What I can describe with 7 words in Chinese; it takes 11 words in English to say the same thing. English is not an effective language.
āę„é£åē»æę±åå²øā āOnce again, the spring breeze has turned the southern riverbanks green.ā
Really, ok, lets look at that
I think āEffectiveā is the wrong word here. In English āEffectiveā Means - successful in producing a desired or intended result.
I speak you understand, that is effective. So it is very successful in producing a desired or intended result to an English speaker. To an English speaker Chinese is not effective at all. However to a Chinese speaker (Specifically Mandarin) it is quite effective. However under Chinese you get multiple dialects (10 major groups) so speaking Chinese (Mandarin) to another Chinese (Cantonese) speaker, it is not effective at all. Also the characters, North to South they do tend to change from Simplified and Traditional, and a whole lot of Northerners are not so good a traditional
English we have accents depending on what part of the country you are from, or what other country you are from, but the language and it's writing system are the same from North to South, East to West
Now this
ę„é£åē»æę±åå²ø
Once again, the spring breeze has turned the southern riverbanks green
Taken character by character (and I do know character combinatoins can change things, which actualy complicates matters)
ę„ - Spring
é£ - wind
å - again
ē»æ - green
ę± - river
å - south
å²ø - shore
So Character by character translation is - Spring wind again green river south shore
Not the same as - Once again, the spring breeze has turned the southern riverbanks green.
Admittedly I guess you could call me illiterate as far as the Chinese written language goes, I only know a few characters, far from the thousands needed to be considered literate. Which is why I run things through a transalator
If you run that (ę„é£åē»æę±åå²ø)
through a translator app it comes out as - The spring breeze makes the south bank green again
Now I am only a learner, and need translators for the written word, but I see nothing showing āonceā in ę„é£åē»æę±åå²ø
To get "Once again, the spring breeze has turned the southern riverbanks green." It comes out to
ę„é£åäøꬔęåę±äø¤å²øęē»æäŗ
And there is the character for once "
äø", one of the few I know
Now to effectiveness, at least from the view of an English speaker listening with ears use to English
mother - mÄ - å¦
hemp - mĆ” - éŗ»
horse - mĒ - 马
scold - mĆ - éŖ
neutral tone ma (å) acts as a question particle.
4, could be argued 5 different tones, the 5th being s neutral tone that Mrs Xue always says is one of the tones
And then there is
He - tÄ - ä»
She - tÄ - 儹
It - tÄ - å®
It - tÄ - ē for animals - (this one I just learned existed, so it may or may not be correct)
All the same tone
It becomes rather confusing if you are not use to tones for meaning like Chinese. Where in English we tend to use tones for emotion. But then to many none english speakers, and english some speakers; To, Too, and Two can be confusing as are; There, Their and They're.
Not saying English is more effective, just saying Chinese is as effective as English, depending on who you are talking to. Also must take into count in he Chinese written language combination of characters can change the meaning of individual characters since they tend to represent sounds, not letters as the english language uses
And for those unfamiliar with tones in Mandarin
Now I could be wrong here, but I have heard that Taiwan Mandarin has an additional tone, is that true or not?
And just to show the difference between dialect Cantonese has
Thanks - Mandarin - XiĆØxiĆØ -
č°¢č°¢
Thanks - Cantonese - do1ze6 -
å¤č¬
