Also, Chinese script, even simplified Chinese, is significantly harder to master than English. I for example can speak Mandarin fluently (as a Chinese person in Canada) but can barely read or write it, and no you don’t just “pick it up” if you can speak it because there is zero correlation between the spoken language and written script, it’s all memorization of every single character. I would have to actually take classes or something to learn to read and write Chinese, which I am definitely considering doing.
Actually, English is technically my second language since I was born in China (long story, left as a young child so wasn’t my choice), and after having learned English and become fluent in both reading and writing it, I keep asking myself “how the hell can you be fluent in speaking English and not be fluent in writing it? If you know how to say a word you know 90% of how to write it unlike Chinese.”
So, sorry anglophones, even if China had the same literacy rate as the US, it would still be more impressive (not of the intellect of Chinese people or any racial bullshit like that, but the effectiveness of their education system and socialist ideology, which English speakers are fully capable of implementing as well with no excuse not to.)
Chinese also has probably the most number of idioms and double meanings out of any language, most of which date back hundreds to thousands of years and are formatted for the time, basically the equivalent of if little snippets of Shakespearean were still in common use mixed in with modern English.
Remember that Western claim that Xi Jinping had banned idioms as a way to control Chinese people, a la Newspeak? Anyone who knows Chinese should know just how ridiculous that claim is, you’d have to ban Chinese language in its entirety to do that.
Literally no native speaker of chinese considers Pinyin a real writing system. The latin alphabet barely works for Latin and its modern descendents, let alone a tonal analytical language in another language family. You’re just another illiterate expat who’s bitter at your inability to learn Chinese. Fuck off back to reddit.
Also, Chinese script, even simplified Chinese, is significantly harder to master than English. I for example can speak Mandarin fluently (as a Chinese person in Canada) but can barely read or write it, and no you don’t just “pick it up” if you can speak it because there is zero correlation between the spoken language and written script, it’s all memorization of every single character. I would have to actually take classes or something to learn to read and write Chinese, which I am definitely considering doing.
Actually, English is technically my second language since I was born in China (long story, left as a young child so wasn’t my choice), and after having learned English and become fluent in both reading and writing it, I keep asking myself “how the hell can you be fluent in speaking English and not be fluent in writing it? If you know how to say a word you know 90% of how to write it unlike Chinese.”
So, sorry anglophones, even if China had the same literacy rate as the US, it would still be more impressive (not of the intellect of Chinese people or any racial bullshit like that, but the effectiveness of their education system and socialist ideology, which English speakers are fully capable of implementing as well with no excuse not to.)
Chinese literacy isn’t only characters. First, all children learn to read Pinyin. THEN they get taught classical characters.
Chinese also has probably the most number of idioms and double meanings out of any language, most of which date back hundreds to thousands of years and are formatted for the time, basically the equivalent of if little snippets of Shakespearean were still in common use mixed in with modern English.
Remember that Western claim that Xi Jinping had banned idioms as a way to control Chinese people, a la Newspeak? Anyone who knows Chinese should know just how ridiculous that claim is, you’d have to ban Chinese language in its entirety to do that.
Literally no native speaker of chinese considers Pinyin a real writing system. The latin alphabet barely works for Latin and its modern descendents, let alone a tonal analytical language in another language family. You’re just another illiterate expat who’s bitter at your inability to learn Chinese. Fuck off back to reddit.