| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Learning 3 languages or more Thread poster: hfp
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hfp
United States
Local time: 09:51
Spanish to English
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TOPIC STARTER | in Chile for now | May 11, 2008 |
Joan Berglund wrote:
You may have noticed that I only translate FR>EN and not JP>EN. That's because after 3 years of formal study, I still didn't feel ready. I should have done an immersion or internship at that point, but I was still studying for my Biology degree, running two businesses and had a husband and small baby. Which is exactly I say you should go now while the going's good. Now that my son is grown -- and actually just spent a year in Taiwan himself -- I could try again, but my brain might be too old and creaky now. Btw, my cousin, who never studied Japanese formally was translating after a 6 month immersion. I don't know if he was translating well, mind you, but he was working for the Japanese government. He also spent time in Taiwan and studied some Chinese, but I think he was mostly working as a journalist then, I don't think he translated. It's definitely worth asking translators who do both languages what they think of the business.
I just read your profile and am very impressed. In addition to many other accomplishments, you graduated from Harvard with a Biology degree. I think there is a difference in IQ between you and me. At the moment I am enrolled in a two year masters program in linguistics here in Santiago, Chile and I would like to finish it. I just began in March, so I don't plan to run off to China for a few years. At this time my main concern is my education and translation/interpreting skills in Spanish and English, which is why I decided to come down here instead of studying in the US, where I got my undergraduate degree. I majored in Spanish and spent a year in Spain and a month and a half in Mexico, and now I've been in Chile for about 7 months. My experience abroad has helped considerably, but I still feel I have a lot to learn. Before heading to China, I want to make sure my Spanish is flawless and that I am able to translate and interpret perfectly. Once that happens, I want to take on China, or Japan, since Japan seems to be very interesting also. You mentioned that you have a son and had a husband and suggested that I go now while the going's good You are very right. Right now I have no children, wife, or girlfriend so I do have freedom, but I would like to stay here a little while longer. Maybe the Chilean government is hiring
| | | | Spring City (X) 
Local time: 21:51
Chinese to English
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| No, Chinese does not work like that | Mar 14, 2009 |
Marcus Malabad wrote:
So to answer your question of whether you would have trouble learning Chinese at such a late stage, it all boils down to skill, a good ear and perseverance. The first year you will slog through tremendous memory work: about 100 basic monosyllables x 6 tones (plus character(s) for each syllable/tone combination). Ah...hmmm...no! I'd rather learn Icelandic or Slovenian.
No, that's not right.
For a start the basic number of monosyllables (ignoring tones) is above 400, about 408-410, depending on dialect. There are 4 tones in standard Mandarin, not 6. But the real error in your post is this: written Chinese is not based on a syllabary, whereby each syllable and tone combination is assigned one character. If that were true there would be around 1200 characters (as some syllables are not used in certain tones, the tones increase the number of syllables from 410 to 1200+), whereas in fact 5000 at least are needed to master modern Chinese, but an additional 49,000 are recorded (although the average Chinese person is unlikely to know these 49,000).
The characters are assigned on the basis of meaning. There are many homophones, but these are not written, as you suggest, in the same way just because they have the same pronunciation. There are many rarer words that become comprehensible in writing because of the characters used to write them but could not be immediately understood in speech because of the large number of homophones.
文明 wen2ming2 means civilized
闻名 wen2ming2 means well-known
文名 wen2ming2 means literary fame
these are all the same in terms of syllabic pronunciation and tone values. In speech, they could become confused - and in spoken Chinese you often need to explain which character you are referring to - but the written script is organized by meaning, so all three words become distinct when written down. There are many further examples, including cases were 100+ disyllabic words share exactly the same pronunciation... but all have their own written forms.
[Edited at 2009-03-14 17:48 GMT]
[Edited at 2009-03-14 17:49 GMT]
[Edited at 2009-03-14 17:50 GMT]
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