I believe (I may be talking <deleted>) that all Chinese people can read the Chinese characters written on a page and it will make sense and mean the same thing to all of them yet if they speak those same characters they will only make sense to those who speak the same dialect. I googled it and wikid it (apparently there are 13 dialects of the spoken Chinese language) but I'm no better of than when I started. In English a hat is a hat no matter how you pronounce it. Can someone explain to me how Chinese works please?

Sorry I cant mate but this always tickles my funny bone.

My take on it is that Chinese characters are actually little pictures.

For instance if we wrote with pictures an Albanian would recognise a pig but not the English word for it. (Unless he could read English).

I read somewhere that Japanese characters can actually be read by Chinese people.

its all in the numbers

23 - Chicken Chow Mein

56 - Egg Fried Rice

58 - Prawn Crackers

61 - Roast Duck with Hong Kong Sauce....

See , Easy, you just need a Chineese Takeway Menu and you have it

Try googling "ideogram" and you might find what you're looking for. The Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideogram ) article is brief but enlightening.

/ Priceless

PS I prefer Boater's approach, though

There is no "chinese language" It is a many languages all using the same characters to read and write. Characters do not represent sounds, they are not an alphabet. They are pictographs representing ideas and things. These are totally different words depending on which language is spoken.

For example: the word for country in Mandarin is guo jia and is written the same in mainland China all over as well as Taiwan (Mao screwed around with the pictographs so Taiwan still uses the old words, China something else)

See this:

he Mandarin Chinese word for “country” or “nation” is ►guó jiā. This is made up of two characters: 國家. The first character 國 (guó) means "country,” or “state” and the second character 家 (jiā) means “home,” or “family.”

The single character 國 (guó) can be used when referring to countries, but guó jiā seems to emphasize that a country is also a homeland where family is found.

Now, if you look at the character for guo it has the pictograph for man, field, and sword. Basically saying a country is made of up people, farms and soldiers.

The same written word is used in Cantonese, but the spoken word is "gwok"

Why do so many Chinese people live in Harrow?

Because they all get of the plane at Heathrow and say "Harrow taxi driver" to the cabbie

........................

Jokes about the Chinese are ok, apparently, because they have a bad history of human rights.

My take on it is that Chinese characters are actually little pictures.

For instance if we wrote with pictures an Albanian would recognise a pig but not the English word for it. (Unless he could read English).

I read somewhere that Japanese characters can actually be read by Chinese people.

I have gained that impression through recent research into the Chinese and Japanese characters for "New Zealand" and a few other words.

I was quite suprised because I can tell at a glance if a sign or bottle label is Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc, because to my eyes, they are very different (even though I am totally illiterate in those languages).

To my eyes, Thai and Cambodian are simmilar, but definitely different....but then, I have begun learning to read Thai.......I guess to some people they would be just the same load of squiggles.

Japanese is made up of Chinese characters and two others. Chinese characters are called kanji, the modified characters that are more simple are called hiragana and katakana, but much of Japanese is made up from Chinese characters.

but who are the best looking girls

Japenesse or Chinese ?

Sorry I cant mate but this always tickles my funny bone.

There are two types of characters ( just to complicate matters)............Up North they use "simplified" characters which some down Sarf, can't read.

but who are the best looking girls

Japenesse or Chinese ?

I guess that would depend on what you consider to be Chinese.

There are two types of characters ( just to complicate matters)............Up North they use "simplified" characters which some down Sarf, can't read.

Actually Mao implemented simplified characters during his rule, also switched from the Wade Giles system of romanization to pinyin. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau still use the traditional characters but I do not believe its use is widespread on the mainland.

It's all Greek to me

So they made up a writing system and then decided to pronounce the characters differently depending on where they lived? I thought they were supposed to be clever?

So they made up a writing system and then decided to pronounce the characters differently depending on where they lived? I thought they were supposed to be clever?

No, I think it's as Sceagudenga says.... the writing system is pictorial, so each written "word" represents a concept rather than a collection of phonetic sounds. Those concepts are verbalised in different dialects with different sounds.

So they made up a writing system and then decided to pronounce the characters differently depending on where they lived? I thought they were supposed to be clever?

No, I think it's as Sceagudenga says.... the writing system is pictorial, so each written "word" represents a concept rather than a collection of phonetic sounds. Those concepts are verbalised in different dialects with different sounds.

As I said...

There are two types of characters ( just to complicate matters)............Up North they use "simplified" characters which some down Sarf, can't read.

There's lots of weird characters up North.

So they made up a writing system and then decided to pronounce the characters differently depending on where they lived? I thought they were supposed to be clever?

It was clever - there were a lot of different languages, spoken by a lot of different tribes.

Some of the main tribes - say Thais and Vietnamese - were driven out by the Han. Others stayed where they were and became subservient to the Han. But in order to unite and unify his conquered territories the first emperor (he of the pottery army)(can't recall his name) introduced the pictogram system of recording the spoken ideas. No matter what language you spoke, you wrote it in the same way.

So messages could be sent across his lands and be understood by all.

If you look at Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, they all have different scripts, none compatible with any other. Probably the people living near the borders can understand their neighbouring country's spoken word, but there is no commonality of speech or script. And then you have the Hmong, the Shan and various other minor ethnicities - different again. The Chinese have a sense of homogeneity (sp?) through their script. Thus is a nation founded.

There are two types of characters ( just to complicate matters)............Up North they use "simplified" characters which some down Sarf, can't read.

There's lots of weird characters up North.

Oi! There's nowt wrong with us!

So they made up a writing system and then decided to pronounce the characters differently depending on where they lived? I thought they were supposed to be clever?

It was clever - there were a lot of different languages, spoken by a lot of different tribes.

Some of the main tribes - say Thais and Vietnamese - were driven out by the Han. Others stayed where they were and became subservient to the Han. But in order to unite and unify his conquered territories the first emperor (he of the pottery army)(can't recall his name) introduced the pictogram system of recording the spoken ideas. No matter what language you spoke, you wrote it in the same way.

So messages could be sent across his lands and be understood by all.

If you look at Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, they all have different scripts, none compatible with any other. Probably the people living near the borders can understand their neighbouring country's spoken word, but there is no commonality of speech or script. And then you have the Hmong, the Shan and various other minor ethnicities - different again. The Chinese have a sense of homogeneity (sp?) through their script. Thus is a nation founded.

Cheers Humph.