I remember a Chinese girl telling me that, in English you see an unknown word, you know how to pronounce it, but not what it means, but in Chinese you know what it means but not how to pronounce it.
That girl lied to you; English has basically no phonetic consistency and pronunciation rules are anarchy. You can take a wild guess, but you're still likely to be wrong.
@@youraftermyrobotbee same for Chinese though. There's a concept called "borrowing characters", and thus the meaning and the shape might not match in some cases. Not an issue for a semi fluent user but definitely a barrier for new learners.
@@youraftermyrobotbee sort of, but the problem is MUCH worse in Chinese. If you see an unknown word in English, you have maybe a 40/60% chance of guessing its pronunciation right, and most of the time you'll say something that is at least sort of like the correct pronunciation. With Chinese, there might be a phonetic component to a character, you might correctly guess which part it's supposed to be, and then you'll have a tiny chance of guessing how that other character is pronounced. So maybe 2%, being generous.
That is so true, it makes it so hard for me to ask Siri because I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce it. You can’t even type it out. The only way is if you can write it out
Oh no, the secret has been revealed. Ooh, ooh We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you We've known each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game, and we're gonna play it And if you ask me how I'm feeling Don't tell me you're too blind to see Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up) (Ooh, ooh) Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up) I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you (Ooh, ooh, ooh) (Ooh, ooh, ooh) We've know each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game, and we're gonna play it I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
But the draw feature can be really buggy at times. If it doesn't like your handwriting, or you try to draw too complex of a character, it can just completely screw you over, then you have to resort back to the pinyin keyboard
Here's an interesting fact about that guy who created Pinyin: he's also known for his extremely old age (even by Chinese standards), having died in 2017 the day after his 111th birthday.
Definitely Ooh, ooh We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you We've known each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game, and we're gonna play it And if you ask me how I'm feeling Don't tell me you're too blind to see Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up) (Ooh, ooh) Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up) I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you (Ooh, ooh, ooh) (Ooh, ooh, ooh) We've know each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game, and we're gonna play it I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Fun fact: People in Hong Kong mostly type Chinese in a way called Cangjie, which disassembles the characters and assigns parts to 26 English characters, say typing 一大 (M and K) gives you 天 (meaning sky)
But of course, it's important to know that the "MK" has nothing to do with the Chinese character. That just happens to be the symbols' QWERTY positions. What was actually typed was "一大". Similarly to a Russian keyboard, if you want to type "Россия" (Rossiya/Rossija/Rossiâ), you type HJCCBZ, which also means nothing.
Actually, Pinyin is mostly used in China. In places like Taiwan, we use 注音符號(Mandarin Phonetic Symbols) like ㄅㄆㄇㄈ to type, so our keyboard has an English symbol, a Mandarin Phonetic Symbol(ZhuYin Symbol), a Cangjie Symbol (Which the Cangjie typing input method uses) , and occasionally punctuation marks. But because Mandarin Phonetic Symbol(Which most Taiwanese use) are not related to how the Chinese characters are written, so character amnesia is also common in Taiwan. (P.S. Although most of your images in this video are Chinese, the picture at 2:04 is a picture of the Taoyuan National Airport in Taiwan, which uses Traditional Chinese instead of Simplified Chinese.)
Mainland China and Taiwan, not China and Taiwan. You're not a real country. You're never going to be a country. Papa America will not be able to save you from us. And as time goes on, this will only become more and more certain. If you don't like it, move away. 中华人民共和国战术恐吓局 Bureau of Tactical Intimidation, People's Republic of China
Actually, we do have an alternative input system called “Wu Bi” (五笔), which literally translates to "Five Pen Strokes". This input method assigned all the Chinses characters into different groups made of components. As you might notice, most of the Chinese characters are made of indexing components. For example, the word "mom" in Chinese (妈) is consist of "女" which suggests it is something related to female, and "马" which is suggesting its pronunciation "ma". Wu Bi input dived all the components into 5 different groups and mapping them on keyboards. When typing, one just needs to remember the correct combination then he or she can type any Chines character he or she wants. Wu Bi is way faster than pinyin, and since its input method is similar to the writing system, it also helps people remember those characters. However, Wubi is extremely NOT beginner-friendly. It is hard to learn and requires more practice than pinyin. Thus, it is often used by professionals such as accountant, clerical workers, and writers only.
1:38 "There's a very close connection with how you write an English word and how you say it." *Tom Scott enters the chat* Did you know how many ways you can pronounce "ough"?
The side effect of the romanization of character-based languages is magnified because there are few situations where text needs to be written by hand in modern society. Thus it doesn't really matter for people to occasionally forget how to write a word of their native language, also it's easy for them to pick it up.
Chinese characters are still used heavily all the way through high school. However I think china should move over to the wubi imput method. It,s hard but more efficient
Mandarin always seemed so inefficient for the amount of information is carried per syllable. Is there chinese internet slang to make sentences shorter? Instead of typing the entire sentence?
@@jacobsalmi5582 This kind of network language is very many, and various forms.Traditionally, Chinese has an idiom, a type of word that uses four or so characters to convey an allusion, often containing the meaning of a whole sentence, allowing the Chinese language to be concise when expressing complex topics（Like this one, it can be summed up as "言简意赅."）.
@@jacobsalmi5582 Modern people have created more new expressions, such as combining several idioms into one word. For example, the word "喜大普奔" will be "喜闻乐见（delighted to see）" "大快人心（greatly happy people）" "普天同庆（celebrate）" "奔走相告（run and tell）" four idioms extracted from the first Chinese characters, formed a word, to express an extreme mood of joy.
@@jacobsalmi5582 Indeed. I'm learning Chinese right now and it just seems so inefficient. I would understand if the characters you wrote were much denser in content than, say, writing in English, but it's not.
4:28 "How you write a character has nothing to do with how you pronounce it." Actually, it some what does. Usually, there's a base character, and additional components of a character called "radicals" are added to create more character, usually using the base character as a reference to hint how it's pronounced, with the radical giving a hint for the meaning or deriving another meaning for a given character. For example: 坴 is pronounced lù (lu4), which by itself means something related to earth. By adding a radical meaning "mound," we get the character 陸, meaning "land" and is also pronounced lù (lu4). Add a radical meaning "grain" to the original character, and we get 稑, meaning "a grain that ripened too early" (don't know if it's used today, actually) which, you guessed, is pronounced lù (lu4). This isn't always a 1-to-1 corresponded and not all derived character will share the same pronunciation as their original character. 曹 (cáo, cao2) is an old character meaning some sort of government official, but adding a radical meaning "walking" makes 遭 mean "to encounter; to suffer" with the pronunciation of zāo (zao1). So, yeah. There's sort of a way of knowing how to pronounce a character without knowing how a radical changes the base character. It's not like most Western languages like English, Russian, Greek, but that's that.
And to be fair he also somewhat overstates the connection between spelling and pronunciation in English. You can make a pretty good guess for the most part but then dough, bough, cough, and through all have different pronunciations for "ough".
Even then, those radicals usually have more than one sound, you have to either remember which one it is, or to guess Albeit, a similar sound. Well, repetition does help, so yeah PS: I am Greek, and well, I find Chinese easier than french even if french is a western language, this has to do with the grammar itself rather than the alphabet, but yeah. The fact that verbs stay the same no matter if it is a past, present or future action makes it easier to form sentences. Although, I really can't speak about this subject, I have been neglecting my Chinese for so long that I can't even recognize more than 50 characters At least I can still read pin yin properly!
You are proving his point which is that the actual Chinese written language is a "picture" language. If you write the picture and unless you learned the meaning of that picture, you have no idea of how to pronounce it. Pinyin like the Western alphabet system makes it easy to write and pronounce the word. And so his point was that young people constantly use pinyin to find a character and they forget how to write the characters. I lived in Taiwan for 4 years and then in China for 1 year and so I learned both the traditional and simplified writing systems. But I have been living in Japan for the last 20 years which also uses "kanji" but sometimes has a different meaning and some of their own characters. I can remember how to write easy characters that are a few strokes, but if you give me a more complex character like the character for dragon, I recognize it when I see it but it would be very difficult for me to write it by hand. Japanese are finding this exact same problem with Kanji.
bruh 1. 事 and 事兒 basically mean the same thing; 2. There is a offical phonetic spelling for Mandarin in Mainland China, which is the Hanyu Pinyin. To type 疹 you always type "zhen". Tying "zjen" or "zjeyn" simply won't work. There are non-official dialectal pinyins but that's another topic; 3. QWERTY isn't the only popular layout. T9 layout is also very popular on feature phones and smartphones; 4. Pinyin input wasn't really popular until somewhere around 2007 when companies came up with Pinyin IMEs that are smart enough for people to comfortably use. Back in the 80s and 90s, many people used Wubi (in the Mainland) and Cangjie (in Taiwan*, HK*), which are both shape-based input methods, because Pinyin IMEs were really dumb at that time. * People in Taiwan mainly use Zhuyin now. People in HK still use Cangjie a lot.
0:36 Here's why it's QWERTY: This dates back to when people used typewriters. Typewriters have little steel arms with letters on them that move up and hit the paper to print the letter when you press the respective key. On the first typewriters, letters on the keyboards were arranged alphabetically, and so were the little arms with the letters on them. But this created the problem that the little steel arms got tangled up with each other because the letters that were next to each other on the keyboard were often used successively in words. So they tried to figure out a letter arrangement that would prevent the little steel arms from getting tangled up in one another. And that's how the QWERTY (or QWERTZ in Germany) keyboard was made.
Exactly! Thank you for taking the time to write that out. It baffled me when he said he couldn't find out why it's called QWERTY/Z or AZERTY... I thought it was common knowledge and pretty darn easy to find out as well ... ? 🤔🙈
For anyone that's wondering: yes, there are other ways to write Chinese that don't rely on Pinyin. Most of Taiwan uses a bopomofo-based keyboard, for example. There are also non-phonetic input methods that rely on the shape of the character rather than the sound, including Cangjie, Boshiamy, and the 5-Input Method. A brief explanation of each: Bopomofo - A homegrown Chinese phonetic system that doesn't rely on the Latin alphabet Cangjie - Radical-based input method with portions of the alphabet dedicated to certain types of concepts Boshiamy - 100% radical-based, with keyboard designations based off of letter shape and/or english meaning 5-Input - Similar to boshiamy, but the keyboard is divided into 5 regions based on radical shape
I use Boshiamy, and with this radical based system, you *have* to know how the character is written in order to type it. So for me, the problem is reversed: I can type some obscure characters without knowing how to pronounce them.
To be fair Mainland brothers and sisters are too obsessed with those United States of America to even consider any alternatives to Pinyin, though I'm surprised that they don't use Wade-Giles.
@@acivilizedhuman thanks for sharing, I was curious about how this affects other language other than mandarin. I mean some are so sidelined that who is going to make a new program just to write their language?
QWERTY comes from when they made the first type writer. To fit all of the keys they had to make it so the push pins from when you tapped the keys not get tangled or too close. So they had to put it in that order and create the staggered layout and it was never changed to much
The first keyboard put the letters alphabetically. They discovered this slowed people down as they would run through the alphabet to remember where a letter should be in the order of the keyboard. So they mixed up the letters somewhat randomly (q seldom used was put in the most difficult position) forcing users even until today to memorize where the letters are.
Oh, we German change y to z and z to y. We add " for äöü and sz as one letter (ß). I learning typing a writing machine / typewriter as I was 7 or 8. With english keyboard we can use "ae" for ä. Easy.
the qwerty keyboard was invented in 1867 by Micheal Qwerty when he imprisoned his alphabet soup in tiny squares, thus creating the keyboard we all know and love
Sergio , you are naughty, naughty! People will not know that you are joking! Lol. The qwerty keyboard is because the top left row of letters are arranged as "qwerty". The keyboard was arranged so that fast typists wouldn't jam keys together when typing on manual typewriters.
Imagine if the keyboard was an ABCDEF keyboard instead. I guess nothing would be different actually, since it's just another order that would be our normal. But I do wonder if the order would change in some languages, like would Spanish do KLMNÑOPQ?
@@Liggliluff , qwerty started because of mechanical typewriters. The reason that ABCDEF form is not used is because, in that format, typists were typing so fast that the mechanical character arms were getting tangled together. When the character arms get tangled, you must stop and pull them apart. I've done this even with qwerty format. It would be worse with ABCDEF format.
@@Liggliluff I wonder how the order would change in languages that don't use the Latin script. Some Cyrillic keyboards use ЙЦУКЕН (JCUKEN); the Russian alphabet starts АБВГДЕ (ABVGDE) but not all Cyrillic alphabets do. The Greek equivalent would be ABГ∆EZ but the usual Greek keyboard layout is mostly just adapted from the QWERTY layout.
Which means sound radical and meaning radical. But you still have to remember the radical corresponds to what sound and meaning radical corresponds to what meaning. And it doesn't tell you which one is which to a new Chinese learner, which makes matters worse in a lot of situations. All he wanted to say is the Chinese language is totally within its own system.
@@EricYaominyu it gets far deeper than that. No one is saying that learning Chinese is as easy as learning a new alphabet or syllabary, but what he said was still completely false for at least 75% of commonly used characters.
Its quite useful for some of my friends whom does know how to actually write that word out,but doesnt know how to spell it in pinyin format,while im facing the same problem as the one mentioned in the video:knowing the pinyin of the word but doesnt know how to actually write it out🤣
or just use the compromise between writing by hand and using keyboard: cangjie. each character is assigned a component of the Chinese character since the smaller parts of it are quite repeatedly used anyway
@@TheZachary86 the accuracy and speed are inherently worse because the application needs to guess what the strokes are. The possible outcomes vary depending on the clarity of handwriting as well.
Apart from pinyin (fun fact: there aren't any "v"s in pinyin, so pressing "v" generates the vowel "ü" instead), there's also zhuyin fuhao which allows you to phonetically (ie. spell by breaking down a word into its sounds). In addition, there's also the cangjie and wubi, which allows you to write words based on its radicals/components rather than phonetically. In Taiwan, where apparently zhuyin fuhao is taught officially (versus pinyin in mainland China and other Chinese diasporas), keyboards can start looking really messy - just search up "Mandarin input keyboards" on Google Images, where keyboards can have up to 4 legends, one for each of the input methods.
@@weirdofromhalo lmao you're right. I should learn not to spout shit as fact before double checking. I've deleted the incorrect comment so I don't mislead others.
Then there are Cantonese and Hokkien and Teochew, each with its own romanization, and General Chinese, which works for all Chinese languages, but if you speak one, there are words you pronounce the same but have to spell differently. (Hokkien and Fujian are the same word, in different Chinese languages.)
In HK to write cantonese they use either sucheng or cangjie. in TW only zhuyin is taught officially (has the very same usage of hiragana in japanese, difficult characters in books for kids are spelt out in zhuyin). U have also a cantonese version of pinyin, called jyutping
as a chinese speaking person, i'm amazed at the accuracy of this video. there's an alternate way to write chinese characters too, as even though all Chinese characters are unique, the way we write each character is based on a combination of different strokes, such as vertical lines, horizontal lines, a curved line and a few other strokes. despite each unique character, there is actually a "proper" way of writing each character, in terms of which part to start writing and which part to end off. however, it is very hard to standardize the sequence of strokes as there are different schools of thought, and although a keyboard for this method exists, most of us still use pinyin (qwerty keyboard) as it's less ambiguous, except for the few times where the word is commonly mispronounced (zhen vs zen, shan vs san) :)
Yeah, I type using zhuyin (also qwerty-compatible), so it's very similar. The simple fact is that we usually haven't done enough to innovate our own solutions, and in the situations where we have (such as cangjie), we haven't done enough to promote them.
Unfortunately, many aspects of being Chinese in the modern world are still more reactive than most of us are willing to admit. Coincidentally, I'm writing to you in English when I know we're both fluent in Chinese 囧
"Amerisplain" is some excellent wordsmithing, but personally I've always used "Laowai-splain" for when any foreigner to China (laowai 老外) steps up to explain something about China. Thanks for the great content!
Small correction: It's not entirely true that Chinese characters are completely independent from pronounciation. A lot of them have a semantic element (that tells you what the character is about) and a phonetic element (that basically tells you "this character sounds like this other character").
So... it is like this?: [SYMBOL] = ♪ *"Keikaku"* ♫ (integrated inside the symbol) -> note: _"Keikaku means plan,_ it also sounds like Ca, but with an e". /s
but seriously, I think they need to make their own "hiragana", japan use hiragana in keyboard cuz it only has several characters, but they still use kanji for artistic, formal, and historical purpose
Chinese Hanzi consist to a large extent of particles. Just like Japanese Kanji consists of smaller particles, for example 板 which mean board/plank which consists of 3 particles. In Chinese however often most there's a phonetic particle embedded and a topic particle as well, so for example; 妈 which means mother, consist of two separate hanzi (nu)女(woman) and (ma)马(horse) however 妈(Mā) is pronounced similar to 马(Mǎ). In that case the Horse is the phonetic marker and woman is the topic marker.
@@ariloussant I read that hiragana was invented in 910AD because japanese women that low educated use hiragana cuz its simpicity, I wonder what chinese women use in old era... are they all know hanzi?
@@vukkulvar9769 there were discussions of dropping traditional Chinese character and only use Latin based characters or Pinyin in around 1900 when China suffers from domestic and international struggles. But now after China rises and self esteem of the Chinese people recovers with it, dropping traditional character becomes oblivion and even a joke to Chinese people. Two Asian countries used to use Chinese language but dropped, vietnam and South Korea, face difficult situation of a discontinued history and even culture because all their history are written in Chinese and their young people can’t read Chinese any more. On the contrary, Japan keeps using Chinese based writing system and Japan is one of the most richest, economically and culturally, country in the world. So there’s nothing wrong with the Chinese writing system. on the contrary, Chinese language has deep philosophy embedded in the manifestation of the Chinese character.
@@vukkulvar9769 Not possible at all. There are 4 tones in chinese, and there could be hundreds of words that use just those four exact spellings and tones, so you would have absolutely no idea what is written if you only use pinyin when writing
This is actually very true. There’s even an Asian boss video asking people on the streets in China how to write out everyday words like “toothbrush” and everyone was struggling to do it. Recognizing a character is very different from actually writing it in Chinese
From your name, I'm guessing you're Japanese. I'm curious, does this problem of forgetting how to write Chinese characters exist among the Japanese youth too?
@@Incognito-rb4tz the problem with 膏 is that it has an area of high-frequency detail in the middle, where the 口 is stacked on top of the 月. Many would just straight up forget how many horizontal strokes they need to put in that area and end up omitting elements.
I think it's just one of those things that change with time. Soon, it will become a hobby, something enjoyed by native enthusiasts and diligent foreigners trying to learn the language (for example, I am studying Japanese, which uses Chinese characters roughly half the time, and so I have to learn how to write). In English, we have cursive. I can only sign my name, but because I grew up seeing it, I can read most cursive while some of my friends can't even read it, and the next generation will likely struggle. However, there are those who enjoy writing in cursive as a hobby.
As a foreigner trying to learn Mandarin AFTER moving to China, it was always funny to me how I would visualize the Pinyin for a word rather than the word itself. I would look at characters and translate them to Pinyin and THEN translate to English. Then I would memorize the Pinyin and only recall the character if I saw it. I could never write much more than my name by hand.
i’m learning japanese, and same. i’m getting better at it, but whenever i try to read a word my brain gives to romaji instead of the kana. writing is a whole process for me instead of just writing what’s in my head.
@@rainewhispers739 i also used to have that issue, but now i use a dictionary that only shows the kana and not the romaji, and now i no longer have that issue, so i recommend trying that if you can
@EaqIe I think what I need right now is reading practice. I've kinda paused my learning for a bit but even though I have the kanas memorized, I don't use them as much as I should. I think that would help my brain think in kanas
I'm a real life example of this. I can read and type Chinese perfectly fine, but ask me to handwrite the same character's I had just read / typed, then I'll be completely screwed.
Yeah I’m learning mandarin in uni and the writing tests are kinda hard cause I learnt to write online rather than in person so I can write on a keyboard but not in paper.
Each Chinese character has an official Pinyin spelling assigned to them, or a few official Pinyin spellings if the character is polyphonic. However, a lot of people don't actually know how to properly pronounce the characters so modern input method editors have the Fuzzy Pinyin feature, which allow Pinyin spellings that are slightly wrong. There is also Wubi which uses the Qwerty keyboard but is based on how a character is written instead of how it is read. But Pinyin is much easier than Wubi so most people use Pinyin.
Thank you for your comment! I didn't know of Wubi - I have something to track down and read. I heard years ago that the Chinese have valued their character system in part because it isn't normally used phonetically; it is a cognitive system. Apparently Miao, Cantonese, Szechuan (a dialect, I think), Manchu speakers may not be mutually intelligible to each other in speech but can communicate clearly when it is written. I wonder if the use of electronic tablets and stylus/finger will increase with Chinese-speakers. Am told that even the order of the brush strokes in older Chinese calligraphy is significant to the construction of the character. Please don't beat me up too badly here - I am only an armchair linguist fascinated with writing systems. Your thoughts, please?
@@STScott-qo4pw not the op, but Chinese people who speak dialects (ex. Sichuanese) will often still know Mandarin because it's kind of like the "official language"... Therefore they'll still be able to type using pinyin (my mom for example, who is from Sichuan, only uses the qwerty keyboard for pinyin and not the handwriting keyboard) There might be pinyin keyboards that are specific to Cantonese and other dialects, but I'm honestly not sure about this. I wouldn't be surprised if Cantonese people have their own system since it's quite different from Mainland speaking
@@STScott-qo4pw With phones and tablets, people still use Pinyin. There is a gesture input mode on Android that involves moving your finger through a 3 by 3 grid (9key glide typing), but ultimately, that is still backed by Pinyin. While the Chinese writing system might be interesting to some, the average person really just want to get things done. Pinyin is the easiest input method so that is what people use.
@@STScott-qo4pw yes , the strokes is important as it will perfectly form the characters if you follow it perfect. Ofc you could stroke it in a different way and still get the same characters. Its like how you write the number 5 , do you start with the top first or the bottom? Either ways it would look the same but will probably look off from the "official" way of writing.
Qwerty the name comes from the first 6 digits on the standard keyboard, the Qwerty design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to E. Remington and Sons in 1873
Well qwerty is supposed to be based on how frequently letters are used so the "rare" ones are shoved to the hard to reach places, so logically all languages would have a different optimization of the keyboad plus any common lattin letters absent from english like (ñ, ë, ö, ect). That while touchscreen keyboards can recognize a hold for more options a mechanical keyboard is basically one to one ignoring shift/alt/control or those special control 1834 codes for characters that are obnoxious to use. Disclaimer: my only need for special/foreign characters are for math, highschool spanish, and greek life fraternity names, so i don't know what native speakers of other languages consider normal for keyboard inputs.
So when an English speaker has to convert it, we convert from concept to word, and then word to correct spelling of the word. When a Chinese person has to convert, they convert from concept to word, word to symbol, then symbol to correct "spelling" (ie: the exact strokes you're supposed to use) There's an extra level of conversion they need to make creating a greater chance of forgetting. That said, I'm guessing that perception of this is fueled by people seeing this foreign alphabet be used to define their own alphabet and looking for confirmation bias that it will be the end of their own heritage.
@@forgottenfamily as a russian speaker i just write a word how i say it, because we really use phonetic spelling, not like in english, where it is used somewhat arbitrary. P.S. yeah, there are some words in russian with rather archaic spelling - these are exceptions.
But you can't type it down, well, not with Pinyin system. Taiwan use another typing system called Zhuyin with which you can also type down the sound radicals.
You're only half right. It's the part of the character that *isn't* the radical that determines the pronunciation of the character. It also isn't some characters, it's most characters. For characters that are constructed in this manner, the radical gives a rough indication of the meaning of a character whereas the rest of the character gives a rough indication of its pronunciation. For example, a character that looks like this 狼 can be mentally interpreted as "a word that sounds like liáng (良) and has a meaning relating to beasts (犭)". One who is familiar with the spoken language should then recognize that the spoken word that matches that description is "láng", which means "wolf". Taking this example further, we start with 良, which is pronounced "liáng". Its meaning is "good" or "very", but that's irrelevant here because it's used for its pronunciation, not its meaning. Add the radical for "beast", and you get 狼, which is pronounced "láng" and means "wolf". Add the radical for "foot", and you get 踉, which is pronounced "liàng" and means "to jump" or "to stagger". Add the radical for "water", and you get 浪, which is pronounced "làng" and means "wave". Add the radical for "dirt", and you get 埌, which is pronounced "làng" and means "wasteland". Add the (right-side) radical for "moon", and you get 朗, which is pronounced "lǎng" and means "clear" or "bright". Add the (right-side) radical for "town", and you get 郎, which is pronounced "láng" and means "official", "man", or "youth".
@@-haclong2366 apparently you dont understand how Pinyin or Zhuyin or Simplify Chinese or Traditional Chinese works..for the record i use both systems regularly。 they are just same system with different symbols to mark the pronunciation。 Pinyin also uses the same sound radicals as Zhuyin，we just dont need to "type" them down since we type “words” rather than single “characters”
Thankfully you don't need to type it that way for it to recognize which word you want... There's still one thing wrong about this video The character itself actually has something to do with it's meaning and pronunciation
There are many alternative input methods. Zhuyin (also based on sound), as well as Cangjie, Wubi and Sucheng which are based on the ideogram. They are faster to type with than the sound based input, but they take much longer to learn and memorize
@@nutronstar45 Having to learn 39 symbols in addition to the Latin Alphabet. This requires basically learning a 2nd alphabet just to learn how to read Chinese characters. For some learners, this is a step-too-many. Pinyin, while not perfect, at least moves directly from Latin (the most readable writing system) to characters without the "middle man."
@@ZhangtheGreat i get that it's too much for some people, but i don't get how that's confusing. also, we generally only use 37 characters (ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌㄍㄎㄏㄐㄑㄒㄓㄔㄕㄖㄗㄘㄙㄧㄨㄩㄚㄛㄜㄝㄞㄟㄠㄡㄢㄣㄤㄥㄦ). also, why do you think that the latin alphabet is the "most readable" writing system?
@@nutronstar45 It's the "most readable" in that it's the most widespread. Latin letters are taught basically everywhere; we can't say the same for any other writing system.
1:53 Adding the 兒 doesn’t make it another word, it’s a characteristic of e.g. the Peking accent to change the ending sounds a bit. Also, adding characters doesn’t magically transform what the characters mean. With this example 有事 is literally “have + business” which also makes sense in english (as in having business (to attend to)).
I mean, that's why latin numbers are now no longer used commonly. Probably the majority of languages will just get lost in the unstoppable way of progress. I'm in Italian and I'm sure my language will be part of this. I bet that in a century, talking Italian, Chinese, Norwegian or any of this national languages will be super exotic or linked to literature only (like latin more or less)
As a Chinese major that now takes classes on Zoom, 提笔忘字 is so real! I can type a whole essay but struggle to write the most common and basic words😅😭........
I know why they made the qwerty keyboard system! Because years ago when they used the old typing machines that had keyboard and when u press them they like stamp on paper and whatnot it was in alphabetical order and i think it was the “ A “ key that kept getting stuck because of how fast they could find it on the keyboard because its in alphabetical order so its the 1st one, they changed the order of the letters so people wouldn’t be used to it and they would need a second to find the letter before pressing it so it doesn’t get stuck when its pressed too many times simultaneously. Im not 100% sure about it but i Remember hearing about it in a video
"In Chinese, on the other hand, how you write a word has _nothing_ to do with how you pronounce it." That's a popular misconception. I can really only speak for Mandarin, but there are some aspects of certain characters that hint at their pronunciation. This is useful because even Chinese adults may sometimes encounter a character they've never seen before. They may rely on context to figure out what word it is (as you said, many words in Chinese comprise more than one character), but also, there is often the opportunity to "sound it out", so to speak, by finding possible pronunciation clues in the character.
Easiest one to see would be 何，可，河。 In mandarin Pinyin and international phonetic alphabet, it would be pronounced: He, Ke, He In American English phonetic alphabet: it would be: H-uh, Kuh, H-uh. They all have the same character 可 in them, so they all end in the same sound. Fun fact: In Cantonese all 3 of these words are pronounced exactly the same way but with different tones. International phonetic alphabet: Ho American English phonetic alphabet: Hau/Haw.
@@onewayraildex4827 Good examples! And of course, a lot of words that begin with the 口radical on the left side will feature radicals on the right side that have pretty much nothing to do with the _meaning_ of the character, but rather its pronunciation. Famously, the yes/no question particle 吗 has nothing to do with horses, and the horse radical 马 only serves as the pronunciation guide. And of course 妈 is not "female horse", but "mother", where again we see that the 马 is only there for pronunciation. Sometimes it seems that certain combinations of radicals also serve as a hint. Like the 刀 above口 on the right hand side of 照 邵 绍 and 韶. These words have little to do with knives and mouths, but they all terminate with "-ao".
A lot of languages spell the same way they say it; with a tight connection between letters, letter-combinations and their pronunciations. This is because of spelling reforms. Spanish is a language which hasn't had a spelling reform for a long long time, last being around 1815. Danish had the last proper spelling reform in 1889, but has made minor letter-recognition changes as late as 1980. Swedish had the last spelling reform in 1906, but similarly to Danish, has had very tiny touch ups as late as 2006. When was the modern English spelling revised last? ...well, a figure I could find was 1350. But there have been spelling simplifications since 1662, such as changing -ique to -ic, and -arre to -ar. The American spelling dates back to 1806, which also had some spelling updates, which has not been adopted by the British. This might tell in what bad state English really is in.
@@Liggliluff @Shuaib Z English isn't a language, it's three languages wearing a trench coat and pretending to be one. Also, polish has the same, just mind the dypthongs.
this is a manufactured problem. it is only in the modern age that most chinese people even became literate. for most of chinese history, a large portion of our population has been unable to read or write our language. in the 20th century, literacy rates skyrocketed but were still very poor. now that people can just use pinyin and type, chinese has been easier than ever for the average person to use. nowadays, nobody really needs or wants to hand write anything. we just have to type on a keyboard. now more people than ever can understand written chinese. this is why the keyboard has actually been very good for the chinese system of writing.
All fine and good. What if you want to record something for posterity that is accessible without electricity or a digital device? I treasure the letters written to me by those now dead. And I seek to write to my descendants to bless them. Those are personal and precious .
@@JohnBBolt you could always print something out, or with what im imagining youre talking about as long as someone gains the capacity to read and write (via a keyboard) when they go to write something meaningful like that they could draw it out calligraphy style
@@ImKittyCow a printer would help. It is not helpful with Birthday cards, etc. I also do calligraphy. Not sure my grands would understand that without examples.
Yep Ooh, ooh We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you We've known each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game, and we're gonna play it And if you ask me how I'm feeling Don't tell me you're too blind to see Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up) (Ooh, ooh) Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up) I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you (Ooh, ooh, ooh) (Ooh, ooh, ooh) We've know each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game, and we're gonna play it I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
My parents sent me to 6 years of Chinese school and I forgot how to read most characters. But don't worry, my grandmother never went to school and is illiterate too. I don't have to be literate in order to type Chinese, which is something westerners can't understand. I can input Chinese text with no problem but have to use translation programs to "read" above-basic Chinese. There's also voice dictation that transcribes speech into text, which I rely on too.
我的天！跟我一样啊！！ ! I can read just fine in my mind but when it comes to sounding it out while making sense of it (say translating to someone in real time) my brain just freezes up!
In today’s era, kids already have a lot they need to learn to get ready for the world. There’s just too much knowledge to cram. Pile on a language where u literally have to learn every word and waste probably hours on end every week on just that is highly inefficient. Imagine a kid that doesn’t have to do that vs the one that has to waste that time/energy. The one using that energy better will win. And if the entire society of kids are wasting time on it, the other society will simply be better prepared. The world keeps getting better and faster every year. Inefficient things will simply end up dying because no one will be able to waste their limited time and energy on them. U can try to ‘keep tradition’ alive by force. But eventually force simply doesn’t work in the long term.
I mean, with 2000+ (let's assume you use only 400 of the most frequent ones), you're bound to forget how to write some of them, specially considering their complexity, unlike other languages that you have to remix the same 26-28 characters to make the same array of words.
@@RojaJaneman That is pretty extreme. A logography is not really better or worst that an alphabet. They are just different. Same with silabaries, abjad, abugidas, and other "Non alphabets". There is no real reason to ditch chinese characters. They are hard to learn, but once you know them you can read a ton of information very fast. And understanding the radicals in a character might help you understand a word that you have never seen, in the right context. Chinese character being complex doesn't mean they are bad. And saying that ditching them would be better is just wrong. Japanese for example writes using both a system of silabaries (Kana) and Chinese characters (Kanji). You can simply write everything in Kana and no information would be lost, so did everybody just stop using kanji and move on to just Kana? Well.. no. Kanjis are still very much around, despite people trying to get rid of them since a very long time, turns out they are not really that big of a deal Other cultures like korea did actually got rid of Chinese Characters (Hanja) from their writting. And some other like Vietnam simply adopted the latin alphabet and got rid of everything else. Are any of these better or worst? Of course not Chinese writting is HARD. But it's also beautiful. I don't think we will see it go away any time soon, and I for one I'm happy about it (Edit: A lot of typos)
One thing I think is the culprit of the "forgetting" of characters is the stroke order. Because you can't just write a Chinese character however you feel like it as long as it looks the part. You have to write it in a specific way so even the cursive version is legible based only on the order of the strokes used. So, I think is less a case of "Oh, I have no idea how to write this character any longer!" than a case of "Oh, I forgot the stroke order of this character!" But I may be wrong, and it may be the case that sheer convenience just makes people _really_ forget how to write, because damn! Chinese characters are far more complicated than a,b,c!
even me, who speaks almost NO chinese, experiences this. i’m in my 3rd full year of chinese. bc of online school we mostly type answers instead of writing them on paper. because of this I keep forgetting how to write simple characters that are used everyday. I can definitely see how this affects chinese speakers.
@@shzaizzhang4465 Thats exactly why he said his chinese isn’t good. He probably deliberately did it that way because “he is american, his chinese no good”
Using Pinyin helped my father's generation get rid of illiteracy and it's helping foreigners start learning Chinese in an easy way. I'm happy to pay the side effect on my own.
The story I always heard about the origin of the layout has 2 primary reasons. First the top row of the QWERTY keyboard can be used to spell out TYPEWRITER front and center of a customers face. the Second reason is due to how the arms actuated on a typewriter it would be possible to "jam" the arms together for fast typists so what they did was they moved where the common keys for the most commonly typed words would be so the mechanical arms wouldn't jam.
A remarkable feature. Ooh, ooh We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you We've known each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game, and we're gonna play it And if you ask me how I'm feeling Don't tell me you're too blind to see Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up) (Ooh, ooh) Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up) I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you (Ooh, ooh, ooh) (Ooh, ooh, ooh) We've know each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game, and we're gonna play it I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
1:48 Actually, you can somehow guess how a chinese word sounds by looking at it. In some characters, a part of it may suggest how it would be sounded. For example 安 is pronounced "an" and so do 按，案 and 胺. I'm a foreigner who knows a bit of chinese so if any natives want to elaborate or correct, please do so.
Unfortunately the opposite is also true. If you don't know what the root word sounds like, you won't be able to guess or even search for the pronunciation of the other words. There are also some words that may have similar/identical characters, but have completely different pronunciations. The pronunciation also doesn't teach you the meaning of the words, and there can be dozens of words with the same sounds, each with different meanings.
Since my comment doesn't get any upvotes, I'll put it here. 20% of Chinese characters are evolved from 1. hieroglyphs 2. Indications marked on hieroglyphs to give a new meaning 3. Combinations of several type 1 and/or type 2 symbols to create a new character with a new implied meaning. These you really need to learn how to pronounce them. The other 80% are called "shape and sound". You have a symbol that gives meaning to the character, another symbol does not provide the meaning, but the pronunciation of the character. For example, 樺，橡，榕，松，杉，栢 are all species of trees, bearing the symbol 木. The right side of all the characters do not convey the meaning of the original symbol, but the pronunciation. Due to passage of time and vowel shifts the pronunciation may have altered a bit, but you can generally figure out how to pronounce it.
As a chinese youth, I struggle with writing chinese. Meanwhile, my parents can't type chinese. They always ask me to help them with the 'pinyin". I guess every generation have their fare share of difficulties.
Is the handwriting keyboard not available in their phone? As someone who's dabbling in chinese I like to keep both since sometimes I might come across a character that I don't know the Pinyin of :)
@@andreluiz6023 There is handwriting IME! Not many people seem to use it in mainland China, but in Hong Kong, most of my family use it (including me). Although this might not be an accurate representation of HK people as a whole, at least peopel do use it. I think it’s just easier for them to use pinyin since they need to for computers anyway, convenience always gets the better of us. But also, not many people like Jyutping (Cantonese pinyin), so we prefer to use other input methods
@@leonardchung3825 I get how unfortunately convenient it is to get used to Pinyin (^_^メ), given that I was planning to learn mandarin with Zhuyin and ended up giving in half way through. It's nice that your family knows the handwriting keyboard though! When looking up "Chinese input methods" handwriting is often left out, I only have it because I was digging through my phone's keyboards ^_________^ nice to hear from users of 漢字 that use it too. (I understand the distaste for Jyutping 😅)
In Germany, a guy invented a keyboard for typewriters in which the individual letters of the hammer were not to get stuck together, which is why he made all the frequently used letters far apart.
@@Yolwoocle because it can't be because the word typewriter all fits on the top row, and er are never ever used together. Qwerty was actually the result of capitalism. Just like how the letter Thorn is now missing due to printing presses. way back when the typewriter was new, there was a bunch of different systems, and only one company used the Qwerty layout and also patented it. That one company also had the most deals with schools teaching how to type, and the most deals with other companies. and now, as everyone learnt how to type on one keyboard layout, and only one company made that keyboard layout, they achieved a monopoly. and qwerty is still seen everywhere to this day
Japanese be like: Hey, let's add two other writing systems, a shitload of pronunciation and remove the tonal system so everything sounds the same, because Chinese wasn't difficult enough
Idk about the sounding the same part. Every Chinese speech I ever hear sounds damn near identical, whereas Japanese speech varies more? Idk if that’s a matter of hearing Japanese media/language more than Chinese, but I still feel like Chinese is the more samey language
@@michaelspleg1228 There are a lot of hanzi that sounds the same (even up to the intonation) but mean completely different things, making you having to rely on the context of the sentence. Japanese also have this problem. Idk, they're about the same level of difficulty. The only thing that made Japanese feel easier to learn (for me at least) is the furigana that occasionally appear, in books and other medium. Or sometimes they just straight up don't write kanji.
@@andrewlee4455 And thats where the hard part is. Japanese may sound phontically diverse but theres also a lot of homophones in japanese. One example is hashi. It both means bridge and chopstick. And without the correct spelling of the word its difficult to know what the context of the sentence is. Specially japanese sentences doesnt use spaces
When I lived in Beijing a friend borrowed me a Taiwanese simple cellphone (not smartphone) where I had two options: one was to type with specific symbols that represented syllables, the other was to use root strokes of the characters. It's not simple, but not as complicated as this video says.
Seriously though Taiwan should switch to Pinyin because Wade-Giles Romanisation is ugly as fuck and nowhere near the accurate pronunciation. Like Taiwanese president Jiang Jingguo becomes "Chiang Ching-kuo"
@@skazka3789 Oh yea the Taiwanese version of romanisation is rlly bad ngl but that aside I still rlly appreciate the fact that zhuyin system exist and still is being used, like most foreigners cant even imagine that there *is* an "alphabetical system" used native to the Mandarin language (at least to some of its speakers).
it's similar to pinyin when you type, it's just another phonetic system. but if taiwanese can write traditional chinese characters, the language can be preserved. the burdens are on you to preserve chinese culture
@@skazka3789 disagree. their spelling makes more sense for foreigners to pronounce, which is the point of languages. pinyun are just standardized phonetic symbols , not to communicate with foreigners.
@@user-zv8qg1co4z Cursive requires both the person writing to be skilled enough to hand write legible cursive and for the reader to have the ability to understand what is written. Both of these skills take time and effort to learn and for a slightly faster to use form of print the cost to value is just not really there. Cursive also shatters under the scrutiny of it's usability for public applications. Since it is an alternate font less people will know it, even if that 'less people' is 1% of the people reading your sign taking that hit in understandability is a large sacrifice for any business or government org. Additionally cursive requires more finger dexterity to write and better eyesight to read than standard fonts do making it less usable for people with even minor disability in these areas. Cursive and calligraphy in general are nice as art but as common written word there is very good reason we use and teach standard print instead.
Arithmetic is a waste of time to get good at. We're intrinsically so bad at it that even scientists just wrote everything down into log tables and referenced those before we had calculators. We're simply better at other things.
@@RamiAbdelal Some people are ridiculously gifted at mathematics and can process complex formulas in their head like others might understand a narrative in a book. Not everyone has the same abilities with math of course.
Lol Ooh, ooh We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you We've known each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game, and we're gonna play it And if you ask me how I'm feeling Don't tell me you're too blind to see Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up) (Ooh, ooh) Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up) I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you (Ooh, ooh, ooh) (Ooh, ooh, ooh) We've know each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game, and we're gonna play it I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Correction: Chinese characters do incorporate the pronounciation into their written forms. Various words which are hard to depict or not common enough for their own symbol were created in a way that a part of them hints to their pronounciation and the other specifies it closer. Example: 化 huà to change 花 huā flower (化 + grass) 貨 huò products (化 + shellfish/money)
yea there are many Chinese charactera the carry a specific Pronounction so you can read the more complex 12 stroke characters or whatever but it's not something really build into the language like that. it's seems it's usually there because of meaning and historic reasons.
@@gorilladisco9108 I mean just because two characters sound similar (add a -ng sound) doesn't mean they're related in any way. 黄, 簧, 磺, 璜, 潢, and 蟥 are all pronounced huáng
Well, there are actually some people that types chinese using keypads similiar to the ones find on your telephone, yes that one with the numbers 0-9. As you might have notices there are letters under the numbers and they just think about the word they are gonna type in Pinyin and then just touch on the corrosponding number then with the help of the intelligent ime they select what they want and finally type the word (This only applies to mobile users). Also a number of my elders use hand write ime's to type chinese (you draw the word with your finger).
I find it strange that not many people seem to use Hand written IME despite my ENTIRE family, including extended, uses it. And it’s not just the older generations, my younger cousins also use it. Maybe this is a HK thing? Cuz with this we can write in Cantonese and Mandarin at the same time and nobody really uses Jyutping (Cantonese pinyin), as opposed to Pinyin. The most common texting methods within my circles are - Hand written and voice messages.
@@leonardchung3825 Seems Cantonese doesn't have a dominant phonetic system. In mainland elementary school, we learn Pinyin earlier than characters, and learn pinyin input in computer class... Though I'm curious how do you guys type with 9-key keyboard, by stroke?
@@leozixiliu4646 There is a 9 key pinyin input, I've used it, and sometimes it can be the default pinyin input for phones. The keys "ABC", "DEF", etc, correspond to letters like a T9 flip phone keypad would, and it is used for romanization input, not stroke order.
native speaker here, and you did a great job on this video seeing as you balanced clarity to a western audience and accuracy. however i just thought that i needed to add on something: you mentioned that there is no official phonetic spelling, and many options would work. this is partially true in that there are indeed many different systems, but it is an oversimplification. different romanization systems dominate in different countries/places. in china and much of the chinese speaking world, the phonetic spelling in the hanyu pinyin system is the main system used for almost all purposes, including typing on the qwerty keyboard. however, differing from china, taiwan has used various different romanization systems- such as the tongyong pinyin and the wade-giles system. a manifestation of it would be names- the taiwanese president 蔡英文s name is romanized as tsai ing-wen, while in hanyu pinyin it'll be cai yingwen. so basically my point is that different countries use different systems and it definitely isn't that random !
I am happy about logical use of "c" in hanyu pinyin. It used this way in latin-writing slavic languages and it is way better than using "ts" for this sound. But in my language there is "ц" for it. And i guess 蔡英文 would be written Цай Ин-Вен (or maybe Инь-Вэн).
@@sodinc “logical” and “way better” all depend on what the speakers first language is. From an English speaker’s view point, it would be neither logical nor way better. Of course, for anyone learning another language, one has to accept there will be differences in spelling and pronunciation, so I would argue the use of ‘c’ in pinyin is different than English and similar in Slavic languages, but can only be described as ‘better’ from a subjective point of view
There is a transliteration used on Taiwan I presume from Hokkien which looks more like VIet than Pinyin. Or maybe it's Vietnam's own version of pinyin.
@@locacharliewong do you think that people who use Cangjie are then able to write characters more accurately than those who use pinyin as they have to remember all the elements rather than just the sound?
0:23 did you miss the story about how the inventor of the typewriter wanted to put all the letters of 'typewriter' on the top line as a sales gimmick? The Q was just thrown in there because it was an uncommon letter and might as well be father from the home row.
As someone who learned English as my second language - I disagree. When learning new words, seeing how they are written is usually somewhat enough to start pronouncing them and be understood. Of course, seeing a phonetic explanation of a word is much more precise.
Yeh, English really is pretty horrible at that, especially considering the phonetic history (not sure if that is the correct term). Leads to things like the ghoti = fish joke. But despite the vowel shift, writing seems doable for most people with some experience with the language. Then again, as a european, I had it easy. Probably confusing for some other language families.
@@axelaguirre5014 goes is read as gows Does is read as das Shed is read as shed She is read as she Read is read as rid but also read as red. Confusing right?
This is a good video that’s very accessible to a wide audience, but this isn’t accurate. Yes, some people forget how to write some words sometimes, but so does literally everyone who is literate. There is no hard evidence presented in this video. On the contrary, a higher percentage of people in mainland China can read and write Chinese than even in all of Chinese history. Right now is the golden era of Chinese literacy. There is also a way to write Chinese characters called zhuyin or bopomofo that reflects a Chinese language solution to phonetics. Zhuyin is more common in Taiwan, but it’s easy to see zhuyin in mainland China too (especially in trendy places or milk tea shops). There are also big problems with the way romanization works in Chinese. It’s really hard to write tone in most keyboards, which is an obvious drawback. And I have never seen someone write something out in pinyin that was not meant to be read by small children or foreigners. Honestly, I think this is a bit sensationalized for a story. I don’t have any problem with that. It is informative. I’m just writing this for people who were curious.
I don't speak or write Chinese but if we were to compare it with let's say English what the video said is akin to forgetting how to write a character, not a word. Once you learn to a certain degree (1st grade of elementary school~ish) most people can remember the characters from A to Z for the rest of their lives
@@amnottabs Most chinese characters are made up of smaller, simpler characters, so forgetting how to write a letter in english would be akin to forgetting how to write the 口 in 语
I concur with Mason. This is totally a thing that Japanese friends have commented on too-with the han4zi4 or kanji (or hanja) presented to you by the input method, your ability to write without prompting deteriorates. Pin1yin1 / bopomofo / kana / romaji / hangul are all totally besides the point. (Korean has basically eliminated everyday hanja usage, and that was without the use of computers.) I wouldn't be so dramatic as to say that the ability to write han4zi4 / kanji / hanja is dying out exactly-it's not a rare sight to see someone pause mid-sentence, pick up their phone and give it a few taps, then to re-place their pen on paper and carry on writing all in one fluid motion. Interestingly my parents use the handwriting input method on their phones, rather than one that spells things out phonetically.
phono-semantic compounds say hi but great video! i’m only very beginning to learn the language but i’m more comfortable with the actual hanzi over pinyin, trying to choose characters from pinyin input stresses me out so i actually use a written keyboard lol. it may be because i’m learning it through reading instead of listening but i’ve always been so interested in the written language, the way it works is so cool!
"how you write a character is nothing to do with how its pronounced" technically, you can guess how a chinese word is pronounced for certain characters. many chinese words can be split into two parts: 1. the first half usually suggests meaning, eg. if the character for 'rain' was at the top of a word, the word often relates to weather. or if the left side is the character for 'leg', than the whole word usually relates to kicking, or jumping etc. 2. the second half usually relates to pronunciation. take lan ( 兰 ) as an example. it is pronounced in the second tone. the word lan ( 烂 ) also has the 兰 on the right side, therefore it is also pronounced 'lan' aswell, but this time it is in the fourth tone. however, the two different words still have very similar pronunciations in conclusion, while chinese characters may look completely different and unique, there are some clues you can pick up along the way to guess the meaning and pronunciation!
Sam: "There's a very close connection with how you write an English word and how you say it" English: hold my choir, queue, quay, tough, trough, though, through, thorough, hiccough...
0:35 apparently, typebars used to get tangled a lot because people were typing faster than what the typewriter can handle so Christopher Latham Sholes rearranged the keyboard layout to slow people down. The 'QWERTY' came from the first six letters in the layout
It's like not knowing how to drive someplace that you've already been to several times before, because you always used GPS navigation prompts to guide you there.
Hmm, not really. You'll still automatically memorize the road because you're still actively driving. It's more like driving someplace you've been to numerous times but for the first time without autopilot.
@@ruthswann88 Maybe she knows the way but is just insecure about it. I've seen people drive with GPS all the time because they somehow doubt their ability to remember roads.
I routinely travel with an organization. We take turns driving and carpool. Half of the drivers seem to be able to instinctively see the map and after driving it once or twice no longer need any prompts. The other half seemed to be glued to their GPS/GoogleMaps/ or have the co=pilot telling them where to go, even though they have been to the same place multiple times. One of the differences seems to be if they were trained in how to use a map and how often they used it before all the computer aids became available.
"How you write a word has nothing to do with how you pronounce it." it does, just not every word for example 少 (shao), and when you add other things near it they commonly pronouce as "sha" for example 砂, 纱, and 沙. Then if you add more things around them they most probably will also pronouced the same, like 裟.
Quite. Thanks for bringing this up. As real life example, I certainly do not "know" the character for sand, but do know its pronunciation (我很喜欢吃长沙面）So knowing the meaning of the water radical plus the meaning and pronunciation of "少“， it became a rather easy informed guess as the meaning and pronunciation of "沙”
@@FrozenBusChannel There definitely aren't hard rules but there's actually some research out there showing that the pronunciation rules get more regular for rarer characters while more common characters are more likely to have irregular pronunciations. Which is no help when learning to pronounce the common characters 😉
hey bro this is true I had some Chinese friends tell me that they forget how to write Chinese haha. I didn't believe it at until I started to learn and notice that typing, reading and speaking Chinese are a completely different and easy to learn skill then writing.
1:49 As a native speaker of Chinese, there is quite a bit of relationship for the word and how pronounce it. Some characters is called 形聲字 which is made up of the part to show what is it related and the sound of it. For an example, the character 棋 (pronounced as Qi4), which mean chess. The left part is 木, which means wood, showing the chess is actually made out of wood (at least in the past). The right side is 其, which is also pronounced as Qi4, shows the way to pronounce it.
Absolutely correct. we often do know how to pronounce a new word, even if it's one of the more archaic and obscure ones. 林琳霖淋痳碄晽箖 甲鉀岬胛柙舺玾 遣譴繾 囧冏炯迥泂浻絅㢠埛扃 鑾鸞攣巒欒孿孌灤圞癵臠虊曫羉灓圝癴 I'll admit I purposely looked for some of the more absurd examples, but that's the point. Chinese has a lot more structure and essence than non-speakers realize because they don't know how to "think Chinese". It's like asking a basketball player to play soccer.
@@scrambledmandible I said basketball, and I played both growing up, so I know that an athlete from either sport can learn the other. The issue is that doing so requires a mental shift because the structure and nuances of both sports are fundamentally different. The athlete cannot simply use the same skills from one sport in the other.
The forgetting part is exaggerated, think more forgetting how to spell a specific word you know like spelling photoes instead of photos. There are little sub-Alphabets that are combined to form a chinese word or character. People often forget or mix up which sub-alphabet is used just like how people also mix up alphabets in english
@@Jo-vn7tg well chinese is more complex, in English a string of characters form to make a word but in mandarin a single character can be counted as a word too. So It’s something like our ABC’s each have their own smaller subset of ABC’s people often confuse the little subsets. An example is b and d, people might confuse one for the other when writing because of the similarities. I probably could’ve phrased my original sentence better but forgive me because it’s not my first language.
@@scintillam_dei but here's the thing. does mandarin writing can write all kinds of sounds? like for example Indonesian, Arabic, Malay? cause i can clearly write any words of indonesian language whicth has diferent accent and more sub voices depending on the reigon(reigonal language) so like in jakarta it is lo but in madura it's diferent. lo is kamu and sometimes i cound spell something in indonesian language that has a strong E with just 1 e
About the beginning: The qwerty Keyboard comes from early typewriters where the most used letters are usually around each other. This explains too why european keyboards sometimes have qwertz.
"Chinese has more characters than an Avengers movie" I take that as an insult. It should be, Chinese has hundreds of times more characters than an Avengers movie. Cos I swear, as a Chinese growing up, there's still words I don't know.
@@FirstnameLastname-ml5bp I.... Didn't really count the number of words I know, but I do know that I could converse properly, though not deeply. So..... Yeah.....
But it's not like anyone can easily learn every english word. If it's easy to learn every english word the spelling bee wouldn't be interesting to watch
side note: actually there are certain ways to learn to write Chinese characters(actions of certain verbs can sometimes be reflected onto the character itself, the other words of a similar sound have similarities in characters, too)
The qwerty keyboard came about because of typewriters. There was an issue with old typewriters where if you pressed two keys that were vertically aligned in quick succession then the keys would get caught on each other. So the qwerty layout was made such that common english letters weren’t directly above or below other common english letters.
Something to mention: Because the letters on the keyboard are arranged in a diagonal order (Q next to A, next to Z next to 2), characters like R and T actually have would have had three keybars between them (between R and T are F, V, and 5). Of course, that became a non-issue with typewriters like the IBM Selectric which used a typing element that was like a ball which made key jams impossible. It also allowed better keyboard layouts like DVORAK to be possible, but QWERTY remains the standard because it became established and inertia keeps in use.
As a Hongkonger, i can tell you that there are a lot of method to type chinese.For example, most people in hk uses strokes(not sure about the English name) It only has 5 keys and is based on how you wrote the word.There are also CangJie(倉頡)and a simplified version of it(速成)which are also based on how you write it.Pinyin are most commonly used in mainland China and Malaysia or Singapore. So in short, places that use simplified Chinese prefer pinyin which is easier,while places that used traditional chinese eg.hongkong,taiwan,macau uses method which are more fundamental
The divide is between the communist and nationalist. Hong Kong, Malaysia, Macau, and Singapore used to use "traditional" Chinese characters. But (if my memory serves me well) since 1990s Malaysia and Singapore switched their allegiance to "simplified" Chinese characters, along with its pinyin counterpart because it's easier to learn for younger generations who are used to Latin alphabet. Taiwan doesn't because .. well, it's communist invention. And Hong Kong are worst version of that line of thinking.
My dad is a language nerd and i started getting suggestions for this channel from youtube and im starting to flood my dad with great ones like this where on one hand i learn something very interesting and also cant help but laugh at all the detailed descriptions of a keyboard.
I remember a Chinese girl telling me that, in English you see an unknown word, you know how to pronounce it, but not what it means, but in Chinese you know what it means but not how to pronounce it.
That girl lied to you; English has basically no phonetic consistency and pronunciation rules are anarchy. You can take a wild guess, but you're still likely to be wrong.
@@youraftermyrobotbee same for Chinese though. There's a concept called "borrowing characters", and thus the meaning and the shape might not match in some cases. Not an issue for a semi fluent user but definitely a barrier for new learners.
No, you can't read an english word you don't know. You may get it right, or you may not.
@@youraftermyrobotbee sort of, but the problem is MUCH worse in Chinese.
If you see an unknown word in English, you have maybe a 40/60% chance of guessing its pronunciation right, and most of the time you'll say something that is at least sort of like the correct pronunciation.
With Chinese, there might be a phonetic component to a character, you might correctly guess which part it's supposed to be, and then you'll have a tiny chance of guessing how that other character is pronounced. So maybe 2%, being generous.
That is so true, it makes it so hard for me to ask Siri because I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce it. You can’t even type it out. The only way is if you can write it out
He’s been on a streak of uploading to the right channel, good job Sam.
?
@@torpid he accidently uploads on wendover sometimes
For people who are going to say that they are not the same guy for them 6:28 of this video which explains it’s the same person
If you break something interesting in half, you get 2 half as interesting topics to make into videos. He's got the math all worked out!
Oh no, the secret has been revealed.
Ooh, ooh
We're no strangers to love
You know the rules and so do I
A full commitment's what I'm thinking of
You wouldn't get this from any other guy
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
We've known each other for so long
Your heart's been aching but
You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on
We know the game, and we're gonna play it
And if you ask me how I'm feeling
Don't tell me you're too blind to see
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)
(Ooh, ooh)
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
(Ooh, ooh, ooh)
(Ooh, ooh, ooh)
We've know each other for so long
Your heart's been aching but
You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on
We know the game, and we're gonna play it
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
This is why some of my friends and family who are chinese only write in chinese using the draw feature on their phones, rather than the keyboard.
But the draw feature can be really buggy at times. If it doesn't like your handwriting, or you try to draw too complex of a character, it can just completely screw you over, then you have to resort back to the pinyin keyboard
@@bluehoodie_gamer6867 then you just messing up the stroke order my guy
@@emilt.m.6418 no sometimes it doesn’t work well
many older generations don't know pinyin so they use the draw pad
@@NoCareBearsGiven work pretty well. I don't know which software you're using
"Ranked 1st in population, 2nd in economy and 36th alphabetically" is such a hilarious line 🤣🤣🤣
Yes
3rd in ethnic cleansing and 2,784th in human rights.
@@almightyhydra 2784th out of 193 or so?
@@howdoipickaname9815 yes
@@howdoipickaname9815 what about the places on other planets
Don't you just hate it when you accidentally break someone's language and they retaliate by breaking your recycling system
Lol, recycling isn't actually effective
@@johnmidwest5650 wdym
And when they give the world coronavirus.
He watched wendover’s video on recycling.
Oops
"For the prior generations who walked to their character-writing lessons uphill both ways" lmao
"You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road" :-D
How have people not heard this common and ancient joke before? 🤨
Classic asian parent comments 🤣🤣😂
@@DrChrisBiomed ooh. Look at lord fauntleroy with his shoe box. I grew up living in a hollowed out cowpat.
In a blizzard with snow flying..
Whether this writing system is good or bad is really a matter of a pinyin.
good one
I see what you did there! 😂
Some may brush it off, but I think it's a stroke of genius.
Hats off, dear sir!
You spelled onion wrong... dammit!😖
Here's an interesting fact about that guy who created Pinyin: he's also known for his extremely old age (even by Chinese standards), having died in 2017 the day after his 111th birthday.
the guy who literally invented chinese characters has fuckin 4 eyes lol wtf. when i first saw that, i thought it was a meme joke
@@xXxSkyViperxXx source
@@xXxSkyViperxXx He's a legendary figure, so his very existence is debatable.
I don't care. That's not how I type in Chinese. I'm sorry. He doesn't affects my life at all.
@@alca6480 makes him much more of a meme. the legend, the myth, the meme, the mythical legendary 4 eyed ancient chinese wise man lol
"Like when you spell 'definitely' wrong for the 500th consecutive time and autocorrect bails you out."
I didnt want to get called out on UA-cam today
Definitely
Ooh, ooh
We're no strangers to love
You know the rules and so do I
A full commitment's what I'm thinking of
You wouldn't get this from any other guy
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
We've known each other for so long
Your heart's been aching but
You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on
We know the game, and we're gonna play it
And if you ask me how I'm feeling
Don't tell me you're too blind to see
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)
(Ooh, ooh)
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
(Ooh, ooh, ooh)
(Ooh, ooh, ooh)
We've know each other for so long
Your heart's been aching but
You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on
We know the game, and we're gonna play it
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
I defiantly laughed at this comment.
@Liam Durr *Definatly
@@jannovotny4797 defliantoly
It's literally just definite and ly. I don't get how people fuck it up.
Fun fact: People in Hong Kong mostly type Chinese in a way called Cangjie, which disassembles the characters and assigns parts to 26 English characters, say typing 一大 (M and K) gives you 天 (meaning sky)
so then what keys in order would you have to press to write 𰻞 (biáng)?
@@chuuisinsane Biang? Oh as in the noodle dish? Yeah, no chinese keyboard has that word
But of course, it's important to know that the "MK" has nothing to do with the Chinese character. That just happens to be the symbols' QWERTY positions. What was actually typed was "一大". Similarly to a Russian keyboard, if you want to type "Россия" (Rossiya/Rossija/Rossiâ), you type HJCCBZ, which also means nothing.
So then it kinda works like the korean keyboard right
So similar to how Japanese keyboards work?
Actually, Pinyin is mostly used in China. In places like Taiwan, we use 注音符號(Mandarin Phonetic Symbols) like ㄅㄆㄇㄈ to type, so our keyboard has an English symbol, a Mandarin Phonetic Symbol(ZhuYin Symbol), a Cangjie Symbol (Which the Cangjie typing input method uses) , and occasionally punctuation marks. But because Mandarin Phonetic Symbol(Which most Taiwanese use) are not related to how the Chinese characters are written, so character amnesia is also common in Taiwan. (P.S. Although most of your images in this video are Chinese, the picture at 2:04 is a picture of the Taoyuan National Airport in Taiwan, which uses Traditional Chinese instead of Simplified Chinese.)
現在用倉頡的應該都老人了
Mainland China and Taiwan, not China and Taiwan.
You're not a real country.
You're never going to be a country.
Papa America will not be able to save you from us. And as time goes on, this will only become more and more certain.
If you don't like it, move away.
中华人民共和国战术恐吓局
Bureau of Tactical Intimidation,
People's Republic of China
It’s actually a picture of the Hong Kong international airport as you can see that it’s 離港 which 港stands for香港
Actually, we do have an alternative input system called “Wu Bi” (五笔), which literally translates to "Five Pen Strokes". This input method assigned all the Chinses characters into different groups made of components. As you might notice, most of the Chinese characters are made of indexing components. For example, the word "mom" in Chinese (妈) is consist of "女" which suggests it is something related to female, and "马" which is suggesting its pronunciation "ma". Wu Bi input dived all the components into 5 different groups and mapping them on keyboards. When typing, one just needs to remember the correct combination then he or she can type any Chines character he or she wants.
Wu Bi is way faster than pinyin, and since its input method is similar to the writing system, it also helps people remember those characters. However, Wubi is extremely NOT beginner-friendly. It is hard to learn and requires more practice than pinyin. Thus, it is often used by professionals such as accountant, clerical workers, and writers only.
i remember there's a setting for that in a T9 Nokia phome
How popular is ZhuYin/Bopomofo in mainland China?
@@003mohamud indeed, not very popular in China. They are mainly uesd by Hong Kong，Taiwan people.
Five pen strokes Sounds like some Naruto technique
windows equivalent is zhengma
1:38 "There's a very close connection with how you write an English word and how you say it." *Tom Scott enters the chat* Did you know how many ways you can pronounce "ough"?
The Romance languages have joined the chat.
slavic languges: lol, you really bad at using alphabet guys, it meant to be a phonetic system.
"Xnopyt"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
@@IloveRumania laughs in French and Romanian
@@CARILYNF it would be cool :)
but it can be translated as "Odin`s son" and that is perfectly enough for me
The way you pronounce Zhou Youguang almost gave my grandma a heart attack, but you tried your best.
“Jeau Yoogooang”
Joe You Gwong
saad
@@timtam. who is joe
OK that made me laugh out loud
The side effect of the romanization of character-based languages is magnified because there are few situations where text needs to be written by hand in modern society. Thus it doesn't really matter for people to occasionally forget how to write a word of their native language, also it's easy for them to pick it up.
Chinese characters are still used heavily all the way through high school.
However I think china should move over to the wubi imput method. It,s hard but more efficient
Mandarin always seemed so inefficient for the amount of information is carried per syllable. Is there chinese internet slang to make sentences shorter? Instead of typing the entire sentence?
@@jacobsalmi5582 This kind of network language is very many, and various forms.Traditionally, Chinese has an idiom, a type of word that uses four or so characters to convey an allusion, often containing the meaning of a whole sentence, allowing the Chinese language to be concise when expressing complex topics（Like this one, it can be summed up as "言简意赅."）.
@@jacobsalmi5582 Modern people have created more new expressions, such as combining several idioms into one word. For example, the word "喜大普奔" will be "喜闻乐见（delighted to see）" "大快人心（greatly happy people）" "普天同庆（celebrate）" "奔走相告（run and tell）" four idioms extracted from the first Chinese characters, formed a word, to express an extreme mood of joy.
@@jacobsalmi5582 Indeed. I'm learning Chinese right now and it just seems so inefficient. I would understand if the characters you wrote were much denser in content than, say, writing in English, but it's not.
4:28
"How you write a character has nothing to do with how you pronounce it."
Actually, it some what does. Usually, there's a base character, and additional components of a character called "radicals" are added to create more character, usually using the base character as a reference to hint how it's pronounced, with the radical giving a hint for the meaning or deriving another meaning for a given character.
For example: 坴 is pronounced lù (lu4), which by itself means something related to earth. By adding a radical meaning "mound," we get the character 陸, meaning "land" and is also pronounced lù (lu4). Add a radical meaning "grain" to the original character, and we get 稑, meaning "a grain that ripened too early" (don't know if it's used today, actually) which, you guessed, is pronounced lù (lu4).
This isn't always a 1-to-1 corresponded and not all derived character will share the same pronunciation as their original character. 曹 (cáo, cao2) is an old character meaning some sort of government official, but adding a radical meaning "walking" makes 遭 mean "to encounter; to suffer" with the pronunciation of zāo (zao1).
So, yeah. There's sort of a way of knowing how to pronounce a character without knowing how a radical changes the base character. It's not like most Western languages like English, Russian, Greek, but that's that.
Thats exatly how sometimes i know and dont know how to pronounce a character when I see it.
And to be fair he also somewhat overstates the connection between spelling and pronunciation in English. You can make a pretty good guess for the most part but then dough, bough, cough, and through all have different pronunciations for "ough".
@@loganrenfrow2544 Yeah but sometimes there's a common patterns and rules that can help you out in pronouncing those words too.
Even then, those radicals usually have more than one sound, you have to either remember which one it is, or to guess
Albeit, a similar sound.
Well, repetition does help, so yeah
PS: I am Greek, and well, I find Chinese easier than french even if french is a western language, this has to do with the grammar itself rather than the alphabet, but yeah.
The fact that verbs stay the same no matter if it is a past, present or future action makes it easier to form sentences.
Although, I really can't speak about this subject, I have been neglecting my Chinese for so long that I can't even recognize more than 50 characters
At least I can still read pin yin properly!
You are proving his point which is that the actual Chinese written language is a "picture" language. If you write the picture and unless you learned the meaning of that picture, you have no idea of how to pronounce it. Pinyin like the Western alphabet system makes it easy to write and pronounce the word. And so his point was that young people constantly use pinyin to find a character and they forget how to write the characters.
I lived in Taiwan for 4 years and then in China for 1 year and so I learned both the traditional and simplified writing systems. But I have been living in Japan for the last 20 years which also uses "kanji" but sometimes has a different meaning and some of their own characters. I can remember how to write easy characters that are a few strokes, but if you give me a more complex character like the character for dragon, I recognize it when I see it but it would be very difficult for me to write it by hand. Japanese are finding this exact same problem with Kanji.
bruh
1. 事 and 事兒 basically mean the same thing;
2. There is a offical phonetic spelling for Mandarin in Mainland China, which is the Hanyu Pinyin. To type 疹 you always type "zhen". Tying "zjen" or "zjeyn" simply won't work. There are non-official dialectal pinyins but that's another topic;
3. QWERTY isn't the only popular layout. T9 layout is also very popular on feature phones and smartphones;
4. Pinyin input wasn't really popular until somewhere around 2007 when companies came up with Pinyin IMEs that are smart enough for people to comfortably use. Back in the 80s and 90s, many people used Wubi (in the Mainland) and Cangjie (in Taiwan*, HK*), which are both shape-based input methods, because Pinyin IMEs were really dumb at that time.
* People in Taiwan mainly use Zhuyin now. People in HK still use Cangjie a lot.
I got confused af when he pulled out "zjen"
Knowledge. Fitting.
3. Mine is QWERTZ.
@@heavenascended It's probably Wade-Giles or one of the other older romanizations of Chinese.
Thank you Patchy
0:36 Here's why it's QWERTY: This dates back to when people used typewriters. Typewriters have little steel arms with letters on them that move up and hit the paper to print the letter when you press the respective key. On the first typewriters, letters on the keyboards were arranged alphabetically, and so were the little arms with the letters on them. But this created the problem that the little steel arms got tangled up with each other because the letters that were next to each other on the keyboard were often used successively in words. So they tried to figure out a letter arrangement that would prevent the little steel arms from getting tangled up in one another. And that's how the QWERTY (or QWERTZ in Germany) keyboard was made.
Could have not said it better.
Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner!
Exactly! Thank you for taking the time to write that out.
It baffled me when he said he couldn't find out why it's called QWERTY/Z or AZERTY... I thought it was common knowledge and pretty darn easy to find out as well ... ? 🤔🙈
Not a deep explanation, I am not buing this as you present
@@dioscur87 still the correct answer, even if you don’t believe it.
For anyone that's wondering: yes, there are other ways to write Chinese that don't rely on Pinyin. Most of Taiwan uses a bopomofo-based keyboard, for example. There are also non-phonetic input methods that rely on the shape of the character rather than the sound, including Cangjie, Boshiamy, and the 5-Input Method. A brief explanation of each:
Bopomofo - A homegrown Chinese phonetic system that doesn't rely on the Latin alphabet
Cangjie - Radical-based input method with portions of the alphabet dedicated to certain types of concepts
Boshiamy - 100% radical-based, with keyboard designations based off of letter shape and/or english meaning
5-Input - Similar to boshiamy, but the keyboard is divided into 5 regions based on radical shape
I used these system but their layouts don't take into account of character frequency or ergonomics like the query or Dvorak do.
I use Boshiamy, and with this radical based system, you *have* to know how the character is written in order to type it. So for me, the problem is reversed: I can type some obscure characters without knowing how to pronounce them.
To be fair Mainland brothers and sisters are too obsessed with those United States of America to even consider any alternatives to Pinyin, though I'm surprised that they don't use Wade-Giles.
I have a full handbook for typing Cangjie. This is because I speak Cantonese and pinyin input for Canto is uncommon.
@@acivilizedhuman thanks for sharing, I was curious about how this affects other language other than mandarin. I mean some are so sidelined that who is going to make a new program just to write their language?
QWERTY comes from when they made the first type writer. To fit all of the keys they had to make it so the push pins from when you tapped the keys not get tangled or too close. So they had to put it in that order and create the staggered layout and it was never changed to much
The first keyboard put the letters alphabetically. They discovered this slowed people down as they would run through the alphabet to remember where a letter should be in the order of the keyboard. So they mixed up the letters somewhat randomly (q seldom used was put in the most difficult position) forcing users even until today to memorize where the letters are.
Oh, we German change y to z and z to y. We add " for äöü and sz as one letter (ß). I learning typing a writing machine / typewriter as I was 7 or 8. With english keyboard we can use "ae" for ä. Easy.
@@rabbit251 This is wrong. Why people write lies or stupid things at UA-cam comments?
@@OldLordSpeedy Then give us the truth
the qwerty keyboard was invented in 1867 by Micheal Qwerty when he imprisoned his alphabet soup in tiny squares, thus creating the keyboard we all know and love
Sergio , you are naughty, naughty! People will not know that you are joking! Lol.
The qwerty keyboard is because the top left row of letters are arranged as "qwerty". The keyboard was arranged so that fast typists wouldn't jam keys together when typing on manual typewriters.
Imagine if the keyboard was an ABCDEF keyboard instead.
I guess nothing would be different actually, since it's just another order that would be our normal.
But I do wonder if the order would change in some languages, like would Spanish do KLMNÑOPQ?
@@Liggliluff , qwerty started because of mechanical typewriters. The reason that ABCDEF form is not used is because, in that format, typists were typing so fast that the mechanical character arms were getting tangled together.
When the character arms get tangled, you must stop and pull them apart. I've done this even with qwerty format. It would be worse with ABCDEF format.
@@Liggliluff I wonder how the order would change in languages that don't use the Latin script. Some Cyrillic keyboards use ЙЦУКЕН (JCUKEN); the Russian alphabet starts АБВГДЕ (ABVGDE) but not all Cyrillic alphabets do. The Greek equivalent would be ABГ∆EZ but the usual Greek keyboard layout is mostly just adapted from the QWERTY layout.
@@EpicB there are other layouts like german QWERTZ or french AZERTY
"the keyboard most of us use"
Germany: laughs in qwertz
Yep
more like central Europe
I'd say here in Czechia the z and y type are like 50/50
"most"
Dieser Kommentarbereich ist nun Eigentum der BRD.
That's why they said most
“In Chinese, how you write a word has nothing to do with how you pronounce it”
*Laughs in 形聲字*
Exactly.
Thank you!
I cringed
Which means sound radical and meaning radical. But you still have to remember the radical corresponds to what sound and meaning radical corresponds to what meaning. And it doesn't tell you which one is which to a new Chinese learner, which makes matters worse in a lot of situations. All he wanted to say is the Chinese language is totally within its own system.
@@EricYaominyu it gets far deeper than that. No one is saying that learning Chinese is as easy as learning a new alphabet or syllabary, but what he said was still completely false for at least 75% of commonly used characters.
*crys in not using doulingo*
"There is a very close connection with how you write an English word and how you say it."
Ah, if only...
What a moron! Every european language is more logically than English.
it is also possible to write the characters and input them digitally (known as 手寫輸入法).
It just needs a touchscreen/tablet and an awful lot of time
Its quite useful for some of my friends whom does know how to actually write that word out,but doesnt know how to spell it in pinyin format,while im facing the same problem as the one mentioned in the video:knowing the pinyin of the word but doesnt know how to actually write it out🤣
or just use the compromise between writing by hand and using keyboard: cangjie. each character is assigned a component of the Chinese character since the smaller parts of it are quite repeatedly used anyway
@Nephilimn My dad use that, because he never learn zhuyin at school
Depends, you get used to fast writing. You’ll be amazed how the phone/tablet can pick up characters.
@@TheZachary86 the accuracy and speed are inherently worse because the application needs to guess what the strokes are. The possible outcomes vary depending on the clarity of handwriting as well.
Apart from pinyin (fun fact: there aren't any "v"s in pinyin, so pressing "v" generates the vowel "ü" instead), there's also zhuyin fuhao which allows you to phonetically (ie. spell by breaking down a word into its sounds). In addition, there's also the cangjie and wubi, which allows you to write words based on its radicals/components rather than phonetically. In Taiwan, where apparently zhuyin fuhao is taught officially (versus pinyin in mainland China and other Chinese diasporas), keyboards can start looking really messy - just search up "Mandarin input keyboards" on Google Images, where keyboards can have up to 4 legends, one for each of the input methods.
@@TheMigdrew That's your accent. In Standard Chinese, "w" is always pronounced /w/.
@@weirdofromhalo lmao you're right. I should learn not to spout shit as fact before double checking. I've deleted the incorrect comment so I don't mislead others.
Wow lol I had always had trouble typing 女 in Chinese lol this is the first time I learned that it's spelled nv , I always thought that it was nu
Then there are Cantonese and Hokkien and Teochew, each with its own romanization, and General Chinese, which works for all Chinese languages, but if you speak one, there are words you pronounce the same but have to spell differently. (Hokkien and Fujian are the same word, in different Chinese languages.)
In HK to write cantonese they use either sucheng or cangjie. in TW only zhuyin is taught officially (has the very same usage of hiragana in japanese, difficult characters in books for kids are spelt out in zhuyin). U have also a cantonese version of pinyin, called jyutping
as a chinese speaking person, i'm amazed at the accuracy of this video. there's an alternate way to write chinese characters too, as even though all Chinese characters are unique, the way we write each character is based on a combination of different strokes, such as vertical lines, horizontal lines, a curved line and a few other strokes. despite each unique character, there is actually a "proper" way of writing each character, in terms of which part to start writing and which part to end off. however, it is very hard to standardize the sequence of strokes as there are different schools of thought, and although a keyboard for this method exists, most of us still use pinyin (qwerty keyboard) as it's less ambiguous, except for the few times where the word is commonly mispronounced (zhen vs zen, shan vs san) :)
Yeah, I type using zhuyin (also qwerty-compatible), so it's very similar. The simple fact is that we usually haven't done enough to innovate our own solutions, and in the situations where we have (such as cangjie), we haven't done enough to promote them.
I believe the shen vs sen problem can be fixed by choosing the “fuzzy input” option
How long does it take for a child to learn Chinese characters? I cant imagine studying 1000 character for a language
The "Ni hao, wo shi mei guo ren, wo de zhong wen bu hen hao" cracked me up. Is that the first sentence everyone learns in Mandarin class?
Unfortunately, many aspects of being Chinese in the modern world are still more reactive than most of us are willing to admit.
Coincidentally, I'm writing to you in English when I know we're both fluent in Chinese 囧
"Amerisplain" is some excellent wordsmithing, but personally I've always used "Laowai-splain" for when any foreigner to China (laowai 老外) steps up to explain something about China. Thanks for the great content!
Small correction: It's not entirely true that Chinese characters are completely independent from pronounciation. A lot of them have a semantic element (that tells you what the character is about) and a phonetic element (that basically tells you "this character sounds like this other character").
So... it is like this?: [SYMBOL] = ♪ *"Keikaku"* ♫
(integrated inside the symbol) -> note: _"Keikaku means plan,_ it also sounds like Ca, but with an e".
/s
but seriously, I think they need to make their own "hiragana", japan use hiragana in keyboard cuz it only has several characters, but they still use kanji for artistic, formal, and historical purpose
Chinese Hanzi consist to a large extent of particles. Just like Japanese Kanji consists of smaller particles, for example 板 which mean board/plank which consists of 3 particles.
In Chinese however often most there's a phonetic particle embedded and a topic particle as well, so for example;
妈 which means mother, consist of two separate hanzi (nu)女(woman) and (ma)马(horse) however 妈(Mā) is pronounced similar to 马(Mǎ). In that case the Horse is the phonetic marker and woman is the topic marker.
@Blind Bob 4:18
@@ariloussant I read that hiragana was invented in 910AD because japanese women that low educated use hiragana cuz its simpicity, I wonder what chinese women use in old era... are they all know hanzi?
As a Chinese, I have to say, I now remember the writing of less Chinese characters than I did 20 years ago in middle school.
As an American, we have the same problem with cursive writing.
Is there chinese advocating for dropping traditional characters and only using pinyin ?
@@vukkulvar9769 there were discussions of dropping traditional Chinese character and only use Latin based characters or Pinyin in around 1900 when China suffers from domestic and international struggles. But now after China rises and self esteem of the Chinese people recovers with it, dropping traditional character becomes oblivion and even a joke to Chinese people. Two Asian countries used to use Chinese language but dropped, vietnam and South Korea, face difficult situation of a discontinued history and even culture because all their history are written in Chinese and their young people can’t read Chinese any more. On the contrary, Japan keeps using Chinese based writing system and Japan is one of the most richest, economically and culturally, country in the world. So there’s nothing wrong with the Chinese writing system. on the contrary, Chinese language has deep philosophy embedded in the manifestation of the Chinese character.
@@vukkulvar9769 just using pinyin would be scary. it would be harder for a lot of reading since each chinese word has like 1000 homophones.
@@vukkulvar9769 Not possible at all. There are 4 tones in chinese, and there could be hundreds of words that use just those four exact spellings and tones, so you would have absolutely no idea what is written if you only use pinyin when writing
This is actually very true. There’s even an Asian boss video asking people on the streets in China how to write out everyday words like “toothbrush” and everyone was struggling to do it. Recognizing a character is very different from actually writing it in Chinese
牙刷
i tried so hard memorizing how it is written but i cant... until i typed it out on my keyboard
now i feel dumb
From your name, I'm guessing you're Japanese.
I'm curious, does this problem of forgetting how to write Chinese characters exist among the Japanese youth too?
@@Incognito-rb4tz I just watched that Asian boss video and they were actually asking toothpaste (牙膏), which is even harder to write out 😂
@@make-some-noise that one is easier because its less complex
@@Incognito-rb4tz the problem with 膏 is that it has an area of high-frequency detail in the middle, where the 口 is stacked on top of the 月. Many would just straight up forget how many horizontal strokes they need to put in that area and end up omitting elements.
I think it's just one of those things that change with time. Soon, it will become a hobby, something enjoyed by native enthusiasts and diligent foreigners trying to learn the language (for example, I am studying Japanese, which uses Chinese characters roughly half the time, and so I have to learn how to write). In English, we have cursive. I can only sign my name, but because I grew up seeing it, I can read most cursive while some of my friends can't even read it, and the next generation will likely struggle. However, there are those who enjoy writing in cursive as a hobby.
As a foreigner trying to learn Mandarin AFTER moving to China, it was always funny to me how I would visualize the Pinyin for a word rather than the word itself. I would look at characters and translate them to Pinyin and THEN translate to English. Then I would memorize the Pinyin and only recall the character if I saw it. I could never write much more than my name by hand.
i’m learning japanese, and same. i’m getting better at it, but whenever i try to read a word my brain gives to romaji instead of the kana. writing is a whole process for me instead of just writing what’s in my head.
@@rainewhispers739 how did you get better at it? I practice learning kanji with furigana and no romaji but my head always goes to romaji
@@spongeborgtheford4971 i just try my best to either think of the kana or only the sound in my head. it’s not a very fast process, haha
@@rainewhispers739 i also used to have that issue, but now i use a dictionary that only shows the kana and not the romaji, and now i no longer have that issue, so i recommend trying that if you can
@EaqIe I think what I need right now is reading practice. I've kinda paused my learning for a bit but even though I have the kanas memorized, I don't use them as much as I should. I think that would help my brain think in kanas
I'm a real life example of this. I can read and type Chinese perfectly fine, but ask me to handwrite the same character's I had just read / typed, then I'll be completely screwed.
same
Oh ur here lol
I can read and type and speak Chinese very well but fail almost every spelling test on paper
F
Yeah I’m learning mandarin in uni and the writing tests are kinda hard cause I learnt to write online rather than in person so I can write on a keyboard but not in paper.
Each Chinese character has an official Pinyin spelling assigned to them, or a few official Pinyin spellings if the character is polyphonic. However, a lot of people don't actually know how to properly pronounce the characters so modern input method editors have the Fuzzy Pinyin feature, which allow Pinyin spellings that are slightly wrong.
There is also Wubi which uses the Qwerty keyboard but is based on how a character is written instead of how it is read. But Pinyin is much easier than Wubi so most people use Pinyin.
Thank you for your comment! I didn't know of Wubi - I have something to track down and read. I heard years ago that the Chinese have valued their character system in part because it isn't normally used phonetically; it is a cognitive system. Apparently Miao, Cantonese, Szechuan (a dialect, I think), Manchu speakers may not be mutually intelligible to each other in speech but can communicate clearly when it is written.
I wonder if the use of electronic tablets and stylus/finger will increase with Chinese-speakers. Am told that even the order of the brush strokes in older Chinese calligraphy is significant to the construction of the character. Please don't beat me up too badly here - I am only an armchair linguist fascinated with writing systems. Your thoughts, please?
@@STScott-qo4pw not the op, but Chinese people who speak dialects (ex. Sichuanese) will often still know Mandarin because it's kind of like the "official language"... Therefore they'll still be able to type using pinyin (my mom for example, who is from Sichuan, only uses the qwerty keyboard for pinyin and not the handwriting keyboard)
There might be pinyin keyboards that are specific to Cantonese and other dialects, but I'm honestly not sure about this. I wouldn't be surprised if Cantonese people have their own system since it's quite different from Mainland speaking
I can never get the in/ing & z/zh right, so it's often a huge fail lol
@@STScott-qo4pw With phones and tablets, people still use Pinyin. There is a gesture input mode on Android that involves moving your finger through a 3 by 3 grid (9key glide typing), but ultimately, that is still backed by Pinyin. While the Chinese writing system might be interesting to some, the average person really just want to get things done. Pinyin is the easiest input method so that is what people use.
@@STScott-qo4pw yes , the strokes is important as it will perfectly form the characters if you follow it perfect. Ofc you could stroke it in a different way and still get the same characters. Its like how you write the number 5 , do you start with the top first or the bottom? Either ways it would look the same but will probably look off from the "official" way of writing.
Qwerty the name comes from the first 6 digits on the standard keyboard, the Qwerty design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to E. Remington and Sons in 1873
No shit Einstein.
*The world: *Uses QWERTY
Germany: laughs in QWERTZ
Russia: йцукен
хахахахахаха¡
France uses AZERTY
@Gizio the Jackal PYFGCRL
Me, most of the time: aoeuidhtns
When typing Russian: фывапролджэ
When typing Hebrew: שדגכעיחלךף
@@pierreabbat6157 You have my respect Stark.jpg
Well qwerty is supposed to be based on how frequently letters are used so the "rare" ones are shoved to the hard to reach places, so logically all languages would have a different optimization of the keyboad plus any common lattin letters absent from english like (ñ, ë, ö, ect). That while touchscreen keyboards can recognize a hold for more options a mechanical keyboard is basically one to one ignoring shift/alt/control or those special control 1834 codes for characters that are obnoxious to use.
Disclaimer: my only need for special/foreign characters are for math, highschool spanish, and greek life fraternity names, so i don't know what native speakers of other languages consider normal for keyboard inputs.
So... The Chinese Equivalent of me forgetting how to spell a word and googling it.
So when an English speaker has to convert it, we convert from concept to word, and then word to correct spelling of the word.
When a Chinese person has to convert, they convert from concept to word, word to symbol, then symbol to correct "spelling" (ie: the exact strokes you're supposed to use)
There's an extra level of conversion they need to make creating a greater chance of forgetting.
That said, I'm guessing that perception of this is fueled by people seeing this foreign alphabet be used to define their own alphabet and looking for confirmation bias that it will be the end of their own heritage.
@@forgottenfamily as a russian speaker i just write a word how i say it, because we really use phonetic spelling, not like in english, where it is used somewhat arbitrary.
P.S. yeah, there are some words in russian with rather archaic spelling - these are exceptions.
@@forgottenfamily They could just do what the Japanese did and create 3 alternate alphabets so the new alphabet for typing is still their own.
@@forgottenfamily I'm pretty sure that you also have to convert between the concept of letters in your head and the lines on paper.
I'd call it the Chinese equivalent of cursive becoming forgotten.
Fun fact: there are actually sound radicals in some characters that can determine how the character is pronounced.
But you can't type it down, well, not with Pinyin system.
Taiwan use another typing system called Zhuyin with which you can also type down the sound radicals.
Simplified Chinese broke that.
You're only half right. It's the part of the character that *isn't* the radical that determines the pronunciation of the character. It also isn't some characters, it's most characters. For characters that are constructed in this manner, the radical gives a rough indication of the meaning of a character whereas the rest of the character gives a rough indication of its pronunciation.
For example, a character that looks like this 狼 can be mentally interpreted as "a word that sounds like liáng (良) and has a meaning relating to beasts (犭)". One who is familiar with the spoken language should then recognize that the spoken word that matches that description is "láng", which means "wolf".
Taking this example further, we start with 良, which is pronounced "liáng". Its meaning is "good" or "very", but that's irrelevant here because it's used for its pronunciation, not its meaning.
Add the radical for "beast", and you get 狼, which is pronounced "láng" and means "wolf".
Add the radical for "foot", and you get 踉, which is pronounced "liàng" and means "to jump" or "to stagger".
Add the radical for "water", and you get 浪, which is pronounced "làng" and means "wave".
Add the radical for "dirt", and you get 埌, which is pronounced "làng" and means "wasteland".
Add the (right-side) radical for "moon", and you get 朗, which is pronounced "lǎng" and means "clear" or "bright".
Add the (right-side) radical for "town", and you get 郎, which is pronounced "láng" and means "official", "man", or "youth".
@@-haclong2366 apparently you dont understand how Pinyin or Zhuyin or Simplify Chinese or Traditional Chinese works..for the record i use both systems regularly。
they are just same system with different symbols to mark the pronunciation。 Pinyin also uses the same sound radicals as Zhuyin，we just dont need to "type" them down since we type “words” rather than single “characters”
Thankfully you don't need to type it that way for it to recognize which word you want... There's still one thing wrong about this video
The character itself actually has something to do with it's meaning and pronunciation
There are many alternative input methods. Zhuyin (also based on sound), as well as Cangjie, Wubi and Sucheng which are based on the ideogram. They are faster to type with than the sound based input, but they take much longer to learn and memorize
Zhuyin is the one most commonly used in Taiwan. However I find it somewhat confusing.
@@melody5296 how is it confusing?
@@nutronstar45 Having to learn 39 symbols in addition to the Latin Alphabet. This requires basically learning a 2nd alphabet just to learn how to read Chinese characters. For some learners, this is a step-too-many. Pinyin, while not perfect, at least moves directly from Latin (the most readable writing system) to characters without the "middle man."
@@ZhangtheGreat i get that it's too much for some people, but i don't get how that's confusing. also, we generally only use 37 characters (ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌㄍㄎㄏㄐㄑㄒㄓㄔㄕㄖㄗㄘㄙㄧㄨㄩㄚㄛㄜㄝㄞㄟㄠㄡㄢㄣㄤㄥㄦ).
also, why do you think that the latin alphabet is the "most readable" writing system?
@@nutronstar45 It's the "most readable" in that it's the most widespread. Latin letters are taught basically everywhere; we can't say the same for any other writing system.
1:53 Adding the 兒 doesn’t make it another word, it’s a characteristic of e.g. the Peking accent to change the ending sounds a bit.
Also, adding characters doesn’t magically transform what the characters mean. With this example 有事 is literally “have + business” which also makes sense in english (as in having business (to attend to)).
i saddened my chinese teacher who was teaching 撒娇 when i pointed out 撒谎 ..
撒 means sow in both cases! so yeah, it doesn't magically change... but ...
As a Chinese, I can fully relate to 提笔忘字; sometimes I even forget how to write characters like 动 despite how easy it is
您好，君硬笔书法本当上手😏
I mean, that's why latin numbers are now no longer used commonly.
Probably the majority of languages will just get lost in the unstoppable way of progress.
I'm in Italian and I'm sure my language will be part of this.
I bet that in a century, talking Italian, Chinese, Norwegian or any of this national languages will be super exotic or linked to literature only (like latin more or less)
@@AlphaLiu我已經完全忘記怎麼寫字了 >.
Yeah I'm learning Japanese and that fact that I'm a learner and not a native of it makes this problem extremely bad
Noice pfp
As a Chinese major that now takes classes on Zoom, 提笔忘字 is so real! I can type a whole essay but struggle to write the most common and basic words😅😭........
i use cangjie to type chinese. i dont know if it’s available for simplified chinese, but you may explore other typing methods other than pinyin👍🏾
Same
Perhaps you should consider update your input to handwriting instead, on mobile devices at least.
like 我 and 是？
@@kurd9112 YIKES I am forgetting Chinese my native language I only know the first Chinese word which means “me”.
I know why they made the qwerty keyboard system!
Because years ago when they used the old typing machines that had keyboard and when u press them they like stamp on paper and whatnot it was in alphabetical order and i think it was the “ A “ key that kept getting stuck because of how fast they could find it on the keyboard because its in alphabetical order so its the 1st one, they changed the order of the letters so people wouldn’t be used to it and they would need a second to find the letter before pressing it so it doesn’t get stuck when its pressed too many times simultaneously.
Im not 100% sure about it but i Remember hearing about it in a video
"In Chinese, on the other hand, how you write a word has _nothing_ to do with how you pronounce it."
That's a popular misconception. I can really only speak for Mandarin, but there are some aspects of certain characters that hint at their pronunciation. This is useful because even Chinese adults may sometimes encounter a character they've never seen before. They may rely on context to figure out what word it is (as you said, many words in Chinese comprise more than one character), but also, there is often the opportunity to "sound it out", so to speak, by finding possible pronunciation clues in the character.
Easiest one to see would be 何，可，河。
In mandarin Pinyin and international phonetic alphabet, it would be pronounced: He, Ke, He
In American English phonetic alphabet: it would be: H-uh, Kuh, H-uh.
They all have the same character 可 in them, so they all end in the same sound.
Fun fact: In Cantonese all 3 of these words are pronounced exactly the same way but with different tones.
International phonetic alphabet: Ho
American English phonetic alphabet: Hau/Haw.
@@onewayraildex4827 Good examples! And of course, a lot of words that begin with the 口radical on the left side will feature radicals on the right side that have pretty much nothing to do with the _meaning_ of the character, but rather its pronunciation. Famously, the yes/no question particle 吗 has nothing to do with horses, and the horse radical 马 only serves as the pronunciation guide. And of course 妈 is not "female horse", but "mother", where again we see that the 马 is only there for pronunciation.
Sometimes it seems that certain combinations of radicals also serve as a hint. Like the 刀 above口 on the right hand side of 照 邵 绍 and 韶. These words have little to do with knives and mouths, but they all terminate with "-ao".
@@tom_something Holy shit I learned something new... If only I knew this back in grade school.
@@andrewlee4455 Well, you know, it's just one of those (looks at username) oh... oh, are you doing a thing?
yesss i came looking for this comment! HAI should pin this
"There's a very close connection to how you write an English word and how you say it."
*Laughs in Finnish* 🤣🤣
@Dami Fly jajajajjajajajajajajajajajajjaja
A lot of languages spell the same way they say it; with a tight connection between letters, letter-combinations and their pronunciations. This is because of spelling reforms. Spanish is a language which hasn't had a spelling reform for a long long time, last being around 1815. Danish had the last proper spelling reform in 1889, but has made minor letter-recognition changes as late as 1980. Swedish had the last spelling reform in 1906, but similarly to Danish, has had very tiny touch ups as late as 2006.
When was the modern English spelling revised last? ...well, a figure I could find was 1350. But there have been spelling simplifications since 1662, such as changing -ique to -ic, and -arre to -ar. The American spelling dates back to 1806, which also had some spelling updates, which has not been adopted by the British. This might tell in what bad state English really is in.
Joins in in German
@@schrodingerscat7252 everything is spelled exactly like it is written in finnish
@@Liggliluff @Shuaib Z English isn't a language, it's three languages wearing a trench coat and pretending to be one.
Also, polish has the same, just mind the dypthongs.
this is a manufactured problem. it is only in the modern age that most chinese people even became literate. for most of chinese history, a large portion of our population has been unable to read or write our language. in the 20th century, literacy rates skyrocketed but were still very poor. now that people can just use pinyin and type, chinese has been easier than ever for the average person to use. nowadays, nobody really needs or wants to hand write anything. we just have to type on a keyboard. now more people than ever can understand written chinese. this is why the keyboard has actually been very good for the chinese system of writing.
All fine and good. What if you want to record something for posterity that is accessible without electricity or a digital device? I treasure the letters written to me by those now dead. And I seek to write to my descendants to bless them. Those are personal and precious .
Vietnam and Korea quit Chinese characters
@@hobog Vietnam switched because it was a french colony, so they started writing in Latin alphabet and then stuck with it.
@@JohnBBolt you could always print something out, or with what im imagining youre talking about as long as someone gains the capacity to read and write (via a keyboard) when they go to write something meaningful like that they could draw it out calligraphy style
@@ImKittyCow a printer would help. It is not helpful with Birthday cards, etc. I also do calligraphy. Not sure my grands would understand that without examples.
the qwerty keyboard was made because when they made typewriters, they made the most used letters far away so it didnt jam, and they just kept it.
Ah yes zendaya: the most common chinese rash
Yep
Ooh, ooh
We're no strangers to love
You know the rules and so do I
A full commitment's what I'm thinking of
You wouldn't get this from any other guy
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
We've known each other for so long
Your heart's been aching but
You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on
We know the game, and we're gonna play it
And if you ask me how I'm feeling
Don't tell me you're too blind to see
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)
(Ooh, ooh)
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
(Ooh, ooh, ooh)
(Ooh, ooh, ooh)
We've know each other for so long
Your heart's been aching but
You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on
We know the game, and we're gonna play it
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
@@harsh3624 everyone click
@@harsh3624 there's a special place in hell for you guys
creo jellyfish :DDDDDDDDDD
why does this sound like a fictional place my sister made up?
My parents sent me to 6 years of Chinese school and I forgot how to read most characters. But don't worry, my grandmother never went to school and is illiterate too. I don't have to be literate in order to type Chinese, which is something westerners can't understand. I can input Chinese text with no problem but have to use translation programs to "read" above-basic Chinese. There's also voice dictation that transcribes speech into text, which I rely on too.
我的天！跟我一样啊！！ !
I can read just fine in my mind but when it comes to sounding it out while making sense of it (say translating to someone in real time) my brain just freezes up!
Some illiterate people apparently don’t know how to write pinyin either.
@@zacharyyan4898 I find that some older people don't know pinyin.
Thanks for sharing! Amazing fact to discover
yeah i rely on ppl reading what i write and sounding it out bc i cant read
It’s not just kids, my parents forget characters too sometimes
In today’s era, kids already have a lot they need to learn to get ready for the world. There’s just too much knowledge to cram. Pile on a language where u literally have to learn every word and waste probably hours on end every week on just that is highly inefficient. Imagine a kid that doesn’t have to do that vs the one that has to waste that time/energy. The one using that energy better will win. And if the entire society of kids are wasting time on it, the other society will simply be better prepared.
The world keeps getting better and faster every year. Inefficient things will simply end up dying because no one will be able to waste their limited time and energy on them.
U can try to ‘keep tradition’ alive by force. But eventually force simply doesn’t work in the long term.
I mean, with 2000+ (let's assume you use only 400 of the most frequent ones), you're bound to forget how to write some of them, specially considering their complexity, unlike other languages that you have to remix the same 26-28 characters to make the same array of words.
@@RojaJaneman ye its super ineficient in terms of writing and learning....but in terms of information density and reading speed its super efficient
@@RojaJaneman That is pretty extreme. A logography is not really better or worst that an alphabet. They are just different. Same with silabaries, abjad, abugidas, and other "Non alphabets". There is no real reason to ditch chinese characters. They are hard to learn, but once you know them you can read a ton of information very fast. And understanding the radicals in a character might help you understand a word that you have never seen, in the right context.
Chinese character being complex doesn't mean they are bad. And saying that ditching them would be better is just wrong. Japanese for example writes using both a system of silabaries (Kana) and Chinese characters (Kanji). You can simply write everything in Kana and no information would be lost, so did everybody just stop using kanji and move on to just Kana? Well.. no. Kanjis are still very much around, despite people trying to get rid of them since a very long time, turns out they are not really that big of a deal
Other cultures like korea did actually got rid of Chinese Characters (Hanja) from their writting. And some other like Vietnam simply adopted the latin alphabet and got rid of everything else. Are any of these better or worst? Of course not
Chinese writting is HARD. But it's also beautiful. I don't think we will see it go away any time soon, and I for one I'm happy about it
(Edit: A lot of typos)
Do people also forget how to read them?
One thing I think is the culprit of the "forgetting" of characters is the stroke order. Because you can't just write a Chinese character however you feel like it as long as it looks the part. You have to write it in a specific way so even the cursive version is legible based only on the order of the strokes used.
So, I think is less a case of "Oh, I have no idea how to write this character any longer!" than a case of "Oh, I forgot the stroke order of this character!" But I may be wrong, and it may be the case that sheer convenience just makes people _really_ forget how to write, because damn! Chinese characters are far more complicated than a,b,c!
even me, who speaks almost NO chinese, experiences this. i’m in my 3rd full year of chinese. bc of online school we mostly type answers instead of writing them on paper. because of this I keep forgetting how to write simple characters that are used everyday. I can definitely see how this affects chinese speakers.
How is it now 4 months later?
same, like i can write 我，你，吗，妈，什么，上，下，雨，月，日，常，and the numbers but that's like it.
4:25
“Hello.I am American .my Chinese is not that good”
what he actually saying is 'Hello, I am American. My Chinese not good.' ''是'should be typed between'不' and '很好' to represent the meaning of ' is'
Actually, his grammar there is not very good.
@@shzaizzhang4465 I actually am Chinese
YEs. I'm laughing when I read this part
@@shzaizzhang4465 Thats exactly why he said his chinese isn’t good. He probably deliberately did it that way because “he is american, his chinese no good”
It is not the " ; " that needs to be checked when you turn 50, it is the " : "
True that.
You should get your semi and your colon checked at 50 honestly
"We don't know the origin of QWERTY"
That's intentional, and that's all I can say.
Using Pinyin helped my father's generation get rid of illiteracy and it's helping foreigners start learning Chinese in an easy way. I'm happy to pay the side effect on my own.
The story I always heard about the origin of the layout has 2 primary reasons. First the top row of the QWERTY keyboard can be used to spell out TYPEWRITER front and center of a customers face. the Second reason is due to how the arms actuated on a typewriter it would be possible to "jam" the arms together for fast typists so what they did was they moved where the common keys for the most commonly typed words would be so the mechanical arms wouldn't jam.
Dang, TIL!
You're absolutely correct and all, but... wooooooosh!
As far as I know it's the second reason. Here in Germany the Z key is used way more often than the Y, so our keyboards have a QWERTZ layout.
@@mustwereallydothis you are the wooooosh. He isn't talking about why they call it QWERTY but why we picked the layout. Pay attention to HAI's voice.
@@zaptowee6625 💩
Luckily in my iPad I have a handwriting “keyboard” where I can write the characters stroke by stroke.
Took apple years to have that feature...
Ok flex
A remarkable feature.
Ooh, ooh
We're no strangers to love
You know the rules and so do I
A full commitment's what I'm thinking of
You wouldn't get this from any other guy
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
We've known each other for so long
Your heart's been aching but
You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on
We know the game, and we're gonna play it
And if you ask me how I'm feeling
Don't tell me you're too blind to see
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)
(Ooh, ooh)
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
(Ooh, ooh, ooh)
(Ooh, ooh, ooh)
We've know each other for so long
Your heart's been aching but
You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on
We know the game, and we're gonna play it
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
I would prefer if you don't have a stroke
@@harsh3624 gg
4:46 dont forget about fighting 2 lions and a t rex while there left leg started a business
1:48 Actually, you can somehow guess how a chinese word sounds by looking at it. In some characters, a part of it may suggest how it would be sounded. For example 安 is pronounced "an" and so do 按，案 and 胺. I'm a foreigner who knows a bit of chinese so if any natives want to elaborate or correct, please do so.
Unfortunately the opposite is also true. If you don't know what the root word sounds like, you won't be able to guess or even search for the pronunciation of the other words. There are also some words that may have similar/identical characters, but have completely different pronunciations.
The pronunciation also doesn't teach you the meaning of the words, and there can be dozens of words with the same sounds, each with different meanings.
Since my comment doesn't get any upvotes, I'll put it here.
20% of Chinese characters are evolved from 1. hieroglyphs 2. Indications marked on hieroglyphs to give a new meaning 3. Combinations of several type 1 and/or type 2 symbols to create a new character with a new implied meaning. These you really need to learn how to pronounce them.
The other 80% are called "shape and sound". You have a symbol that gives meaning to the character, another symbol does not provide the meaning, but the pronunciation of the character. For example, 樺，橡，榕，松，杉，栢 are all species of trees, bearing the symbol 木. The right side of all the characters do not convey the meaning of the original symbol, but the pronunciation.
Due to passage of time and vowel shifts the pronunciation may have altered a bit, but you can generally figure out how to pronounce it.
Ok i get it im wrong sorry
@@DaGreatest_ Dude. VPNs exist. it's not that hard.
@@DaGreatest_ they have the internet....
As a chinese youth, I struggle with writing chinese. Meanwhile, my parents can't type chinese. They always ask me to help them with the 'pinyin". I guess every generation have their fare share of difficulties.
Is the handwriting keyboard not available in their phone? As someone who's dabbling in chinese I like to keep both since sometimes I might come across a character that I don't know the Pinyin of :)
@@andreluiz6023 There is handwriting IME! Not many people seem to use it in mainland China, but in Hong Kong, most of my family use it (including me). Although this might not be an accurate representation of HK people as a whole, at least peopel do use it. I think it’s just easier for them to use pinyin since they need to for computers anyway, convenience always gets the better of us. But also, not many people like Jyutping (Cantonese pinyin), so we prefer to use other input methods
Do you also struggle reading the characters? And if not, why?
I suck at both lol
@@leonardchung3825 I get how unfortunately convenient it is to get used to Pinyin (^_^メ), given that I was planning to learn mandarin with Zhuyin and ended up giving in half way through.
It's nice that your family knows the handwriting keyboard though! When looking up "Chinese input methods" handwriting is often left out, I only have it because I was digging through my phone's keyboards ^_________^ nice to hear from users of 漢字 that use it too.
(I understand the distaste for Jyutping 😅)
4:25 Translation:
Hi. I am an American. My Chinese isn’t very good.
He should have used 中文 instead of 汉语.
@@CanMav both have the same meaning tho
@@nicholasnelson7365 True but one is more commonly used and would be more recognised when in China
@@CanMav yea...same thing
@@CanMav No, just no, they are identical
4:25 i like how he wrote that he knows Chinese, but not very well.
In Germany, a guy invented a keyboard for typewriters in which the individual letters of the hammer were not to get stuck together, which is why he made all the frequently used letters far apart.
Because the letters E and R in German are famously hardly ever used in succession and only one of them is common, right?
@Rio the same thing happened for QWERTY! It's designed to make typing slower and not make typewriters stuck
This is all myth and if were true it'd be the Qwertz layout as German Keyboards have the Z and Y switched from the Qwerty Layout.
@@Yolwoocle because it can't be because the word typewriter all fits on the top row, and er are never ever used together.
Qwerty was actually the result of capitalism. Just like how the letter Thorn is now missing due to printing presses.
way back when the typewriter was new, there was a bunch of different systems, and only one company used the Qwerty layout and also patented it. That one company also had the most deals with schools teaching how to type, and the most deals with other companies.
and now, as everyone learnt how to type on one keyboard layout, and only one company made that keyboard layout, they achieved a monopoly. and qwerty is still seen everywhere to this day
yeah it's widely known. he's blatantly trying to milk comments for the youtube algorithm lmao
Japanese be like: Hey, let's add two other writing systems, a shitload of pronunciation and remove the tonal system so everything sounds the same, because Chinese wasn't difficult enough
Idk about the sounding the same part. Every Chinese speech I ever hear sounds damn near identical, whereas Japanese speech varies more? Idk if that’s a matter of hearing Japanese media/language more than Chinese, but I still feel like Chinese is the more samey language
@@michaelspleg1228 There are a lot of hanzi that sounds the same (even up to the intonation) but mean completely different things, making you having to rely on the context of the sentence. Japanese also have this problem. Idk, they're about the same level of difficulty. The only thing that made Japanese feel easier to learn (for me at least) is the furigana that occasionally appear, in books and other medium. Or sometimes they just straight up don't write kanji.
@@andrewlee4455 And thats where the hard part is. Japanese may sound phontically diverse but theres also a lot of homophones in japanese. One example is hashi. It both means bridge and chopstick. And without the correct spelling of the word its difficult to know what the context of the sentence is. Specially japanese sentences doesnt use spaces
@@Anginitkapetayo same problem with chinese.
Didn't they make it easier by adding alphabets instead of just relying on kanji memorization?
Next video: how bricks broke the economy of my front window
Or, how BRICS -will start WWIII- is a group of powerful but developing countries.
*BLM has entered the chat*
@@IloveRumania Lets nuke Bucharest unless #Erdély is fucking returned to Hungary!
When I lived in Beijing a friend borrowed me a Taiwanese simple cellphone (not smartphone) where I had two options: one was to type with specific symbols that represented syllables, the other was to use root strokes of the characters.
It's not simple, but not as complicated as this video says.
HAI: How the QWERTY Keyboard and pinyin broke the Chinese Language
Taiwanese people: *Laughs in zhuyin*
Seriously though Taiwan should switch to Pinyin because Wade-Giles Romanisation is ugly as fuck and nowhere near the accurate pronunciation. Like Taiwanese president Jiang Jingguo becomes "Chiang Ching-kuo"
hkers: *laughs in cangjie*
@@skazka3789 Oh yea the Taiwanese version of romanisation is rlly bad ngl but that aside I still rlly appreciate the fact that zhuyin system exist and still is being used, like most foreigners cant even imagine that there *is* an "alphabetical system" used native to the Mandarin language (at least to some of its speakers).
it's similar to pinyin when you type, it's just another phonetic system. but if taiwanese can write traditional chinese characters, the language can be preserved. the burdens are on you to preserve chinese culture
@@skazka3789 disagree. their spelling makes more sense for foreigners to pronounce, which is the point of languages. pinyun are just standardized phonetic symbols , not to communicate with foreigners.
It's a bit like "why should I learn maths when I got a calculator" and eventually no one can add up whole, positive, 2 digit numbers anymore.
My little sister couldn't figure out what 4*4 was.
@@user-zv8qg1co4z Cursive requires both the person writing to be skilled enough to hand write legible cursive and for the reader to have the ability to understand what is written. Both of these skills take time and effort to learn and for a slightly faster to use form of print the cost to value is just not really there. Cursive also shatters under the scrutiny of it's usability for public applications. Since it is an alternate font less people will know it, even if that 'less people' is 1% of the people reading your sign taking that hit in understandability is a large sacrifice for any business or government org. Additionally cursive requires more finger dexterity to write and better eyesight to read than standard fonts do making it less usable for people with even minor disability in these areas.
Cursive and calligraphy in general are nice as art but as common written word there is very good reason we use and teach standard print instead.
Arithmetic is a waste of time to get good at. We're intrinsically so bad at it that even scientists just wrote everything down into log tables and referenced those before we had calculators. We're simply better at other things.
@@RamiAbdelal Intrinsic? I mean, I have never taken any arithmetic classes and can add 4 digit numbers in a couple second, and so can most people.
@@RamiAbdelal Some people are ridiculously gifted at mathematics and can process complex formulas in their head like others might understand a narrative in a book. Not everyone has the same abilities with math of course.
4:45 "uphill both ways" made me chuckle
Lol
Ooh, ooh
We're no strangers to love
You know the rules and so do I
A full commitment's what I'm thinking of
You wouldn't get this from any other guy
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
We've known each other for so long
Your heart's been aching but
You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on
We know the game, and we're gonna play it
And if you ask me how I'm feeling
Don't tell me you're too blind to see
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)
(Ooh, ooh)
Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up)
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
(Ooh, ooh, ooh)
(Ooh, ooh, ooh)
We've know each other for so long
Your heart's been aching but
You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on
We know the game, and we're gonna play it
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
@@harsh3624 why did i click that
@@harsh3624 God...damnit
@@harsh3624 This is only my second time :(
It's an ancient and common joke; how have you never heard it before? 🤨
As someone who learned Chinese in the past and had to suffer for this I feel less bad about how much I forgot
Correction:
Chinese characters do incorporate the pronounciation into their written forms.
Various words which are hard to depict or not common enough for their own symbol were created in a way that a part of them hints to their pronounciation and the other specifies it closer.
Example:
化 huà to change
花 huā flower (化 + grass)
貨 huò products (化 + shellfish/money)
Thank you! Someone who has actually learned Chinese.
Then there are 黄 huáng, which is not resemble anything from 化 huà, even when you just add "-ng" sound into it.
yea there are many Chinese charactera the carry a specific Pronounction so you can read the more complex 12 stroke characters or whatever but it's not something really build into the language like that. it's seems it's usually there because of meaning and historic reasons.
@@gorilladisco9108 I mean just because two characters sound similar (add a -ng sound) doesn't mean they're related in any way. 黄, 簧, 磺, 璜, 潢, and 蟥 are all pronounced huáng
Yo wtf why did my Chinese school never teach me that ? That would have been so helpful
Well, there are actually some people that types chinese using keypads similiar to the ones find on your telephone, yes that one with the numbers 0-9. As you might have notices there are letters under the numbers and they just think about the word they are gonna type in Pinyin and then just touch on the corrosponding number then with the help of the intelligent ime they select what they want and finally type the word (This only applies to mobile users). Also a number of my elders use hand write ime's to type chinese (you draw the word with your finger).
I find it strange that not many people seem to use Hand written IME despite my ENTIRE family, including extended, uses it. And it’s not just the older generations, my younger cousins also use it. Maybe this is a HK thing? Cuz with this we can write in Cantonese and Mandarin at the same time and nobody really uses Jyutping (Cantonese pinyin), as opposed to Pinyin. The most common texting methods within my circles are - Hand written and voice messages.
@@leonardchung3825 Seems Cantonese doesn't have a dominant phonetic system. In mainland elementary school, we learn Pinyin earlier than characters, and learn pinyin input in computer class... Though I'm curious how do you guys type with 9-key keyboard, by stroke?
@@leozixiliu4646 There is a 9 key pinyin input, I've used it, and sometimes it can be the default pinyin input for phones.
The keys "ABC", "DEF", etc, correspond to letters like a T9 flip phone keypad would, and it is used for romanization input, not stroke order.
Ah yes, the 9 button keypad master race.
I started switching to cangjie (倉頡) and found it helpful with the character amnesia 🤔
native speaker here, and you did a great job on this video seeing as you balanced clarity to a western audience and accuracy. however i just thought that i needed to add on something: you mentioned that there is no official phonetic spelling, and many options would work. this is partially true in that there are indeed many different systems, but it is an oversimplification. different romanization systems dominate in different countries/places. in china and much of the chinese speaking world, the phonetic spelling in the hanyu pinyin system is the main system used for almost all purposes, including typing on the qwerty keyboard. however, differing from china, taiwan has used various different romanization systems- such as the tongyong pinyin and the wade-giles system. a manifestation of it would be names- the taiwanese president 蔡英文s name is romanized as tsai ing-wen, while in hanyu pinyin it'll be cai yingwen. so basically my point is that different countries use different systems and it definitely isn't that random !
I am happy about logical use of "c" in hanyu pinyin. It used this way in latin-writing slavic languages and it is way better than using "ts" for this sound.
But in my language there is "ц" for it. And i guess 蔡英文 would be written Цай Ин-Вен (or maybe Инь-Вэн).
@@sodinc “logical” and “way better” all depend on what the speakers first language is. From an English speaker’s view point, it would be neither logical nor way better. Of course, for anyone learning another language, one has to accept there will be differences in spelling and pronunciation, so I would argue the use of ‘c’ in pinyin is different than English and similar in Slavic languages, but can only be described as ‘better’ from a subjective point of view
There is a transliteration used on Taiwan I presume from Hokkien which looks more like VIet than Pinyin. Or maybe it's Vietnam's own version of pinyin.
Native speaker here too.... But I don't type in Pinyin. I'm sorry. He missed many other "Chinese" who doesn't use PinYin at all. I use Cangjie & Q9.
@@locacharliewong do you think that people who use Cangjie are then able to write characters more accurately than those who use pinyin as they have to remember all the elements rather than just the sound?
0:23 did you miss the story about how the inventor of the typewriter wanted to put all the letters of 'typewriter' on the top line as a sales gimmick? The Q was just thrown in there because it was an uncommon letter and might as well be father from the home row.
omg that is awesome
New product idea: Chinese Character Keyboard with all 5000 characters.
Time to make some 300-inch smartphone screens!
(And call it Rentina XDR 5G)
@@krash4291 Too bad China will steal it and make a -low-quality- no-quality knock-off. ¬_¬
sounds like an emoji keyboard to me
@@user-vn7ce5ig1z (°ー°〃)
More like 100,000 character
1:44 "how you write a word has nothing to do with how you pronounce it"
*so it's the same type of language as english*
yeah
As someone who learned English as my second language - I disagree. When learning new words, seeing how they are written is usually somewhat enough to start pronouncing them and be understood. Of course, seeing a phonetic explanation of a word is much more precise.
@@michawesoy2728 as a spanish speaker a disagree
Yeh, English really is pretty horrible at that, especially considering the phonetic history (not sure if that is the correct term).
Leads to things like the ghoti = fish joke.
But despite the vowel shift, writing seems doable for most people with some experience with the language. Then again, as a european, I had it easy. Probably confusing for some other language families.
@@axelaguirre5014
goes is read as gows
Does is read as das
Shed is read as shed
She is read as she
Read is read as rid but also read as red.
Confusing right?
This is a good video that’s very accessible to a wide audience, but this isn’t accurate. Yes, some people forget how to write some words sometimes, but so does literally everyone who is literate. There is no hard evidence presented in this video. On the contrary, a higher percentage of people in mainland China can read and write Chinese than even in all of Chinese history. Right now is the golden era of Chinese literacy. There is also a way to write Chinese characters called zhuyin or bopomofo that reflects a Chinese language solution to phonetics. Zhuyin is more common in Taiwan, but it’s easy to see zhuyin in mainland China too (especially in trendy places or milk tea shops). There are also big problems with the way romanization works in Chinese. It’s really hard to write tone in most keyboards, which is an obvious drawback. And I have never seen someone write something out in pinyin that was not meant to be read by small children or foreigners. Honestly, I think this is a bit sensationalized for a story. I don’t have any problem with that. It is informative. I’m just writing this for people who were curious.
加1
I don't speak or write Chinese but if we were to compare it with let's say English what the video said is akin to forgetting how to write a character, not a word. Once you learn to a certain degree (1st grade of elementary school~ish) most people can remember the characters from A to Z for the rest of their lives
@@amnottabs Most chinese characters are made up of smaller, simpler characters, so forgetting how to write a letter in english would be akin to forgetting how to write the 口 in 语
I concur with Mason. This is totally a thing that Japanese friends have commented on too-with the han4zi4 or kanji (or hanja) presented to you by the input method, your ability to write without prompting deteriorates. Pin1yin1 / bopomofo / kana / romaji / hangul are all totally besides the point. (Korean has basically eliminated everyday hanja usage, and that was without the use of computers.)
I wouldn't be so dramatic as to say that the ability to write han4zi4 / kanji / hanja is dying out exactly-it's not a rare sight to see someone pause mid-sentence, pick up their phone and give it a few taps, then to re-place their pen on paper and carry on writing all in one fluid motion.
Interestingly my parents use the handwriting input method on their phones, rather than one that spells things out phonetically.
@@LiyangHU but thats just like not knowing how to spell an english word properly because you always get prompted.
phono-semantic compounds say hi but great video! i’m only very beginning to learn the language but i’m more comfortable with the actual hanzi over pinyin, trying to choose characters from pinyin input stresses me out so i actually use a written keyboard lol. it may be because i’m learning it through reading instead of listening but i’ve always been so interested in the written language, the way it works is so cool!
That “ranked 36th alphabetically” joke got me
"how you write a character is nothing to do with how its pronounced"
technically, you can guess how a chinese word is pronounced for certain characters. many chinese words can be split into two parts:
1. the first half usually suggests meaning, eg. if the character for 'rain' was at the top of a word, the word often relates to weather. or if the left side is the character for 'leg', than the whole word usually relates to kicking, or jumping etc.
2. the second half usually relates to pronunciation. take lan ( 兰 ) as an example. it is pronounced in the second tone. the word lan ( 烂 ) also has the 兰 on the right side, therefore it is also pronounced 'lan' aswell, but this time it is in the fourth tone. however, the two different words still have very similar pronunciations
in conclusion, while chinese characters may look completely different and unique, there are some clues you can pick up along the way to guess the meaning and pronunciation!
It's more difficult in the Cantonese-speaking world. The written phrase 是不是他們的？is actually spoken in Cantonese as 係唔係佢哋嘅？
Sam: "There's a very close connection with how you write an English word and how you say it"
English: hold my choir, queue, quay, tough, trough, though, through, thorough, hiccough...
Don’t even talk about the vowels! Why couldn’t English be pentavocalic😓
I don't get it, the pronunciation is different
He didn’t say it was completely phonetic, just that there’s a connection.
Queue is a french word, and it's a recent borrowing
@@cardett75 People misspell "Queue" as "Que" which translates to "What" in Spanish.
0:35 apparently, typebars used to get tangled a lot because people were typing faster than what the typewriter can handle so Christopher Latham Sholes rearranged the keyboard layout to slow people down. The 'QWERTY' came from the first six letters in the layout
really?!!!!
It's like not knowing how to drive someplace that you've already been to several times before, because you always used GPS navigation prompts to guide you there.
Hmm, not really. You'll still automatically memorize the road because you're still actively driving. It's more like driving someplace you've been to numerous times but for the first time without autopilot.
@@srccde Eh don't bet on it my mom still needs GPS to go to most places she's been to a lot
@@ruthswann88 Maybe she knows the way but is just insecure about it. I've seen people drive with GPS all the time because they somehow doubt their ability to remember roads.
Do people regularly use GPS? Isn't it annoying to sit around keying it in before you can move?
I routinely travel with an organization. We take turns driving and carpool. Half of the drivers seem to be able to instinctively see the map and after driving it once or twice no longer need any prompts. The other half seemed to be glued to their GPS/GoogleMaps/ or have the co=pilot telling them where to go, even though they have been to the same place multiple times. One of the differences seems to be if they were trained in how to use a map and how often they used it before all the computer aids became available.
"How you write a word has nothing to do with how you pronounce it."
it does, just not every word
for example 少 (shao), and when you add other things near it they commonly pronouce as "sha" for example 砂, 纱, and 沙. Then if you add more things around them they most probably will also pronouced the same, like 裟.
tfw a character was phonetic in the Tang dynasty but then the pronunciation changed
Quite. Thanks for bringing this up. As real life example, I certainly do not "know" the character for sand, but do know its pronunciation (我很喜欢吃长沙面）So knowing the meaning of the water radical plus the meaning and pronunciation of "少“， it became a rather easy informed guess as the meaning and pronunciation of "沙”
True, though there's no "rule" for the pronunciation of the combined characters
@@FrozenBusChannel There definitely aren't hard rules but there's actually some research out there showing that the pronunciation rules get more regular for rarer characters while more common characters are more likely to have irregular pronunciations. Which is no help when learning to pronounce the common characters 😉
@@rosebohrer4899 yep. Common characters are more likely to have a wider usage, thus more likely to have "mutated" pronunciations
hey bro this is true I had some Chinese friends tell me that they forget how to write Chinese haha. I didn't believe it at until I started to learn and notice that typing, reading and speaking Chinese are a completely different and easy to learn skill then writing.
The qwerty keyboard didn't just break Chinese, a bunch of other languages that the qwerty keyboard wasn't designed for got broken too lmao.
The video itself talks about the japanese.
Don't know why he focused on the chinese lol
Ever heard of cangjie and sucheng? Theyre focused on using character strokes, converting to keys on the keyboard, and using it to type.
1:49 As a native speaker of Chinese, there is quite a bit of relationship for the word and how pronounce it. Some characters is called 形聲字 which is made up of the part to show what is it related and the sound of it. For an example, the character 棋 (pronounced as Qi4), which mean chess. The left part is 木, which means wood, showing the chess is actually made out of wood (at least in the past). The right side is 其, which is also pronounced as Qi4, shows the way to pronounce it.
Absolutely correct. we often do know how to pronounce a new word, even if it's one of the more archaic and obscure ones.
林琳霖淋痳碄晽箖
甲鉀岬胛柙舺玾
遣譴繾
囧冏炯迥泂浻絅㢠埛扃
鑾鸞攣巒欒孿孌灤圞癵臠虊曫羉灓圝癴
I'll admit I purposely looked for some of the more absurd examples, but that's the point. Chinese has a lot more structure and essence than non-speakers realize because they don't know how to "think Chinese". It's like asking a basketball player to play soccer.
@@ScottyShaw That's not fair, a baseball player can at least look at soccer players playing and guess the rules
that is not the main point of it
@@scrambledmandible I said basketball, and I played both growing up, so I know that an athlete from either sport can learn the other. The issue is that doing so requires a mental shift because the structure and nuances of both sports are fundamentally different. The athlete cannot simply use the same skills from one sport in the other.
@@ScottyShaw fair enough
The forgetting part is exaggerated, think more forgetting how to spell a specific word you know like spelling photoes instead of photos. There are little sub-Alphabets that are combined to form a chinese word or character. People often forget or mix up which sub-alphabet is used just like how people also mix up alphabets in english
Sub alphabets? "Like how people mix up alphabets in english" do you mean letters?
@@Jo-vn7tg well chinese is more complex, in English a string of characters form to make a word but in mandarin a single character can be counted as a word too. So It’s something like our ABC’s each have their own smaller subset of ABC’s people often confuse the little subsets. An example is b and d, people might confuse one for the other when writing because of the similarities. I probably could’ve phrased my original sentence better but forgive me because it’s not my first language.
Ps Chinese characters are formed by the subset of less complex characters ， just googled them they are called CJK strokes or 筆畫 in Chinese.
I teach English, and sometimes when I write a word on the board, it looks very strange to me because I'm used to seeing it on the computer only.
@@scintillam_dei but here's the thing. does mandarin writing can write all kinds of sounds? like for example Indonesian, Arabic, Malay? cause i can clearly write any words of indonesian language whicth has diferent accent and more sub voices depending on the reigon(reigonal language) so like in jakarta it is lo but in madura it's diferent. lo is kamu and sometimes i cound spell something in indonesian language that has a strong E with just 1 e
About the beginning: The qwerty Keyboard comes from early typewriters where the most used letters are usually around each other. This explains too why european keyboards sometimes have qwertz.
"Chinese has more characters than an Avengers movie"
I take that as an insult. It should be, Chinese has hundreds of times more characters than an Avengers movie. Cos I swear, as a Chinese growing up, there's still words I don't know.
That last sentence, I felt that.
To be very fluent , basically very good in Chinese, I remember one needs to know around 30 thousand characters
@@FirstnameLastname-ml5bp I.... Didn't really count the number of words I know, but I do know that I could converse properly, though not deeply. So..... Yeah.....
@@FirstnameLastname-ml5bp 3000 is enough
But it's not like anyone can easily learn every english word. If it's easy to learn every english word the spelling bee wouldn't be interesting to watch
side note: actually there are certain ways to learn to write Chinese characters(actions of certain verbs can sometimes be reflected onto the character itself, the other words of a similar sound have similarities in characters, too)
Is nobody gonna talk about him saying “the generation that walked to school uphill both ways”
Still happenin but less now
My grandparents story of how they get to school but it's actually real but over exaggerated.
steven he
Fighting 2 lions and having 1 foot starting a buesines
The qwerty keyboard came about because of typewriters. There was an issue with old typewriters where if you pressed two keys that were vertically aligned in quick succession then the keys would get caught on each other. So the qwerty layout was made such that common english letters weren’t directly above or below other common english letters.
Something to mention: Because the letters on the keyboard are arranged in a diagonal order (Q next to A, next to Z next to 2), characters like R and T actually have would have had three keybars between them (between R and T are F, V, and 5).
Of course, that became a non-issue with typewriters like the IBM Selectric which used a typing element that was like a ball which made key jams impossible. It also allowed better keyboard layouts like DVORAK to be possible, but QWERTY remains the standard because it became established and inertia keeps in use.
As a Hongkonger, i can tell you that there are a lot of method to type chinese.For example, most people in hk uses strokes(not sure about the English name) It only has 5 keys and is based on how you wrote the word.There are also CangJie(倉頡)and a simplified version of it(速成)which are also based on how you write it.Pinyin are most commonly used in mainland China and Malaysia or Singapore.
So in short, places that use simplified Chinese prefer pinyin which is easier,while places that used traditional chinese eg.hongkong,taiwan,macau uses method which are more fundamental
The divide is between the communist and nationalist. Hong Kong, Malaysia, Macau, and Singapore used to use "traditional" Chinese characters. But (if my memory serves me well) since 1990s Malaysia and Singapore switched their allegiance to "simplified" Chinese characters, along with its pinyin counterpart because it's easier to learn for younger generations who are used to Latin alphabet. Taiwan doesn't because .. well, it's communist invention. And Hong Kong are worst version of that line of thinking.
I use 筆劃。 it is called 'Stroke Count' in English
So fun fact: bumfuzz is another name for light beard hair, usually what men get when they first hit puberty. Also known as peachfuzz.
I thought it was the fuzz on someone's bum.
Interesting..
I don’t think many Chinese youths are typing “hello. I’m an American. My Chinese isn’t very good.”
My dad is a language nerd and i started getting suggestions for this channel from youtube and im starting to flood my dad with great ones like this where on one hand i learn something very interesting and also cant help but laugh at all the detailed descriptions of a keyboard.