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Adult learner here. My friends and I were talking about perfume and I guessed the word for perfume in Chinese: 香水 (fragrant water), since it makes perfect sense. My friends were so impressed about my guessing ability. But they didn't think the way I was thinking as someone who needed to learn from scratch and see how "simple" the words are made up. You can't do this in English!

There are countless words with similar pronunciation and tone in Chinese spoken language. The solution is to use up ALL Chinese spoken language (dialect, regional, local, etc) to acquire as much as possible all the different sound, and incorporate into all the written language. Hopefully Chinese language will contain all possible sound an average human vocal can produce.

12:15 but again these are all just my pinyins

Is Gboard safe? I get a warning that what you type can be recorded

Putonghua: conquers all of the Chinese languages Rural Putonghua variations: split off and become unintelligible Putonghua: But fr though I can’t understand many rural dialects, though it seems that the young here I understand more, more like the national language.

In this case, there is a striking similarity between China and India. In India, too, our largest spoken language and official language of Union, i.e., Hindi also spread like Mandarin and today it is spoken all over Northern, Central and parts of eastern and Western India, today these regions are called Hindi belt but in reality these reasons have dozens of mutually intelligible local vernaculars with their hundreds of varieties and accents. Today, almost all regional speeches of Hindi belt like Awadhi, Braj, Haryanavi, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Bundeli, Magahi, Marawari, Bagari, Pahari etc, all are considered as dialect of Standard Hindi.

Where's 阮

I'm Filipino, some words in Filipino are same as Hokkien/Fokkien. but I watch a lot o Cantonese / Hong Kong movies.

你的中文真的很好 如果你不说你是abc的话我几乎听不出来你不是国内出生长大的

SORRY IF I WRITE IN UPPER CASE, BUT I HAVE SERIOUS PROBLEMS SEEING PROPERLY WITH MY EYES. I DO NOT DO ET OUT OF ANGER OR TO SHOUT! NOW, AS A WESTERNER LEARNING THE CHINESE LANGUAGE, I DISAGREE WITH YOU TOTALLY! I THINK, THAT IT IS A WONDERFUL SYSTEM AND ALTHOUGH QUITE CHALLENGING FOR MEMORY, UNLESS PRACTISED REGULARLY, IT REPRESENTS MOSTLY WHAT WORDS MEAN, THUS ALSO HELPS US FOR WORD MEMORY RETENTION. NOW, THE PROBLEM IS THE PRONUNCIATION, NOT THE WRITING SYSTEM! TONE LANGUAGES ARE REALLY VERY HARD TO LEARN BECAUSE THE SAME SOUND CAN CARRY SEVERAL MEANINGS WITH EXACTLY THE SAME PRONOUNCIATION AND SOME HAVE HUNDREDS OF THEM! BUT FOR THAT! CHINESE IS ACTUALLY MUCH SIMPLER THAN ENGLISH OR FRENCH, WITH THEIR MULTISYLLABIC WORD STRUCTURES AND COMPLICATED VERBAL SYSTEMS AND ACTUALLY THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH IS ALSO QUITE DIFFICULT TO LEARN AND ITS SPELLING HAS BEEN CRITICIZED TIME AND AGAIN BY ENGLISH NATIVE TEACHERS ALL THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF THAT LANGUAGE! JUST TO CONCLUDE, THE MERE FACT, THAT THE CHINESE CHARACTERS ARE COMPOSED OF MAINLY CHINESE GRAPHIC AND PHONETIC ROOTS COMBINATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS MAKE IT ACTUALLY AS INTERESTING AND EASY TO LEARN AS IN GERMAN, WHICH SPORTS SIMILAR FEATURES IN ITS WORD BUILDING MORPHOLOGY AND IT IS MUCH EASIER TO LEARN BECAUSE OF THAT THAN ENGLISH, THAT HAS ROOTS AND WORDS COMING FROM SEVERAL LANGUAGES, MAINLY OLD FRENCH, OLD ENGLISH, GREEK, LATIN AND SO MANY OTHERS. ONE CAN EASILY SEE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ALL CHARACTERS FOR WOMAN, MAN, VEHICLE, ETC. IN CHINESE, BUT NOT IN ENGLISH BETWEEN WOMAN AND FEMALE, LADY AND DAME, ETC. OR GENTLEMAN, SQUIRE AND LORD, ETC. CAR, TRUCK AND TRAIN, ETC. WHEREAS, ONE SEES IMMEDIATELY HOW HUOCHE, KACHE AND QICHE ARE RELATED AN UNDENIABLE ADVANTAGE FOR ANY LEARNER OF CHINESE, NON EXISTENT IN ENGLISH, MAKING IT, UNLIKE WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK, MUCH EASIER TO LEARN THAN SHAKESPEARE LANGUAGE AND IF IT WERE NOT THE LANGUAGE OF MONEY AND POWER, NOBODY WOULD REALLY WANT TO LEARN IT, WOULD THEY! AND LAST, BUT NOT LEAST...READING AND WRITING IN CHINESE IS ALSO A HIGHLY AESTHETIC PLEASURE BECAUSE OF THE GREAT BEAUTY AND HISTORY BEHIND EACH CHINESE CHARACTER! AND IN OUR NEW ERA OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND SUPER POWERFUL INTERNET AND COMPUTERS, MANDARIN CHINESE IS ACTUALLY AN EXTRAORDINARY TOOL FOR PROGRAMMERS BECAUSE MADE OF THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF SMALL UNITS, COMBINED AND RECOMBINED! I LOVE THE CHINESE SYSTEM AND WISHED I HAD LEARNT IT WHEN I WAS A CHILD, BUT EVEN NOW, NEARING 70, I AM GLAD TO BE ABLE TO READ IT AND TO UNDERSTAND PERFECTLY HOW TO WORK WITH IT, EVEN THOUGH I DO NOT USE IT ENOUGH TO BE ABLE TO USE IT FAST AND RELIABLY TO WRITE IT AND OF COURSE, I ALSO TEND TO FORGET CHARACTERS AND THEIR MEANINGS QUICKLY, BUT...WELL...THIS IS BECAUSE OF LACK OF PRACTICE AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH FLAWS IN THAT SYSTEM. IT IS ACTUALLY AN EXTREMELY CLEVER SYSTEM! I AM A NATIVE SPEAKER AND TEACHER OF FRENCH AND ALSO KNOW THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE EXTREMELY WELL, NEARLY LIKE FRENCH, BUT I LOVE THE CHINESE LANGUAGE AND ACTUALLY ADORE IT! NOW AND JUST TO CONCLUDE ABOUT WHAT I HAVE JUST SAID, HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO READ ANY NEW ENGLISH WORD THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW AT ALL, ACCORDING TO ITS SPELLING? I BET THAT YOU FELT MISERABLY AND THE SAME IN FRENCH WITH WORDS LIKE ''EAU''...3 LETTERS FOR ONE SOUND?! WELL...I HAVE A GREAT TEST FOR YOU : WITHOUT LISTENING TO THE VIDEO FIRST, PLEASE TRY TO READ THIS VERY FAMOUS POEM ABOUT HOW ABSURD THE ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AND ITS WRITING SYSTEM ARE : ua-cam.com/video/1edPxKqiptw/v-deo.htmlsi=o3mWSdAT2H0U_aEI AFTER THAT, YOU MIGHT FIND THE CHINESE WRITING SYSTEM A LOT EASIER THAN THE ENGLIH BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE AND EVEN NATIVE SPEAKERS FAIL THAT TEST! NOW, THIS IS A NATIVE SPEAKER OF AMERICAN ENGLISH, BUT JUST TRY TO READ IT IN BRITISH, AUSTRALIAN, WESTERN AFRICAN OR INDIAN ENGLISH, ETC....SEE THE HURDLES? IT IS EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM AS IN CHINESE WITH SO MANY DIALECTS! YOU WILL SOON UNDERSTAND WHY MOST NON NATIVE SPEAKERS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEVER ACTUALLY MANAGE TO PRONOUNCE IT CORRECTLY AND HAVE SO MANY DIFFICULTIES LEARNING IT AND WHAT ABOUT THE STRESS PATTERN OF ENGLISH WORDS AND SENTENCES...AN ORDEAL TO LEARN FOR ANY LEARNER! AND IF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS THE MOST LEARNT IN THE WORLD, IT IS NOT BECAUSE IT IS EASY AT ALL,, BUT BECAUSE PEOPLE ALWAYS THINK OF MAKING MONEY THROUGH ITS USE AND BECAUSE OF THE POWER OF ENGLISH SPEAKING NATIONS, WHICH IS ABOUT TO CHANGE RIGHT NOW SINCE ALL ANGLO-SAXON COUNTRIES ARE IN TOTAL DECLINE ECONOMICALLY AND ECONOMIC COLLAPSE, WHEREAS CHINA IS ON ITS RISE TOWARDS WORLD LEADERSHIP AND PROMINENCE! LOVE AND TAKE CARE!

愛

Because of Mandarin. Manchu becomes an endangered language and soon it will become extinct.

How was Chinese dynasty back then unified n spoke to each other when theres so many diff Chinese dialects? Just wondering

Thank you for the translation of this 夜空中最亮的星 song.

Actually 瞭is了in taiwan traditional chinese

A runout rat who doesnt even know the map first talks about culture now, just like ABC starts with the "A", who makes u qualified? just cuz u self-claiming "C"?

Mongolia in china taiwan is land china

3:32 boy, it was Stalin who told Mao to not change their script,

Randomly came across this video and did not expect to be this fascinated by it. Honestly never thought about the origins of jianti my whole life as, probably because I grew up with it and am so used to it that I've never stopped to question it much lol. But after watching this armed with the ability to read both jianti and fanti, suddenly so many things make sense (besides the last part with the 又s where nothing makes sense, but guess what, it never occured to me how random 又 is before watching this video. Thanks for making this, makes me appreciate our culture more!

China wouldn't be china if china hadn't united linguistically, india is only starting on said path...thats the difference between china and india...even today.

Wonder how Chinese got dictionary because without it writing is useless but back then bet very rare n expensive like 60 years ago alone? Alphabet writing without dictionary we still can understand due from make sound from writing then we know what it said so speak. Spoken language base on sound too that's how we can understand so writing must be about sound alone too.

Thanks! I'm Indonesian from Javanese ethnic. In mid-90s, when I was interested to Romance of Three Kingdom due to the popular strategy computer games, I struggled with the names spelling. The game used Pinyin. The newest book I read in bookstore used Wade Gilles spelling. However, the book in my family collection had the names in Hokkien. So I have to pair each names from Hokkien to Mandarin. Until the late of 90s, the Wuxia drama in Indonesian TV used Hokkien names. The series were dubbed from Cantonese to Indonesian. However, in 2000s, the Indonesian dubbed wuxia series started to use Mandarin names. Even today, among Indonesia fans of Wuxia genre, we still debate which one we prefer, the Hokkien names or the Mandarin names.

I find it really ironic to watch a video about the standardization of Mandarin, made by someone, who's pronunciation is often quite far off from the standard one :') (very interesting video though, thx!)

Cuz the Chinese word is complex and have same sounds to pronounciate many words, such as丝，斯，撕 both of them sounds sī.

The advantage of a phonetic system is that it can pass down an element of spoken language to future generations and the advantage of the symbol idea system was that people could communicate across different languages like Mandarin and Cantonese. For a multi-ethnic country like China with a number of languages the symbol version has a greater advantage. That being said complex ideas/concepts/object are constructed of simple ones by teaching just a few simple characters and the rules for combining them you can simplify the teaching of a system while allowing a degree of freedom of expression.

I will say my two counterarguments to this, although you may discount one because it does not directly related to Chinese. 1. I actually know a coworker who is learning Japanese and he says that between katakana, hiragana, and kanji, he actually prefers kanji because it is a lot more compact. I imagine if you had a more simplified/latinized/alphabetic writing system, it could potentially be like katakana or hiragana. 2. With regards to pinyin being easier, actually, for my parents who moved here during the 70s-80s, pinyin is not intuitive to them, and a lot of the time (although less now over time), they will ask me what the pinyin is for Chinese characters/phrases. They are able to visualize phrases or characters in their head, but they do not associate it with pinyin. So pinyin very much is a system that you have to learn.

While 二简字 or secondly reduced characters that would have been more latinized was doomed to fail, on a long enough timeframe, I could see them have potentially succeeded like katakana, hiragana, or Hangul. Although I guess to play my own devil’s advocate, it’s possible that Japanese and Korean only came up with those writing systems to differentiate themselves from traditional Chinese. It’s also very possible that Chinese would never feel that urge to be differentiated from something else, and at most over time, maybe some characters were slowly trickled and simplified.

8:09 thanks for the explanation regarding semantic and 8:22 for the phonetic portion

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The old chinese charcter used in japan are the most beautiful

I refuse to use simplified

I am Chinese, grow up in Shanghai, I am support that everyone should learn and speak mandarin, because one nation one language can make this nation united and not split.

Very informative. Thanks for another high quality video.

0:27 That was Soviet Union not russia

A few facts: 1. Surely Chinese characters are barely phonetic now, but they used to be phonetic, though not completely so: over 2000 years ago, characters sharing the same root used to have quite similar sounds, and they’re said to be in one phonetic series by linguists studying Old Chinese. Since nearly all Old Chinese words have only one syllable, the ancient Chinese chose to record their sounds not faithfully but only roughly, along with a hint for their meanings. You can check this out in Wiktionary, which gives common conjectural reconstructions for what the characters used to sound. It’s just that after 2000+ years all the modern Chinese varieties have diverged drastically from Old Chinese, making the writing system not phonetic. It’s like how English learners often find English spelling chaotic: in English, the letters a,e,i,o,u used to be pronounced as how Spanish pronounce these letters, either long or short, but after 500 years the long vowels changed to the current English callings of the letters a,e,i,o,u, while the short vowels do not diverge that much. Also there are some random sound changes that for example left the letter o in one, bone, and done with three different pronunciations . 2. 秦始皇 or his officials didn’t make up 小篆 from scratch. Before his writing system reform, different regions of China used slightly different writings for characters due to 400 years’ separation, which was similar to 异体字 but to a much greater extent. What 秦始皇 did was roughly standardizing and unifying the writing of characters, giving the so-called 小篆. 3. Therefore, for the writing system of modern Chinese, the choice of 汉字 over pinyin is in fact the choice to try better incorporating all Chinese varieties (that are descendants of Old Chinese according to which the characters were invented), to maintain more connection with ancient texts, and to make etymology clearer. With pinyin it wouldn’t be possible to directly teach average high schoolers ancient texts, and it wouldn’t be that easy for people to trace the etymology of hundreds of 成语 that are still in every day use while having an underlying story that happened or was told over 2000 years ago. Surely it’s not the most efficient choice from the sole perspective of modern standard Chinese speakers, but it is still in other perspectives practical.

I think these characters are hard to learn. I woud rather like Korean Hangul. ❤

i thought physical culture can still be preserved, but language should be changed as it will bring a lot more benefits than not in a country that is big. I see it same as the unifying of the chinese alphabets, the benefits siimply outweigh the downsides

There are children in Southern China that don't speak their parents language of Cantonese

我是中国的少数民族（苗），说苗语，普通话，当地方言（类似四川话），由于在武汉读书认识全国各地的同学，有的同学方言能听懂一些，有的就完全听不懂也蛮有趣的。

you are not yangyang😅

I can show you my video

I am really in Dubai

You hurry up and get plastic surgery to look like Sid.

中文简化还是保留其单字表意形式，其实是更利于书写的。

very well researched. good job

"When they nearly killed Chinese".... What a stupid title from idiot conclusion. Yes the origin character of Chinese words are incredibly gorgeous.... But the reason to simplify it not bcoz of intention to kill Chinese language characters, it simply want to make it easier to be implement in daily uses and to make it easier to learn esp for Chinese who grown up in foreign countries that don't have Chinese curriculum in their school... Like me , Indonesian Chinese that can only learn Chinese how to read n write thru home education that end up failed. I finally decided to only concentrate in oral speaking only. And simplify traditional character not happened in china only.... Koreans and japanese also did the simplifying traditional character (Chinese) into the new Koreans , Japan today character that used. But the most important thing is that government still hold and maintain the study of traditional Chinese language/ character that available for everyone that interested in it.

As a chinese learner, using monosyllabic words is difficult because it's much harder to understand. If I look up a translation and it's just one syllable then I look up a 2 syllable variant of it. Especially since my tones aren't perfect.

这是针对现今 白话。 古文言文 单词运用可多了 来而不往 非礼也 有朋远方来不亦悦乎！ 视而不见。 有眼无珠。 怒发冲冠为红颜！ 道非道 非常道， 名非名 非常名。 举一而不反三 吾不教也。 孺子可教也。 教无类。 听其言 观其行。 君无戏言。 伴君如伴虎。解铃还需系铃人。 一问三不知。 三人成虎。 逢场作戏。 游戏人间。 枯藤老树昏鸦 小桥流水人家 古道西风瘦马 断肠人在天涯 （all nouns no verb one adverb)

You can tell me whatever you want, I think that in time pinyin is going to win over the current writing system in the long run. And something similar is going to happen in Japan as well.