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A Moment Of Clarity

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Turbulent tongues!


One of the most fascinating languages around is the chinese language, simply because the speakers always seem to be musically expressing the language to each other! They sing, they chant, they hum, and they also yawn the language out but very rarely 'speak'! Their funny nasal twangs have become trademarks of their own!

I had been wanting to know more about the language ever since I heard that there were no 'tenses' in the Chinese language. I had also known that the language doesnt have a prescribed set of alphabets but instead a series of symbols some of which conveyed a whole sentence by themselves. The only way people expressed the time factor in the language was by altering the tone of the spoken word. I recently got to discuss more about the language with a friend in Singapore who threw a generous amount to light on the subject.

Some of the shocking facts that i learnt were...


  • Chinese has a set of 10,000 characters which are never completely mastered by anyone in a single lifetime!
  • Students generally carry a Chinese dictionary into the exam hall!
  • Even a minor change in a single stroke of a symbol will result in a completely different word or phrase!
  • A single sound such as 'ma' can be expressed in 4 different tones viz. starting with a high and ending with a low tone, starting low and ending high, a flat tone, and then another where it starts with a high, goes low and then ends with a high tone again!!! And each of these carry completely contrasting meanings!
  • The natives speak at such blistering speeds that the sound has to be reduced to a super slow-motion inorder to pick the actual word!

Now then, since when did languages cease to exist as a communication medium and instead begin to test the frontiers of human creativity and retention power?

Om Shanti...Chinese-aaya namahuh!

posted by Unknown at 12:49 pm

30 Comments:

  • then how do u explain the book "learn chineese in 30 days"???????????

    By Blogger Sid, at February 04, 2006 1:35 pm  

  • ke wei pen you... nee how??
    nee yau chiang hua yu ma??
    Needhe blog hen hau..

    haha, yeah mandarin is indeed fascinating..
    Anyway, translation for the above is..

    "Greeting friend, how are you?
    you want to speak chinese?
    You blog is very nice"

    By Blogger Pandhu, at February 04, 2006 7:11 pm  

  • Here's a poem for u Vikram..In fact the only one that i know..other than half a twinkle twinkle little star..haha

    yi er san si wu liu qi
    wode pengyou zai nali?
    zai zheli zai zheli
    wode pengyou zai zheli

    (1 2 3 4 5 6
    Where's my friend gone?
    In here in here..
    My friend is in here)

    Lol....nursery standard!

    By Blogger Priya, at February 04, 2006 9:47 pm  

  • whoa., 10000??? i thought tamil was the worst in this count.. hmm.

    aashish: Well., i heard they are mass producing english-speaking chinese students. The goal is to steal our IT jobs too :-S

    By Blogger Da Rodent, at February 04, 2006 10:15 pm  

  • sid, I believe that is impossible...chinese in 30 days? No way! Maybe able to memorise some common phrases...in hanyu pinyin (the english form of writing it)..Surely u cannot learn characters in 30 days!

    By Blogger Priya, at February 05, 2006 12:12 pm  

  • speakng chinese at a blistering speed is fine, with the pitch and all, but speaking english in a similar manner means that unless ur chinese u cant understnad jackshit of what they are saying (yes i have this big problem with the chinse accent, especially in english)

    By Blogger ada-paavi!!!!, at February 05, 2006 12:14 pm  

  • LOL...wow, that's pretty interesting. Can a language be SO complicated? No wonder their English and other languages are usually bad. Anyone's brains would be screwed after studying a language like this with its bazillion characters!
    Thank goodness I wasn't born in China! :D

    By Blogger The Girl Who Sold The World, at February 05, 2006 1:33 pm  

  • @aashish: lol...u dont seem to be a match to them in language or at work! :P

    @sid: are u sure u didnt misread the cover?...must have been '30 years'!

    @reva: hehe....interesting indeed!

    @priya: lol, lol...I feel so grown up reading that stuff! ;)

    @vatsan: dude...personally, when i had been to Singapore, i loved the Chinese way of speaking Chinese! It was rather cute!

    @girl who sold the world: heh heh...u wouldnt have uttered the above lines if u'd been born there! :)

    By Blogger Unknown, at February 05, 2006 3:31 pm  

  • well.. nice to know the complexities of chinese language.. n somethings are definitely much more complex than life itself..

    and well, its kind of fun to learn something thats difficult..at least when you are sad enough, and then you compare the complexity of your life to the language..your life wud seem so much more easier and less complicated..so it in a way gives out satidfaction.. i hope i havent confused you here..
    nice blog..

    By Blogger Akanksha Chaudhary , at February 05, 2006 5:22 pm  

  • @akanksha: Very, very beautifully said! I can understand exactly what you're saying!

    By Blogger Unknown, at February 05, 2006 10:39 pm  

  • hey vikram....heard u stopped after 6 kilometres in the chennai marathon?? why?? what happened??????? i had to stop after 21kms cause the race was over and they started lettin traffic on the road...too bad u backed off man...better luck next time...maybe ill take u along with me on practice runs....

    By Blogger Sid, at February 05, 2006 10:42 pm  

  • @sid: siddhaaaarth....you keep making the mistake of assuming the act of 'crawling on all fours' to be running! But its ok, dont worry, i shall teach u how to move around without the help of the other two limbs...Maybe next time i could carry u on my shoulder, during the marathon, to give u a feeel of how it is!

    By Blogger Unknown, at February 05, 2006 11:21 pm  

  • what a sore loser! ur jus burnin with jealousy and i can feel it

    By Blogger Sid, at February 05, 2006 11:24 pm  

  • thankfully chinese language is not in our cuurriculum...

    By Blogger sai thilak, at February 06, 2006 9:20 am  

  • hey pretty fascinating.i have seen a cuple of students from australia who were doing some kindof research on the chinese.i was amazed at the fact that they were able to actually write these symbols and the were doing it in a special type of notebook something similar to our four ruled ones.

    By Blogger backpack_everyday, at February 06, 2006 2:45 pm  

  • 进入其它词或{C} 改变语言类别。



    使用以下驾驶通过查寻结果...进入{N} 为下页, {P} 为前页, {X} 退出当前的查寻,{C} 改变语言类别。

    By Blogger Shriedhar, at February 07, 2006 6:37 pm  

  • hey dude!

    all i wanna say was,

    strange
    n gud :)

    u can c the complexity :)

    By Blogger Shriedhar, at February 07, 2006 6:38 pm  

  • Interesting !

    By Blogger Viewer, at February 07, 2006 8:39 pm  

  • why do i like to keep commenting without a purpose????

    By Blogger Sid, at February 07, 2006 9:38 pm  

  • This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    By Blogger Eclectic Blogger, at February 08, 2006 8:44 am  

  • wow.. heard chinese was complicated.. but not so much..

    By Blogger Eclectic Blogger, at February 08, 2006 8:45 am  

  • if chinese was so complicated why can't they have much and complicated names instead of having all names sound similar...there is a proff call Hu...and asked one of the students who took that subject ...that guy replied Hu("who")took it....i was so confused.....and there is one more gal whose name is Hei yu....and it is pretty easy to call her...."hey you"

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at February 09, 2006 10:25 am  

  • this is ur 25th comment!!!

    By Blogger Sid, at February 09, 2006 9:52 pm  

  • just passing by,


    o WOW. thats absurd..its a wonder how young chineese children learn it so quickly.!

    By Blogger EarthlyTraveler, at February 10, 2006 7:58 am  

  • chi ho win wang tong..
    means priya sucks wen ti comes to new languages :D leave alone chinese..

    ..p..

    By Blogger Priya, at February 10, 2006 9:19 pm  

  • Yes, when I was learning to speak Chinese, went nuts with the tones man... you never know when you change the tone and end up saying something offensive! 'Ma' said in one tone means 'mother' and in another means 'horse'! :O

    By Blogger Sayesha, at February 11, 2006 8:09 am  

  • Haha...the only few words in Chinese i know after being in Singapore for almost two years include 'nee hau' (how're you), sze szie (thank you), gong xi fa cai.. and the wierd thing that comes up in the trains when they say 'your attention please' (It's too difficult to write ;) )
    And ma in one tone means 'mother' and 'fish' in another! And that's when I decided to give up the thought of even trying to learn chinese!!

    By Blogger Vani Viswanathan, at February 12, 2006 3:08 pm  

  • yow chinesea pathi solara ....go try ot the hindi in bihar ...they speak without opening their mouth .....

    By Blogger Kausikram Krishnasayee, at February 12, 2006 3:34 pm  

  • hi
    happy v-day!!!!

    By Blogger Shriedhar, at February 14, 2006 6:44 pm  

  • @sai thilak: curriculum??? then our entire curriculum would only have Chinese!!

    @arun: dude....its the others who are running away from Chinese cos THEY are stealing our jobs even without knowing any other language properly!

    @backpack:Well, thats some interesting news....

    @anon: LOL....thanks for those tid-bits!

    @precious: now u know why they are talented enough to deprive half the globe of jobs!

    @priya: lol...Anybody's brain would need to be rewired inorder to be able to learn Chinese!

    @sayesha:hehe....yeah i'd heard of that!

    @vani: Thankfully i never gave it a start!

    @mark: hehehe...Laloo has been a good ambassador for the language!

    By Blogger Unknown, at February 15, 2006 4:19 pm  

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