Why learn Chinese?

 

Statistics by word count: Mandarin School In Burnaby

The Chinese version has a total of 26,650 words, the English version has 55,614 words , the French version has 57,753 words, the Russian version has 56,345 words, the Spanish version has 59,694 words, and the Arabic version has 40,533 words.

Ranking of text efficiency: Chinese 100% > Arabic 65% > English 47.9% > Russian 47.3% > French 46.1% > Spanish 44.6%

Chinese is the most efficient, more than twice that of European languages , and 35% ahead of Arabic . The advantage is very obvious! The number of words represents reading efficiency. Chinese reading is the most efficient, and you can read twice the content of European languages ​​in the same time.

Reading efficiency gives Chinese users two natural advantages:

1. Learn faster

Chinese is simple and concise, and Chinese children are often able to carry out daily communication earlier. On average, Chinese children can communicate with their parents and express themselves more accurately at the age of 2.5 , while European and American children can only achieve the same level of communication and communication at the average age of 3-4. expression ability. The number of child prodigies in China is far greater than in the West. The high efficiency of Chinese gives Chinese people a great advantage in learning, and the learning progress of middle and high school is generally about two years faster than that of Western students.

2. Communication is more efficient

The same content can be expressed in Chinese with fewer words. In daily oral communication, Chinese is twice as efficient as Western languages. In a sentence, Chinese can be finished in 5 seconds , while English may take 10-15 seconds. The efficiency of communication has real economic value. In the same exchange meeting, the discussion can be completed in half an hour in Chinese, but it may take more than an hour in English. The high efficiency of Chinese can make decision-making faster and social operation more efficient, which is also one of the important reasons for China's faster economic development.

Second, according to the number of words: Mandarin School Burnaby

The Chinese version has a total of 459 words , the English version has 9691 words, the French version has 9711 words, the Russian version has 8133 words, the Spanish version has 10307 words, and the Arabic version has 7188 words.

The Chinese vocabulary is concise and efficient, which is 10-20 times that of other languages! How did Chinese achieve such high efficiency?

The smallest indivisible unit in Chinese is "character" , and "character" is combined into "ci" . This method of "free combination" word creation has two advantages:

1. Greatly simplifies the difficulty of "vocabulary" . Most words do not require deliberate learning to understand their meaning.

2. Effectively controlled the growth of words and phrases

. The 3,500 commonly used Chinese characters can theoretically be combined into an "astronomical amount" of vocabulary, so there is basically no need to create new Chinese characters in Chinese. In the past 100 years, only a handful of Chinese characters have been newly created in Chinese, and there are only dozens of Chinese characters on the periodic table of elements. There are no uncommon words in the newly coined vocabulary. They are all new combinations of common Chinese characters. It is not difficult to understand and does not require deliberate learning. Therefore, Chinese people can easily cope with the growth of new vocabulary .

The smallest unit of phonograms is "word", which is like a radish and a hole. To express new content, we must create new "words", and human beings know the world endlessly. New things, new theories, new Concepts, new phenomena, new discoveries are endless, and new "words" are endless. According to statistics from Oxford University, 8,500 new "words" (phrases) are added to English every year . In the past 100 years, the number of English vocabulary has increased by five times, from more than 200,000 in 1900 to more than 1 million today. 

Compared with phonetic characters, Chinese characters are more regular, concise and efficient . For example: cattle cattle, beef beef; sheep sheep, lamb lamb; pig pig, pork pork. Chinese is highly generalized, and the material is ever-changing, but "meat" will never change, simplifying complex vocabulary. In English, cattle and beef have nothing to do with each other, complicating simple things.

Chinese is not just words, it scientifically "summarizes", "classifies", and "labels" everything in the world, and it is a systematic writing system . Western characters are more like weeds that grow wildly, with a weak system.

As human beings accumulate more and more knowledge and need to learn more and more content, the advantages of Chinese are gradually revealed . In recent years, Western students have become tired of studying STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics education) on a large scale. Because they need to master too many uncommon words to understand the meaning of the text, the learning difficulty is beyond the ability of ordinary people, and Westerners are turning away from science. Among the groups engaged in professional scientific research in the United States, the proportion of native American talents is less than 30%, and Asians, mainly Chinese, are close to 50% .

3. Summary of Ten Major Advantages of Mandarin Chinese : Mandarin Classes Burnaby

1. The largest user population

There are 6 billion people in the world, more than 200 countries and regions, and more than 2,500 ethnic groups. There are 5,651 languages ​​that have been identified. The languages ​​with the most population are: Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, German, Russian, French, Bengali, Portuguese, etc. According to statistics from the United Nations, Chinese is spoken by 1.6 billion people around the world, accounting for 25% of the world's total population .

2. Chinese characters are stable, with a long history and strong cultural heritage

Chinese characters are characters that have lasted for five thousand years. Although Chinese has formed many dialects due to differences in pronunciation, it does not affect the understanding of written Chinese characters between people. Chinese is a relatively restrained and stable language. This enables the wisdom and civilization of the ancestors to be inherited and developed. Today's Chinese students can read the Chu Ci of the poet Qu Yuan 2,000 years ago catchy. English is a divergent and unstable language. The English spelling was unified only 400 years ago, and it is still difficult for English graduates to read the original works of Shakespeare 300 years ago.

3. Use less words, strong word formation, and large amount of information

Now, the English vocabulary has exceeded 1 million, and ordinary people can't remember it all in a lifetime. According to statistics from The New York Times, 10,000 to 20,000 new words are produced in English every year. However, the new vocabulary in English has very little connection with the original vocabulary, and millions of English words come out in this way.

And Chinese, needn't create new character, only get final product with the new word of existing Chinese character group . And all English vocabulary and new words can be expressed in words with 3500 Chinese characters.

The ability to form Chinese characters is too powerful, and it can also be understood by analogy, which greatly reduces the amount of memory. The famous scholar Ji Xianlin said: "Chinese is the most concise language in the world. To express the same meaning, if it takes 60 seconds for English, 5 seconds for Chinese is enough."

In English-speaking countries, don’t read newspapers without 20,000 characters, and don’t read Time magazine without 30,000 characters. Professionals who have graduated from university for 10 years generally need to know 80,000 words.

The standard for literacy of Chinese characters in my country is 1500 characters. College students of science and engineering generally master 3,500 Chinese characters, so it is no problem to engage in scientific research. As for reading and reading newspapers, one can do it after graduating from elementary school. The average person can read and write 2000 Chinese characters.

Think about it, Americans have learned 30,000 to 50,000 words, but the information they can enjoy is still very limited, and they have to face tens of thousands of new words every year. Chinese people can enjoy almost all the information by learning three or four thousand Chinese characters.

4. Chinese vocabulary is extremely rich and easy to express: Mandarin Classes in Burnaby

Chinese vocabulary is very rich. For example, "watch" has many expressions: look, watch, look, look, look, glance, glance, aim, read, peep, squint, look, look down, look up, look up, etc., as well as stare, white, Cross (such as crossing his eyes) and so on. In addition, watching, appreciating, scouting, reviewing, consulting, etc., all contain the meaning of watching.

For example, the expression of "death" has a greater choice of words , and there are clear distinctions between praise and criticism , and which words should be used. In history, the death of the emperor is called "beng", and the death of a queen or a high official is called "喨". Eternal sleep, sacrifice, righteousness, benevolence, honor, fall to death, leave the world, leave me, never come back, stop thinking, stop beating the heart, drive the crane west, return to the west, go to the west, see Marx is dead, cold, hard, forgetting to vent his anger, canceling his account, seeing the king of hell, alas, and so on. In addition, committing suicide, committing suicide, throwing oneself into a river, slaying oneself, hanging oneself, moving one's head, decapitation, etc., all mean death. In works of art, folklore, and people's oral creations, there are many kinds of sayings about death, which cannot be fully described. There are very few words in English to express a certain meaning.

5. Expressive, incisive and easy to understand

Thoughts expressed in English can find corresponding Chinese expressions; while thoughts expressed in Chinese may not necessarily find corresponding English expressions.

It is relatively easy to translate foreign language works into Chinese, and there are relatively few foreign words. Generally speaking, one word in them can be translated into Chinese with many words. The process of translation is also a creative process. The translation of the same foreign language into Chinese is not the same, and the translation of the same foreign literary work into Chinese is very different. Ru Long's translation of Chekhov's "Chameleon" is very different from Huang Zhirui's translation. Fu Lei's translation of Maupassant's "Necklace" is also different from Wang Zhensun's translation. The reason is very simple, because the vocabulary of Chinese is too rich .

However, it is relatively more difficult to translate Chinese into English. After translation into foreign languages, some of them are not so accurate, and some translations do not match the original meaning of Chinese. They can't even translate some poems and idioms : "Ice-cold wine at one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, hundreds of thousands of lilac flowers" and so on. How to translate these couplets related to Chinese characters in English?

6. Pronunciation science, Chinese thinking fast

Chinese is pronounced loudly , with sonorous tones , full of changes , and has the beauty of music . The poems and songs are mediocre and mediocre, mediocre and mediocre, with harmonious phonology and the beauty of music. They are catchy to read and sound harmonious and pleasing to the ear.

The types of pronunciation in Chinese are 3~7 times that of English. Studies have shown that it takes about 1/4 second for an ordinary person to make a sound, and the thinking speed in Chinese is faster than that in English .

Mandarin Chinese has 20 initials, 39 finals and 4 tones, and the result of multiplication is about 3000 sounds. 2500 voices can be utilized, and 1200 voices are commonly used. Mandarin Chinese wants to express 1200 things, only one sound is needed, and it takes 1/4 second.

English has 20 vowels and 20 consonants without tone, and the sound types of English will not exceed 20×20=400. That is to say, if one sound corresponds to one thing, then the 400 sounds in English can only express 400 things. To express the 401st thing, 2 voices are needed, which takes 1/2 second.

Mathematics in Chinese is a monosyllabic pronunciation, and the response speed of Chinese to numbers is faster than that of English.

7. The font of Chinese characters is a treasure house of wisdom

It can be written horizontally or vertically.

With its unique charm, Chinese characters have become the carrier and foundation of Chinese civilization , as well as a unique artistic treasure in the treasure house of world civilization . The unique square Chinese characters are one of the important reasons why the ancient Chinese civilization has continued to this day as the only one in the world civilization system without interruption. It is the crystallization of the wisdom of the Chinese nation and a living object. It contains rich aesthetic and poetic flavor, and has profound cultural implication and charm.

The font of Chinese characters is a unity of abstraction and imagery, philosophy and artistry.

The evolution process of Chinese characters: oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, small seal script, official script, cursive script, regular script, Song style.

The text is divided into traditional characters and simplified characters. The strokes of Chinese characters have horizontal and vertical strokes, dots and hooks. The structures include single body, up and down, left and right, inside and outside, as well as up, middle and bottom, left, middle and right, semi-enclosed, and fully encircled. The writing methods are also different. The vertical can be divided into hanging needle vertical and vertical dew vertical. Points can be divided into left point and right point. Fonts used to be divided into real grass and official script, but now there are more fonts, and there are more and more. Regular script can be divided into Yan, Liu, Ou, Chu, Su, Huang, Mi Cai, and the number of fonts is enough to make foreigners far behind...

8. Chinese characters are the perfect combination of sound, form and meaning

Chinese characters are two-dimensional information that integrates sound, form and meaning . Chinese characters have the greatest expressive force in plane space (paper), so Chinese characters are more convenient to read. You can capture their characteristics and map their meanings at a glance. It is an advanced text form .

English is a one-dimensional password information, only a sound symbol, and a low-level form of words.

The two-dimensional nature of Chinese characters determines the diversity and flexibility of its input methods , which is far more able to stimulate people's pioneering spirit and space to display their wisdom than the one-dimensional boring English code.

As a writing system for recording Chinese language, Chinese characters are a masterpiece of Chinese people and a combination of aesthetics and practicality. Almost every character has a beautiful shape.

9. Chinese is rich in derivatives

Chinese calligraphy is profound and has a long history, it is the quintessence of the country. A calligraphy work, or even a single character, is invaluable. I once saw a calligrapher make a nave, which was a big "crane" character, but it looked like a painting when you looked closely, with a standing crane dancing gracefully.

Rhythmic poems, Ci Fu, Yuanqu, Zaju, cross talk, local drama, lantern riddles, etc. in Chinese, as well as rhetorical devices such as phonetic puns , semantic puns , and allegory, add infinite charm to Chinese.

These arts and cultures based on the charm of Chinese characters are not available in any other country in the world.

10. Chinese grammar is simple

There are four difficulties in Chinese: difficult to read, difficult to write, difficult to remember, and difficult to recognize . There are also phonetics, grammar, rhetoric, logic, word meaning, part of speech, and part of speech. It is precisely because learning Chinese is difficult that it becomes more precious. Good things are not easy to get.

Chinese grammar is very simple, no verb changes, no singular and plural, no change of Yin and Yang.

There are few Chinese characters, simple and scientific grouping, and expressive shapes . After mastering 1,500 Chinese characters, you will be able to learn without learning, learn without a teacher, understand by analogy, and integrate.

Now, Chinese can be input into computers faster than English, and voice input has a greater advantage. In the future, computers will enter the two- and three-dimensional era, and Chinese will increasingly show its advantages.

Our Chinese ancestors are so great that they created such a wonderful language. When English meets Chinese, you will know how powerful Chinese is.

"Huainanzi· Benjing": "In the past, Cangjie wrote books, but it rained millet in the sky, and ghosts cried at night." With such a great Chinese character, can you not be moved by heaven and earth?

 

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