premshree: 品速力

Premshree Pillai (

premshree) wrote,
@ 2005-06-14 22:43:00

Current music:

Queen - Tear It Up

品速力

That’s my name in Chinese. Apparently. It’s not accurate, actually. I forgot to ask Jill the exact pronounciation.

There’s lots of stuff I learned about the Chinese language recently... the only thing I *had* known earlier was that Chinese characters are not phonetic—each character “represents” something. Now I know that Chinese language books are read like Urdu language books—the beginning corresponds to the end in regular language books. Another interesting thing: words are read from top to bottom! No wonder many of the Chinese hoardings have words written vertically.

Some of what I understood might be wrong, but maybe not: this learning comes from my Taiwan and Hong Kong colleagues.

By the way, Edgar, these folks didn’t like Mainland China at all. But then they weren’t Mainland China folks either :D. Philip: no, I didn’t take them for Chinese food; *they* wanted to go.

(Post a new comment)

eddd
2005-06-15 01:28 am UTC (link)

I've never been to Mainland China, so don't know if the cuisine served is mainland chinese :p ...The guys from Beijing said "Its almost identical to the stuff we get @ street corner places in Beijing ... really awesome and authentic ... best ever outside China"

I've seen mandarin written horizontally too, and books the normal way too.
FWIW, all back to front books --> vertical.

Oh well, maybe this is some funda between traditional chinese and simplified chinese, which i really haven't figured out.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

solzaire
2005-06-15 03:22 am UTC (link)

Japanese also has pictures representing things; those pictures are called Kanjis. Traditional Japanese is also written top to bottom.

Add to that Japanese has 2 more scripts; Hiragana for normal style left to right, front to back writing, and Katakana which is a script exclusively for non-Japanese words. A normal Japanese sentence will mix Hiragana and Katakana.

I don't remember reading and writing in those scripts anymore, though after seeing Naruto I realise my spoken and heard Japanese is still ok though extremely basic. Some revision is in order.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

amunix
2005-06-15 07:03 am UTC (link)

Think of the effort that goes in to support top to bottom orientation of these languages - ugh - gives me creeps! :) We've recently been through this nightmare to support traditional Chinese for our product.

OTOH, a small mistake in the character can change its meaning from sister to prostitute. :-| And single character that has the capacity to say - ``I had been to MG road, then Shivajinagar, had excellent Biryani there, then back to MG road, and at night went to a movie."

He he - makes me wonder how those folks cope up with such complexities. :)

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	Chinese language books are read like Urdu language books moccacino 2005-06-15 05:25 am UTC (link)
	That holds good for Japanese too. In fact, the Japanese Manga when translated in English, retains the same right to left, back to front format. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	Re: Chinese language books are read like Urdu language books premshree 2005-06-15 06:13 am UTC (link)
	When I said the Chinese language, I basically meant the characters. So, yeah, it’ll hold true for Japanese too. Oh, I also learned that Korean charcters are phonetic. I think. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Chinese language books are read like Urdu language books eddd 2005-06-15 06:20 am UTC (link)
	Chinese Characters == Japanese Characters ???? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Chinese language books are read like Urdu language books premshree 2005-06-15 06:23 am UTC (link)
	Some are, AFAIK. Will confirm. :-) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Chinese language books are read like Urdu language books eddd 2005-06-15 06:29 am UTC (link)
	Very few, if any. Even I can tell mandarin from japanese, so that means a lot :) (Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: Chinese language books are read like Urdu language books

gromhellscream
2005-06-15 09:47 am UTC (link)

Actually this is true,

What is known as Kanji is actually a set of 50,000 chars borrowed from chinese few centuries ago when Japan invaded china etc..Since then they developed two other scripts namely hiragana ( this was supposedly developed by women as women earlier were not allowed to learn kanji )

and katagana is a script which was developed to write words not of japanese origin. Hiragana has slightly cursive strokes where as katagana has straight strokes... How do I know this, i learnt japanese for two months:) I still remember a bit of it though not enough to hold a decent conversation:-\

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: Chinese language books are read like Urdu language books prasun 2005-06-16 08:22 am UTC (link)
	Korean is similar to Indian languages. Korean vowels are pretty similar to the concept of "matra" in Hindi. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mainland china (Anonymous) 2005-06-15 06:07 am UTC (link)
	Me been to mainland china . I think it's pretty good. I liked the ambience too. 'n btw, it's the Arabic script not the Urdu language. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	Re: mainland china premshree 2005-06-15 06:14 am UTC (link)
	Arabic, right. My bad. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: mainland china eddd 2005-06-15 06:24 am UTC (link)
	Urdu script is slightly different from Arabic script, IIRC. Remember a cousin had a problem reading some signboards @ Mohd. Ali Road. I think its farsi ? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: mainland china eddd 2005-06-15 06:27 am UTC (link)
	Check out this list. Urdu == Nastaliq style of the Arabic. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	thought this maybe of interest (Anonymous) 2005-06-15 12:47 pm UTC (link)
	http://python.miscellaneousmirror.org/workshops/1997-10/proceedings/loewis.html (Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2005-06-15 03:27 pm UTC (link)
	pin3 su4 li4 would be the pinyin romanization of those characters. The characters' meanings are very complimentary! ;) (Reply to this)

	appaji 2005-06-18 07:27 pm UTC (link)
	I like Bamboo Shoots in Museum Inn most for Chinese and Thai food. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	premshree 2005-06-18 08:21 pm UTC (link)
	Never been there. Will try. Have you been to Noble House -- somewhere in commercial street? Decent Thai food. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	appaji 2005-06-18 08:31 pm UTC (link)
	The only complaint I have about Bamboo Shoots is that it is very expensive. I've been to Noble House, it is on infantry road, a few meters down the you are walking towards Safina Plaza when you are at Gem Plaza (the building that has Samarkand and Hypnos). For Indian Chinese, there is this place called China Pearl that serves awesome food, and for very reasonable prices. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	themadman 2005-07-06 07:03 am UTC (link)
	If you want a particular Chinese dish, you can always let me know in advance. :) (Reply to this)(Thread)

	premshree 2005-07-06 07:19 am UTC (link)
	For free? Sure. :D (Reply to this)(Parent)

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