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Internet Message Format  |  1993-01-21  |  1.4 KB
  1. Path: sparky!uunet!pipex!demon!cix.compulink.co.uk!petex
  2. Newsgroups: sci.lang
  3. From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
  4. Subject: Re: Bah! to bhaashaa
  5. Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
  6. Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 20:32:00 +0000
  7. Message-ID: <memo.884324@cix.compulink.co.uk>
  8. Sender: usenet@demon.co.uk
  9. Lines: 24
  10.  
  11. In-Reply-To: <1993Jan18.002731.6997@trl.oz.au> jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)
  12.  
  13.  
  14. > I found learning to write Chinese no more difficult than English.
  15. > Perhaps Chinese children are considered to be fluent only when
  16. > in their teens because Chinese teachers insist on decent standards
  17. > of literacy.
  18.  
  19. I don't think fluency is the issue, it's having learnt to recognize and
  20. reproduce 4000+ different characters. The task of learning to write
  21. correctly (i.e. to form the letters correctly) is fairly soon
  22. accomplished in an alphabetic script, and it's the relation of sound
  23. to spelling that's the problem. In Chinese, learning the inventory of
  24. signs is the whole task essentially. The enormous numbers of
  25. homophones must make it difficult too.
  26.  
  27. Peter
  28.  
  29. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  30. Peter Christian                         
  31.   Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  32.   Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
  33. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  34.  
  35.