Cantonese Romanization

To：Woozle ＆ Case

－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－
Chinese：

《施氏食獅史》

石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食 十獅。
氏時時適市視獅。
十時，適十獅適市。
是時，適施氏適市。
氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是 十獅逝世。
氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。
石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。
食時，始識是十獅，實十石 獅屍。
試釋是事。

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Romanization：

« Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.

－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－
English：

« Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den »

In a stone den was a poet Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.

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Please remember this is only a drop in the ocean for explaining my viewpoint. BTW, I'm absolutely not Han (漢) nationalism, believe it or not.

> Tionghoa Wed Sep 02, 2009 3:47 am GMT
> Please remember this is only a drop in the ocean for explaining my viewpoint.
> BTW, I'm absolutely not Han (漢) nationalism, believe it or not.

That is very wellcome your viewpoints about the matters of Chinese languages.

I'm believe that you may be not a Han nationalist, you just like to share your viewpoints about the language's problems.

"Tionghoa Wed Sep 02, 2009 3:47 am GMT
"To：Woozle ＆ Case

－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－
Chinese：

《施氏食獅史》

石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食 十獅。
氏時時適市視獅。
十時，適十獅適市。
是時，適施氏適市。
氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是 十獅逝世。
氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。
石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。
食時，始識是十獅，實十石 獅屍。
試釋是事。

－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－



Romanization：

« Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.

－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－
English：

« Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den »

In a stone den was a poet Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.

－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－

Please remember this is only a drop in the ocean for explaining my viewpoint. BTW, I'm absolutely not Han (漢) nationalism, believe it or not. "




Oh, come on, this is Classical Chinese, not Modern Chinese!
Why should we care Classical Chinese? It is only a message, not a language!

"3721 Sun Aug 30, 2009 7:56 am GMT
石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。施氏时时适市视狮。十时，适十狮适市。是时，适施氏适市。氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。石室拭，氏始试食是十狮尸。食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。试释是事。

shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi .........(Can this be written in Romanization or not)? "


Can Classical Chinese be spoken now? Of course Classical Chinese which is not a language can't be romanized!
Now it is the modern day, not in Zhou dynasty.
I suggest you come back to Zhou dynasty by time machine if you enthusiastically love Classical Chinese!

Oh, come on, this is Classical Chinese, not Modern Chinese!
Why should we care Classical Chinese? It is only a message, not a language!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To tell the truth, beyond foreigners' expectations, written and spoken Chinese are not very identical in words and sentences. In written form, plenty of monosyllabic single characters (soul of Chinese) are nearly combined freely to express refined and succinct meanings which might need redundant statement to make them distinctly in spoken Chinese or in western languages. Unconsciously, classical Chinese has actually infiltrated into modern Chinese for centuries, and it's impossible to be wholly removed from written form, even some spoken Chinese, and what's more, the main mission of PinYin is to help learners to master accurate pronunciation and tones, rather than replace characters' writing system, simply because PinYin will be unable to, since it can hardly suit the special features of Chinese languages (Mandarin and modern dialects).

Frankly, I'm not Chinese 漢 (Hàn) nationalist, though I'm gratified to see Chinese characters have been kept using in Sinosphere (Chinese cultural sphere). Obviously many westerners have complained that characters are really hard, they asked righteously why damn characters were still in wide use as official written form, and they impatiently made a subjective judgment that Chinese must be latinized, or Chinese can be latinized, without any confusion, mistakes, embarrassment, and cultural separation. If Chinese were mostly restricted to a beginner's stage such as "hello, good morning, thank you, OK, Bye & etc.", then perhaps Chinese could be latinized, cyrillicized, or whatever else, but the situation of Chinese turns out to be much more complicated, particularly for those beginners who've always insisted that Latinization or PinYin would be a better option in comparison with characters. As a matter of fact, the more you learn Chinese further, the more possible for you to realize that, Latinization is definitely not a feasible solution.

Chinese certainly can be written in pinyin, actually it has already been done that way while it assists westerners in mastering the pronunciation and tones, and Zhùyīn, the traditional style of pinyin, was abolished long ago in Mainland China, though occasionally it's still available in Taiwan. It seems like you feel quite confident about the efficiency and accuracy of pinyin or latinization, I'm afraid that you haven't deeply comprehended how written Chinese exactly functions in a particular way that other languages (including Vietnamese) would never perform. If you once read through some articles written by Chinese famous scholars, you might realize how foolish it is to convert characters completely into pinyin or latinized form, it's really inefficient and ridiculous.

In Chinese, each monosyllabic single character has 5 tones in mandarin (mā, má, mǎ, mà, ma), and even 7 in Cantonese, each character of same tone also has some homophone words (such as tā＝他／她／它／牠／祂／塌／．．．), most of all, each character often needs to combine another or more characters to be a real vocabulary, only at that time, the combination of 2 (at least) or more characters can be called vocabularies, if everybody used Latin or other alphabets in China, 「鼓励、骨力、古历、谷粒、股利」（gǔ lì）, unluckily, they all have the same pronunciation and same tone. Could you tell them apart immediately, without any hesitation based on contexts? Even if you could do that, it took more time and energy to do the same thing which can successfully be well done in shorter time and in less energy. Why do Chinese people have to choose a wrong way and abandon the easiest method? We don't think Characters very hard to learn, except for a few native Chinese who don't want to learn anything, and just like to be lazybones all their lives. Arabic, maybe the most difficult languages, hasn't changed its writing system for those foreign learners, it still uses Arabic Script, and special writing direction (from right to left), but Arabic was, is, and will be always Arabic itself, the foreign learners have to learn original Arabic script.

When Chinese are reading an article, the most effective way is visual reflection, instead of the analysis of polysyllabic vocabulary sound. Chinese characters really and truly play an important role in Chinese languages, it's not only the Classical Latin of China, but also Modern style of China, even a person doesn't want to learn anything about ancient China, he still needs to learn Characters to keep Chinese writing effectively, without any errors and confusion. In daily informal conversation, of course, we can talk to each other in colloquial style, and don't have to read characters, but it only relates to some frequent words which are spoken almost everyday, but if you write Chinese in Latin alphabet, we have to guess what they actually mean based on context, and what’s worse, in spoken Chinese, we also speak some classical idioms in order to emphasize the meanings or make the speech more naturally.

222332 , Now it is the modern day, not in Zhou dynasty.
I suggest you come back to Zhou dynasty by time machine if you enthusiastically love Classical Chinese!


No, classical Chinese is still alive, you can't wipe it out from modern Chinese, it's the truth, whether you like it or not.

I don't know who "doom" is, but I think he's a clever man who supports my viewpoint, thanks, doom. And 222332, 3322, ......or whatever else, please read it carefully.

From ancient China up to now, Classical Chinese has never really died, of course, from 1949, it began to decline increasingly, but it has already integrated into modern Chinese and still play an important role in written Chinese, or even in some spoken Chinese. Nobody ignores this reality but a few foolish trolls.

>>[...]Obviously many westerners have complained that characters are really hard, they asked righteously why damn characters were still in wide use as official written form, and they impatiently made a subjective judgment that Chinese must be latinized, or Chinese can be latinized, without any confusion, mistakes, embarrassment, and cultural separation. If Chinese were mostly restricted to a beginner's stage such as "hello, good morning, thank you, OK, Bye & etc.", then perhaps Chinese could be latinized, cyrillicized, or whatever else, but the situation of Chinese turns out to be much more complicated, particularly for those beginners who've always insisted that Latinization or PinYin would be a better option in comparison with characters. As a matter of fact, the more you learn Chinese further, the more possible for you to realize that, Latinization is definitely not a feasible solution.<<

Therefore, I find it hard NOT to say: they (foreigners that have no knowledge of, to a larger extent, the East Asian languages) just don't understand our culture(s). I had first-hand experiences with foreigners in Germany, where I truly found my language and culture to be rather difficult for them to understand. Nobody actually paid the effort to understand them (I happened to have been in a small town where there are no Chinese learners). But on the other hand, western cultures can be hard to understand too.

>>Chinese certainly can be written in pinyin, actually it has already been done that way while it assists westerners in mastering the pronunciation and tones, and Zhùyīn, the traditional style of pinyin, was abolished long ago in Mainland China, though occasionally it's still available in Taiwan.<<

You may say so, but dictionaries written in mainland China still maintain Zhuyin. Zhuyin and Pinyin largely correspond to each other. You may say it was the effort of the PRC to promote some Latinization... but both are just the same thing in different forms, a phonetic script to help people learn Chinese, Chinese and foreigners alike.

>>In Chinese, each monosyllabic single character has 5 tones in mandarin (mā, má, mǎ, mà, ma), and even 7 in Cantonese<<

No, just 6 in Cantonese but 9 tone contours. Entering tones correspond to 3 among the 6.

=====

Well, well, if you take characters in a more relaxed way... you guys, just think of how you write your names. And how I write my name. My own name may be pronounced in multiple ways according to what kind of Chinese you speak. Xie is just the standard Mandarin for a common surname (lit. thanks/wither, you guys know it, don't you). But Latin letters represent NOTHING of me (yes, me).

Or at least, Xie itself refers to how it used to be written, and is still written, by my paternal ancestors many many centuries ago. Just as how most west Europeans won't write their names in the Cyrillic letters, how Russians won't write theirs in the Latin, we Chinese always use characters to represent who we are. Ultimately, Xie also represents millions of Chinese, particularly in the south, who share some far removed kinship with me. They don't need to know the kind of Chinese I speak. Just look at my name, and they know: ah, so pal you're my "namesake" too!

Tionghoa - of what nationalism are you?

Caspian
Tionghoa - of what nationalism are you?

Tionghoa＝「中華」
You don't know? I'm Chinese (native Mandarin speaker).

To Xie:

Cantonese,Minnan and Vietnamese belong to the same linguistic family - Baiyue(百越) language family. So , in fact, they are not Chinese!
They just borrowed so many loan words from Northern Chinese dialects just like English did borrow French in middle age. English doesn't belong to the dialects of the French language although they are over 70 vocabularies directly borrowed from French. So, it doesn't make any sense that Cantonese and Minnan belong to Chinese language family.
Besides, Vietnamese ppl did use Classical Chinese but in 19th century it succeeded in latinizing, so it will successful to make Cantonese romanized.

English- over 70% vocabularies directly borrowed from French
Cantonese and Minnan - about 65% vocabularies directly borrowed from Northern Chinese dialects.

I am just curious that why English can't be French dialect but Cantonese or Minnan should. Why can't English belong to French language family but Cantonese or Minnan do belong to Chinese language family?

To: 55454

Re: no, grammatically, english is very different from french , though they do have a lot of similar borrowed vocabularies. in fact, not only did cantonese and minnanese borrow many loanwords from northern chinese in ancient china, but also it strictly followed up the syntax, grammar, usage and word building of classical chinese, on the whole, we would rather consider both cantonese and minnanese as in chinese family, than simply mistake them for another language family, the original baiyue language had almost died out before baiyue people completely integrated into chinese cultural world, and they mostly identified themselves as in chinese big family. when it comes to vietnamese language, actually I haven't ever learned it by myself, so I won't comment on the relations between chinese and vietnamese based on my subjective viewpoint.

<< Caspian Sat Aug 29, 2009 9:28 pm GMT
1. Why should they adopt a Western alphabet system, when their language is much older than ours, and much more beautiful? >>

Dear Caspian,

Your native speakers of Western languages enjoy the Right of Native Language in Education and Public Media and don't face the so-called Dialects Cleansing, therefore your people don't understand the laments of Southern Chinese speakers.

Although, the Chinese character is very old and much more beautiful. There are two real reasons for Chinese peoples to adopt a Western alphabet script.


1. The Modernization:
Some peoples find that Latinization of Mandarin can modernize the China. Therefore, the May Fourth Movement (New Culture) held in 1910s. Reference:
(http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t12959-165.htm)

In China, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia the Southern Chinese Languages were all defined as the Dialects of Chinese and only Mandarin is definded as the standard form of Chinese. Then, the governments promote the policy of Mandarinization (推廣 "國語 / 普通話") and Dialects Cleansing (消滅方言).

In that policy which banned Spoken Sinitics and Written Sinitics teaching at schools in China, and Taiwan from 1950s, Singapore and Malaysia from 1970s, to present day. Which also banned the public media to adopt Sinitics either the spoken languages or written languages.

Modernization's points:
- Chinese is a single Language.
- Chinese is include some dialects; Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Hakka, Min, Gan, Xiang etc. (political viewpoint)
- Mandarin is the standard form of Chinese.
- only Mandarin (standard form) has the right to have Written Form.
- ban the printing books in Written Sinitics which were all existing in Christian churches before 1950s.
- ban the so-called Chinese dialects in Spoken Form and Written Form teaching in schools and using in public media.
- promote the nationalism.
(single Mandarin language and culture)


2. The Protection of Dialects: (保護方言)
The so-called Dialects' Speakers find that Latinization of Southern Chinese Languages can escape the suppression from the Movement of Mandarinization and Dialects Cleansing.

Every kinds of Written Sinitics in Chinese character script are only expressed in "meanings". Because Written Sinitics in Latin alphabet script can be expressed in "native sound" (native pronunciation) of every Sinitic languages, thus native speakers of Sinitics find that the Written Sinitics in Latin script can help them to preserve their native languages, and provide a non school's ways, unofficial platform of education; a function of teaching in native language for their next coming generations.

Protection of Dialects' points:
- Chinese is a Sinitic Group.
- Chinese is include some Sinitic languages; Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Hakka, Min, Gan, Xiang etc. (linguistic viewpoint)
- Mandarin is only a language of Sinitics.
- all Sinitics have the right to have Written Form.
- allow the printing books in Written Sinitics which were all existing in Christian churches before 1950s.
- allow the Sinitics in Spoken Form and Written Form teaching in schools and using in public media.
- promote the patriotism.
(multi Chinese languages and cultures)

> Tionghoa Fri Sep 04, 2009 8:04 am GMT
From ancient China up to now, Classical Chinese has never really died, of course, from 1949, it began to decline increasingly, but it has already integrated into modern Chinese and still play an important role in written Chinese, or even in some spoken Chinese. Nobody ignores this reality but a few foolish trolls. <

In the present time, no any people knows the pronunciation of Classical Chinese because the Chinese character is not expressed in the form of alphabetic script, which is just a set of logograms and any nationality can borrow these logograms for their language to use in written form.

So, the Classical Chinese as a language is really died. But, as a code system and which can be understanded that the Classical Chinese is never died.