Comments by "神州 Shenzhou" (@Shenzhou.) on "NativLang"
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As a spoken language, most words have only 1 or 2 syllables (sounds) so you can cram lots of words into a certain sound limit (i.e. How many ideas can you express in a 8-syllable limit in English? You can probably squeeze in more words in Mandarin or Cantonese)
As a written language, complex words occupy roughly the same space as simple words. So if you're getting a tattoo, the word " 智 " is more space efficient than "Wisdom" (although getting a tattoo is not wise!)
Chengyu (成语) are 4-character idioms that compress an entire story into a few words. For example, 井底之蛙 means the frog at the bottom of a well, which refers to someone who ignorant of anything aside from the world of their own.
However, in terms of writing speed, Chinese characters tend to suffer because of their complexity. For example, the Chinese word for police is 警察 which has 34 strokes in total, so yeah, it's a pain to write.
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If you compare Japanese to English then
Hiragana is like lower-case alphabets ( a, b, c ... x, y, z). Basic form.
Katakana is like upper-case alphabets (A, B, C ... X,Y,Z). For foreign words.
And Kanji is all those symbols, emoticons, abbreviations; LOL, OMG, ;), &, $, ♂, etc
So if you apply Japanese sentence structures to English you will get this:
2day, I met this HAWT ♀! & I was like (0_0)? OMG I'm so GONNA ask her 4 her phone #! LOL JKJK ;) Anyway, CYA L8R @ school V(^.^)V & peace out!
Just a little joke guys, don't take it too seriously.
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Kanji and Chinese Characters are visually indistinguishable (although Chinese has some simplified characters) However, the difference lies in how they are pronounced and used. For example in Chinese.
木 -> tree, 爫 -> represents a hand grasping.
So 采 -> Pick up (Hand plucking grass/shrub)
采 is pronounced Cai in Mandarin. Vegetable is also called Cai so they denote using 艹 -> grass to form 菜 -> Vegetable
Kanji also uses.菜 called sai (as in yasai). But because it is borrowed, the history of the word may not be taught.
Here's another example
子 -> Child, 老 -> Old person
So 孝 -> Filial (Old parent supported by Child)
Add in 文 -> culture, we get 教 -> Teach (Elder talking to Child about Culture)
Kanji uses the same characters with almost equal meanings. But the pronunciation is different
Other words are very similar in pronunciation
失敗 -> Failure, Shibai (Mandarin), Shippai (Japanese)
電話 -> Telephone, Dianhua (Mand), Denwa (Jap)
準備 -> Prepare, Zhunbei (Mand), Junbi (Jap)
Bottom line is that learning Chinese radicals (木,爫,子,艹,文) will help to understand why Kanji is written as it is. Suddenly the Kanji becomes less intimidating when you can see the links of its components.
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