Languages

[curiousdude]

Dear all, after having lived in Malaysia, i have been exposed to malay, (both versions spoken in malaysia as well as indonesia), thai, chinese, indian (several dialects) and some other european languages. Nevertheless, i shall gloat about being able to speak any one of the above mentioned languages. I can only manage my life, food, shopping, etc needs if i were to be stuck in these places. However, i would like to share with you the main reason why i could not learn chinese. There are 4 main dialects of chinese language (dialect but each is completely different from the other) and the official version, which is called Mandarin Chinese. In general chinese language has roughly about 2000 characters, and each character is an equivalent of a "word" in our so called western understanding. However each character has 4 inntonations (ways of reading/pronounciation). Each pronounciation would mean something completely different. Furthermore, there are four dialects - Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Teo Chew, which each has 2000 characters with 4 inntonations. In order to be able to fully speak Chinese (or consider yourself to be fully able to speak chinese) the formula goes as such:

(Mandarin X 2000 characters X 4 intonations)+(cantonese X 2000 characters X 4 intonations)+(Hakka X 2000 characters X 4 intonations)+(Hokkien X 2000 characters X 4 intonations)+(Teo Chew X 2000 characters X 4 intonations) = God Knows What....

I don't really know what is the outcome of this formula, however, if i am not mistaken, the equivalent of "tea" from Japan to Greece (including all other countries in between) is "chay" or a very similar pronounciation of "cha"...