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by blacksmith_tb
3359 days ago
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Yes and no, usually it's enough to allow for broadly guessing at meanings[1]. Contrast that with the Roman alphabet - I am a native speaker of English, and if you hand me a book written in German, I can sound it out (to some extent), but without knowing what it means. Reading written Chinese, you may be able to guess at what a line means, but without any chance of sounding it out! (Disclaimer, I studied one year of college-level Mandarin, so I would have a slight chance, at least...). Of course, it's interesting also to think about the impact computing and smartphones are having on written Chinese, stroke order of characters, for example was less important when using a keyboard for input, but if you're drawing on a touchscreen, it comes back into play. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_(Chinese_characters)#S... |
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That works well because English and German are very similar. If China moved from characters to Pinyin, someone who doesn't know Chinese could sound it out, but it would be mostly unintelligible (wrong initials, no tones).