers can not.

Chinese characters can be recognized at first glimpse. Chinese video websites have "flying comments" (as below picture shows) function, which can never been seen in English videos.

 

[Song Hong]

Chinese is the language for human being's future. Chinese vocabulary is stable meanwhile English vocabulary is becoming bigger and bigger. People from different professional background can communitcate and exchange ideas with Chinese while English speakers can not.

Chinese characters can be recognized at first glimpse. Chinese video websites have "flying comments" (as below picture shows) function, which can never been seen in English videos.

View attachment 909275

Chinese character meaning is quite stable while phonetics changes rapidly. You can have Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and Chinese pronuncing the same character with different but related phonetics.

 

[REhorror]

Chinese is the language for human being's future. Chinese vocabulary is stable meanwhile English vocabulary is becoming bigger and bigger. People from different professional background can communitcate and exchange ideas with Chinese while English speakers can not.

Chinese characters can be recognized at first glimpse. Chinese video websites have "flying comments" (as below picture shows) function, which can never been seen in English videos.

View attachment 909275

This flying comment style, it is originally from Nico Nico Douga, a japanese Video website.

EDIT: Hmmm, I watch the video, and from his point, Vietnamese can in fact be better than Mandarin, because it essentially uses the same concept, but just in Latin characters, which are easier to write and remember than Chinese characters.

 

[etylo]

Its easier to learn English writing in the beginning, but after passing the initial rudimentary stage of learning, its easier to learn Chinese writing system to be at good and adept level. Many Chinese writings of words and phrases are self explanatory and can be easily understood. One only has to learn 2k to 3k Chinese characters to be proficient in everyday reading and writing Chinese.

 

[Mista]

Will Mandarin become world language due to this advantage?

Realistically, no. More people will learn Chinese, but English will remain the dominant lingua franca for the foreseeable future and will only get more dominant due to network effects.

 

[kankan326]

This flying comment style, it is originally from Nico Nico Douga, a japanese Video website.

EDIT: Hmmm, I watch the video, and from his point, Vietnamese can in fact be better than Mandarin, because it essentially uses the same concept, but just in Latin characters, which are easier to write and remember than Chinese characters.

One thing the video author didn't mention. Each of Chinese character has its meaning(s), in most cases more than one meaning. It is very easy to make characters combinations to form all words. For example, "电“ means "electricity". It can combine with other characters to form all words related with "electricity". Phone, computer, TV etc. I don't understand Vietnamese so I'm not qualified to judge Vietnamese. But I know alphabetic words can not be freely combined with each other. Alphabetic words combinations are either too long or hard to read because of too many homophones.

 

[REhorror]

One thing the video author didn't mention. Each of Chinese character has its meaning(s), in most cases more than one meaning. It is very easy to make characters combinations to form all words. For example, "电“ means "electricity". It can combine with other characters to form all words related with "electricity". Phone, computer, TV etc. I don't understand Vietnamese so I'm not qualified to judge Vietnamese. But I know alphabetic words can not be freely combined with each other. Alphabetic words combinations are either too long or hard to read because of too many homophones.

That's true for latin alphabet to man, you can combine the letters into different words, then combine them together.
For example, In Vietnamese, computer is translated to "máy tính", "máy" means machine, "tính" means calculation.
For washing machine, we can still reuse the "máy", just add "giặt" (washing).

 

[kankan326]

That's true for latin alphabet to man, you can combine the letters into different words, then combine them together.
For example, In Vietnamese, computer is translated to "máy tính", "máy" means machine, "tính" means calculation.
For washing machine, we can still reuse the "máy", just add "giặt" (washing).

If Vietnamese words don't have many syllables as you showed, I guess Vietnamese must have homophones problem. Like Korean does. Am I right?

 

[REhorror]

If Vietnamese words don't have many syllables as you showed, I guess Vietnamese must have homophones problem. Like Korean does. Am I right?

Yep, a word can have different meaning, and have homophones.
This is common issue in language, man.

 

[kankan326]

Yep, a word can have different meaning, and have homophones.
This is common issue in language, man.

That is what I said. Alphabetic words from multi-syllables languages(e.g English) can not be freely combined because it would be too long. Alphabetic words from one or two syllables languages have homophones problem. That's why Vietnamese doesn't have Chinese advantage.

 

[REhorror]

That is what I said. Alphabetic words from multi-syllables languages(e.g English) can not be freely combined because it would be too long. Alphabetic words from one or two syllables languages have homophones problem. That's why Vietnamese doesn't have Chinese advantage.

Yeah, except it's much quicker to write the long words in latin though.
And you can just also acronym it, like Hồ Chí Minh became HCM.

About homophone, it's not a problem if you know the context.

 

[kankan326]

Yeah, except it's much quicker to write the long words in latin though.
And you can just also acronym it, like Hồ Chí Minh became HCM.

This is another problem for alphabetic languages. No one knows what HCM means without explanation. Chinese also has abbreviations. For example, 发展改革委员会---发改委. People can easily figure out what 发改委 means because the 3 characters tell all.

 

[REhorror]

This is another problem for alphabetic languages. No one knows what HCM means without explanation. Chinese also has abbreviations. For example, 发展改革委员会---发改委. People can easily figure out what 发改委 means because the 3 characters tell all.

I mean, all we have to do is Hồ Chí Minh (HCM) at the beginning and that's it.

 

[Mista]

It's just a feature of the language. I don't really see it as an advantage whatsoever.

Trying to spin that as an advantage which could lead Mandarin to be the world's lingua franca and the future of human language seems like hopium addiction.

This is another problem for alphabetic languages. No one knows what HCM means without explanation. Chinese also has abbreviations. For example, 发展改革委员会---发改委. People can easily figure out what 发改委 means because the 3 characters tell all.

Lolwut?