43 replies to this topic

[Queen]

Who is defining what is Egyptian culture and what not? I have been two times in Egypt and everytime it struck me how people make a point that they are Eygptians and not Arabs. If cultural continuity is a question of how peope define themself, then there is little doubt that we are talking now about 5000 years of Egyptian history.

But thats not what cultural continuity is That would be political continuity. And I don't even see a continuity here, because modern Egyptians are only taught about the pharaohs in the past hundred year.
And who is to define Chinese culture? Culture and civilization are two different things. History is about writen works, and Chinese writing continuity certainly outlast those of Egypt. Even coptic language is hardly static.

Finally, lets not forget that Egypt looks back at a longer history than any other current state, so the mere mathematical possibility of change to its culture was bigger than in everyone elses case: 5000 years of existence as a state (3100 BC - 2000 AD), 3000 years of Pharaonic rule (3100 - 30 BC, with large intermediate periods of course), over 3500 years of Hieroglyphs (roughly 3100 BC - 400 AD) and over 4500 years of Egpytian as a widespread living language ( - 1400 AD) represent an even longer, continuous history than the Chinese. And who knows how different will China look like in, say, another 200 years?

I contest that, as a culture (not a cvilization), Chinese cultural continuity probably goes all the way back 10,000 years into neolithic times with symbols written on pots discovered recentely. So I'm afraid cultural continuity is a very subjective term. And you can argue your mouth dry who is the earliest because the definition of a culture is very vague. But as a continuous civilization, China is certainly longer.

Of course, nothing wrong there, but a European would rather put the emphasis on the spoken language.

Again, language is part of culture, but not civilization. If you want to use language that way, why not use symbols for China, Chinese pictographic symbols are discovered earlier than those of Egypt.

Edited by Queen, 23 February 2006 - 11:14 PM.

[Tibet Libre]

History is about writen works, and Chinese writing continuity certainly outlast those of Egypt.

The oldest Hieroglyphs are dated back to at least 3200 BC (found in a grave at Abydos). The oldest known Chinese pictographs date back to around 1200 BC. But the interesting thing is that written Egyptian reached a high capability of expression sooner than any other language, including Sumerian.

I contest that, as a culture (not a cvilization), Chinese cultural continuity probably goes all the way back 10,000 years into neolithic times with symbols written on pots discovered recentely.

What? Only 10,000 years? Rise your game, because I have already read claims of Iranian and Indian nationalists of 15000 to 20000 years of Iranian respectively Indian history...

[somechineseperson]

The oldest Hieroglyphs are dated back to at least 3200 BC (found in a grave at Abydos). The oldest known Chinese pictographs date back to around 1200 BC. But the interesting thing is that written Egyptian reached a high capability of expression sooner than any other language, including Sumerian.

Actually they go back to the 14th century BC. Also, I hope you are not trying to say that the Chinese language is incapable of reaching a high level of expression. The foundations of the Chinese language were already laid down during the Shang Dynasty, and Chinese people are still using essentially the same language today. Chinese is a language that is equally suited to poetic literature and rational philosophy.

[Tibet Libre]

Actually, I was implicitly refering to long going scientific debate which script was the first, the Sumerian or the Egyptian? My point is, whether the Egyptian script is somehwat younger than the Sumerian or not - a notion recently shaken by new excavations like that in Abydos - it reached in any case sooner a higher level of expressability than Sumerian. While Sumerian was for centuries only used for record keeping (until roughly 2500 BC), Egyptian got pretty soon complex and sophisticated enough to convey texts.

[somechineseperson]

Actually, I was implicitly refering to long going scientific debate which script was the first, the Sumerian or the Egyptian? My point is, whether the Egyptian script is somehwat younger than the Sumerian or not - a notion recently shaken by new excavations like that in Abydos - it reached in any case sooner a higher level of expressability than Sumerian. While Sumerian was for centuries only used for record keeping (until roughly 2500 BC), Egyptian got pretty soon complex and sophisticated enough to convey texts.

Sumerians had a more advanced system of mathematics though based on the place value system (same as the one we use today), whereas ancient Egyptian mathematics was in principle the same as that of the Romans.

[MengTzu]

Hey Tibet Libre,

For the most part I agree that the idea of a "continuous China" and a "non-continuous Egypt" are equally untenable. Both are based on questionable constructs. I don't know of Egyptians are more genetically continuous than the Han Chinese as you claimed, but I agree with the general drift.

However, you are incorrect about one thing:

The question is who defines when we should stop talking of Latin and instead more adequately of a successor language? This is a matter of definition as well. People say modern Chinese is the successor to ancient Chinese, but modern Chinese usually cant understand neither in writing nor much less in speaking old Chinese. Intelligibility is lost, still people treat Chinese as a continuity. On the other hand, in case of Latin and its nowadays successor, even a language like English classified as Germanic, contains nearly 50% words of latin origin. And Romanic languages lie Italian and Spanish remain through their common linguistic origin to this day mutually intelligible, much more than most Chinese languages.

You're clearly mistaken here.

While Chinese, like every language or set of languages, change from time to time, it is not true to say that ancient Chinese is unintelligible to modern Chinese. First of all, intelligibility is a matter of education, and this ability of reading ancient Chinese improves as one becomes more and more knowledgeable with the written Chinese language as a whole (this is the same with every language in the world). A modern Chinese elementary school kid would not be able to read ancient Chinese; a secondary school kid can read significantly more -- a lot of secondary school Chinese kids read ancient classical novels, like Romance of Three Kingdoms, in their classical original; I started reading my favorite Chinese classical novel, Outlaws of the March, in its classical original around sixth grade. In university level, the skill improves even more. If someone majors in classical Chinese, he should have basically no problem in reading ancient Chinese at all.

Your point that English has kept 50% of Latin words, and the communicability of Italian and Spanish, actually prove our point that Chinese language(s) is very continuous: the majority of the words you find in ancient Chinese classics are still in use today. Many phrases from ancient Chinese classics, like Yi Ching, have become common Chinese idioms today. All Chinese dialects share the same written scripts and are thereby mutually communicable. The biggest reason they are not mutually communicable is because they pronounce the same words very differently, but this actually proves our point: we share the same words. There are some gramatical differences that contribute to difficulty of mutual communicability, but they are not the major reason.

Your argument would've worked without this fallacious idea that "intelligibility of ancient Chinese is lost to the modern Chinese." This means you're going overboard with your argument and you introduced a clearly mistaken notion. I advice that however one feels strongly about something, he should always only bring the best arguments. To introduce a clearly mistaken view based on lack of information makes one's intellectual integrity questionable. (In fact, you give me doubt about your familiarity about Chinese written language and spoken languages and your ability to discuss this.) You could've made your point eloquently without this fallacious point, which is actually a setback to your overall argument. I suggest a reworking of your premises.

[somechineseperson]

Hey Tibet Libre,

For the most part I agree that the idea of a "continuous China" and a "non-continuous Egypt" are equally untenable. Both are based on questionable constructs. I don't know of Egyptians are more genetically continuous than the Han Chinese as you claimed, but I agree with the general drift.

No how is it "untenable"? It is a construct to be sure but so is every concept we use (including the concept of "construct" itself). Actually I have changed my mind about ancient Egypt for it appears there is a small group of Egyptians today who still consider themselves to be essentially the same stock as the ancient Egyptians instead of Arabs, and in many ways, they probably are right. However, the concept of "continuous civilisation" is not untenable at all, in fact it is a serious academic concept held by many professional historians today. The fact that Greece and China are clearly continuous civilisations from the second millennium BC while the Sumerians and Mesoamerican civilisations have essentially died out is very clear. There is a very significant quantitative difference.

[Tibet Libre]

In fact, you give me doubt about your familiarity about Chinese written language and spoken languages and your ability to discuss this.

True, my Chinese speaking abilities are basic at best, although I am perhaps the only one in this thread to have passed exams in Latin orally. ;-)

For the ancient Chinese stuff, I talked lengthily with my GF who is from the PRC and her opinion is that classical written Chinese is practically unintelligible to those modern Chinese speaker who do not take extra lessons. She is a professional translater btw.

But anyway, my comparisons between Latin, classical Chinese and their successors are obviously far from being a complete theory. My main purpose is to stir up the habitual thinking along the lines of 'Latin is extinct and Chinese alive'. The truth rather lies in between, Latin is much more alive than we think, while the continuity of Chinese less strong than usually perceived.

[somechineseperson]

True, my Chinese speaking abilities are basic at best, although I am perhaps the only one in this thread to have passed exams in Latin orally. ;-)

For the ancient Chinese stuff, I talked lengthily with my GF who is from the PRC and her opinion is that classical written Chinese is practically unintelligible to those modern Chinese speaker who do not take extra lessons. She is a professional translater btw.

But anyway, my comparisons between Latin, classical Chinese and their successors are obviously far from being a complete theory. My main purpose is to stir up the habitual thinking along the lines of 'Latin is extinct and Chinese alive'. The truth rather lies in between, Latin is much more alive than we think, while the continuity of Chinese less strong than usually perceived.

Well I have a friend who recently came from PRC to England (where I am living in now) and still has not finished high school. He can get the general ideas of a classical Chinese text but not the precise details. This is, I believe, what most modern Chinese people who have had a basic high school education can achieve, understanding the general idea of an ancient text, but not the precise details.

[qrasy]

While Chinese, like every language or set of languages, change from time to time, it is not true to say that ancient Chinese is unintelligible to modern Chinese.

Intelligibility actually refer to direct communication rather than word continuation/relation.

If someone majors in classical Chinese, he should have basically no problem in reading ancient Chinese at all.

It would be somehow similar to learning a new but related language. (e.g. English speaker learning German)

Without using the "trick" of meaningful symbols, it could be more difficult from modern English speaker trying to understand old English.

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum, Si þin nama gehalgod. to becume þin rice, gewurþe ðin willa, on eorðan swa swa on heofonum. urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg, and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum. and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele. soþlice. (A.D. 600-1150)

All Chinese dialects share the same written scripts and are thereby mutually communicable. The biggest reason they are not mutually communicable is because they pronounce the same words very differently, but this actually proves our point: we share the same words.

They're still considered unintelligible. They do have cognates and word continuation though.

In fact, the undeciphered markings found in the other ancient ruins of China shows that OTHER systems of writing (using ideograms, pictograms, phonograms?) were developed/ developing but it was the system developed in the Shang oracular script which survived (to become Chinese (Han) writing).

Though there is some continuation, but still it's considered different.

When only the SHAPES of Chinese (Han) writing were adopted to represent a system of sounds by the Japanese and the Koreans, there is no way to argue that the Korean script and non-kanji Japanese scripts are a kind of Chinese (Han) writing.

Actually Korean non-Hanja script (Hangul) did not develop from Chiense character.

I understand this was what the Phoenicians (& later the Greek and the Romans) did with earlier writing?

I thought the first would be some hieroglyphs but not used to represent meanings, but taking a sound from meaning, e.g. "A" from "aleph" which meant 'ox'. [you can see the similarity of "A" to 牛]

I mean, show the Chinese some Shang oracular script and they unconsciously start (in vain) to "decode" them using the SYSTEM of Chinese (Han) writing. Show the Romans some Greek writing and you draw a complete blank-- the Romans will ask: so how do I pronounce each symbol?.

No, it's about the same difficulty
Some of the Zhuanshu 篆书 writing is already difficult to understand.
And actually Latin still keep greek symbols like A, B and Z.

[qrasy]

especially since I made a distinction between linguistics and a system of writing while you didn't.

I didn't?
I just said the language is unintelligible; the writing also takes different shape. (I didn't say "unmatchable"). Not making any relationship between them two.

So where did they get the idea from and why didn't they use the more common linear system of writing (like the Japanese non-kanji script did)?

This is an example on how they use Jamo in Hangul: ᄂ(n)+ᅡ(a)+ᄆ(m)-> 남(nam).
The vowels are their own invention, and are formed by horizontal and vertical strokes only.
The consonants, some say its also their own invention of making "lateral" shape of the tongue, e.g. ᆮ=shape of tongue of t, ᄀ=shape of tongue for k, then modify a little bit to change the sound, ᄏ=kh, etc.
It's unlike Japansese kana which is reductions of some set of Chinese characters. (and kana represents syllable rather than phoneme. The result is that Kana is more like a character while Jamo is more like 部首 radicals.)
Well, I think if it's not combined it would be ugly and waste space and perhaps some ambiguity?
There was an attempt to "split" the Hangul characters to the basic shapes, but not successful at all.
<edit: wait.... the idea of "syllable" was strong, as in China and Japan, so splitting makes some weird thing>

As I pointed out-- "human" in oracular script means "human" in simplified script, once you recognise the changes in the FORM of the character.

Well, go and see how 話 were written and you won't see the 舌 (tongue) in older scripts. This also holds for a big portion of modern character, especially if you use Simplified characters

Even Bahasa keeps most of the FORM of the Latin alphabet, but they don't exactly use them to represent the same sound elements

Bahasa keeps 26/26 of the Latin alphabet. In fact the use in Bahasa is more "similar to original" (more "alphabetic") than Modern English or Modern French, since everything is to be taken "literally". (one strong example is that nothing is "silent" in Bahasa writing)

The example you gave of taking the sound element "A" from the dual-syllabic "aleph" without concern for its original meaning of "ox" is EXACTLY what I was talking about.

The idea of "A" may have come from "aleph" but I doubt they used it as how 牛 was in Chinese. (well, most probably it was but it may also be not true )

Oh wait, you're actually agreeing with me?

Does everyone has to disagree in everything?

like how the Chinese got the words for lion (India) or spinach (Persia) by transliteration (not much cultural/ linguistic continuity there) or how much Egyptian/ Greek volcabulary/ grammar influenced Latin (enough to make them the same culture/ language?)

The examples you use for Chinese here is clearly a commodity, "apple" does not exist in the homeland of the Malays then they would adopt foreign language for that.
Egyptian language (both modern and past) is closer to Middle Eastern than Indo-European. And I wouldn't say Latin and Greek are the same language (in fact quite distinct) but they share closer common ancestor.

Edited by qrasy, 06 March 2006 - 10:11 AM.

[qrasy]

was just wondering why didn't they go the way of grouping the phonetics by using spaces? Because they had been using Chinese (Han) writing (vertical alignment and all) and want to take baby steps that don't "deviate" too much from the accepted form?

I was wrong about the reason why they took syllabic rather than "linear" like Rome... The "original" scripts were all syllabic.. As most human thinking is.
Greek script and its descendants are special in that they are *not* syllabic. The Middle-Eastern character was syllabic, but they emphasize in consonants. Rarely we would see vowel marks... This is because in the Middle-Eastern languages the main grammatical change are the change of vowels..
Then the Greeks saw a need for symbols for vowels... Then they added from some sounds not representable in Greek and take the vowels from it... (the "empty" consonant become a, etc.)
We see something like "alef"->a "oin"->o "yod"->i.
An example for syllabic ambiguity is like "k a m a n" pronounced as "kam an" or "ka man"?

but they would get the pronunciation wrong and they would have no idea what they are pronouncing.

Well, I guess it would be "good for a foreigner"
Yes, they would have no idea what they are pronouncing, as if I try to pronounce some essays written in Hangul... Fortunately I would have idea on some Chinese loans there.... (and the Romans would get some idea for Indo-European loans in Indonesian)

So to repeat, the Chinese go on and on about the continuity of Chinese characters

Yes, of course there is continuities, from language and written script. But what they try to represent is.... usually cognate to each other but not neccessarily the same... e.g. 走 meant "to run" and in Mandarin now "to walk".
I'm not saying they're not continuous or so... Just the language is considerably different. (different is not the same as discontinuous)

No, the Phoenicians would already have their own (language and) word for "ox" and other things

I'm not talking the linguistic relationship between Phoenician and Roman...
I mean, did they use the character as symbolic or phonetic? The most probably is phonetic, syllabic. I think it's hard to convert from ideographic thinking to phonetic+syllabic, and how would anyone choose between characters? e.g. why "alef" not "a-"something else?

Duh, the continuity of Chinese (Han) characters by itself promotes cultural/ linguistic continuity, but the continuity of an alphabet by itself promotes only phonetic continuity--

Well, since it's ideographic, then the continuity is the continuity of human mind abstraction, like how Japanese and Korean did before they invented their own scripts.
And there could be many 假借 as well, that means phonetic continuity rather than meaning continuity....
Perhaps you would say it did not suit their languages well, but if Chinese characters is inherited to another isolating+monosyllabic language, say Yi...

[Queen]

The oldest Hieroglyphs are dated back to at least 3200 BC (found in a grave at Abydos). The oldest known Chinese pictographs date back to around 1200 BC. But the interesting thing is that written Egyptian reached a high capability of expression sooner than any other language, including Sumerian.

Nope, the Egyptian "writing" in 3200 b.c. are nothing but symbols, the earliest hieroglyphs that can be read only dates to after 3,000 b.c. and stopped to be used by 400 b.c. So Egyptian writing lasted around 3400 years.

The Oldest Chinese writing dates back to 1500 b.c., you are three hundred years off. So it would seem China outlast Egypt by a century. The oldest Chinese symbols dates back to 8,000 b.c. just recently uncovered.

What? Only 10,000 years? Rise your game, because I have already read claims of Iranian and Indian nationalists of 15000 to 20000 years of Iranian respectively Indian history...

I'm not actually playing a game, Chinese symbols 10,000 old have been recently uncovered. Notice, I said symbols, not writing.
http://www.chinahist...7624&hl=writing

[Queen]

The question is who defines when we should stop talking of Latin and instead more adequately of a successor language? This is a matter of definition as well. People say modern Chinese is the successor to ancient Chinese, but modern Chinese usually cant understand neither in writing nor much less in speaking old Chinese. Intelligibility is lost, still people treat Chinese as a continuity. On the other hand, in case of Latin and its nowadays successor, even a language like English classified as Germanic, contains nearly 50% words of latin origin. And Romanic languages lie Italian and Spanish remain through their common linguistic origin to this day mutually intelligible, much more than most Chinese languages.

Its obvious that you don't know anything about Chinese script. In fact most Chinese that has a college level of education in language CAN understand much of the meaning of writing dating back since the Latter Han. I have no trouble making out the general information from a script regarding the western regions dating back to around 170 A.D., although it took me a bit of time. And I'm not even specifically trained in ancient Chinese. I got this from my general high school education(and reading Taiwanese newspaper).

However, no one today would be able to read ancient Latin unless they are trained in it. So it seems that its Chinese which is much more continuous than any writing systems today since no script today can even roughly make out their ancient counterpart.

Chinese from the Han period to those of modern days(at least in Taiwan and Hong Kong) is similar to Modern English is to late Middle English.(not old english), those that dates from the Tang time are almost like Shakespearean English is to Modern English. Most of modern Chinese already took its present shape by Tang times around 1400 years ago. Its merely a concept of structural difference. The structure of which isn't that different in comparison for Shakespearean English to Modern English.

[qrasy]

Well, by the Han age Kaishu script had already formed. And no much change I suppose. But trying to read Zhuanshu and older scripts is as difficult as trying to read ancient Latin with modern Latin.
But... as change of terms have occured... It's hard to understand correctly. Sort of things like "將無歸".

Another thing I think... is that the Greek script is quite stable. But many marks are already obsolete.