Chinese dialects / 方言~} / dialektoj
Hung J Lu
Zhong Qiyao <zh...@accton.com.tw> wrote:
>
>pronunciation, a new character was created. A lot of "dialect
>sounds" have characters, but not all can be found. Perhaps for
>some sounds, characters were never created. But then, we can
>always ask linguists to find or create.
>
For the most used words/expressions, phonemic (or nearly
phonemic) representation is good enough. Chinese characters
or alphabetized writing are equally foreign for these
words/expressions.
For technical/professional/elegant/scientifc expressions, direct
borrowing from English (or other foreign languages) is good enough.
This saves the work of having to translate and/or create new characters
(like Chemical element names, like the Chinese characters for "entropy",
etc.)
Why direct borrowing instead of creating new characters?
1) quicker and simpler
2) makes bridge between Chinese languages and Western language.
3) reduce homophone problems of the Chinese languages, making
them more colloquial.
Precedents:
Look at how English was developed as a language
(heavy borrowing from French), or how Japanese was
developed (heavy borrowing from Chinese & English).
No room for cultural isolationism or chauvinism
today.
-- Ekki