lemmie689@lemmy.sdf.org 4 days ago
I was watching a docu series on language, I’m sure an estimate of the number of Chinese pictographs in total was around 50000, of which several hundred were common. Literacy in 2000-3000 symbols is enough for most communication.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
I went to school in China till 2nd grade and use Cantonese at home (like at a very basic level, I don’t have the lexicon to discuss “adult topics” like politics, science, philosophy, etc…)
But that’s enough to understand 99% of the plot of Mandarin/Cantonese TV shows with zero subtitles. I mean, sometimes there’s new vocab, but your can figure it out with the context. I could also mute the sounds and read chinese subtitles.
I actually don’t know exactly how many characters/syllables I could understand lol. But clearly you don’t need a lot, just grade-school level is good enough.
I don’t think people actually remember characters especially nowadays. Its not like alphabetic languages whete you can sound it out, because the same chracter has like a different pronunciation in each different Chinese Variant (aka: “Dialect”). In the past, I read about that they used to use pen and paper to communicate because of “Dialect” differences.
I remember like the characters for numbers and my Chinese Name, but I can’t write a basic sentence using a pen, even though I can type it using Pinyin or Jyutping (Cantonese Pinyin). Idk if my parents can still write after being in the US for over a decade.
lemmie689@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
Interesting story. Thanks!