Quote: (12-02-2013 07:57 PM)Feisbook Control Wrote:
木, 林, and 森 (mu, lin, sen). They all have semantic connections, of course, but not phonetic.
Not all characters are that easy to figure out, of course. Although the three you use as examples are all common enough that one will commit them to memory sooner or later, just like one learns that the plural of "mouse" is "mice" and not "mouses."
Quote: (12-02-2013 07:57 PM)Feisbook Control Wrote:
The broader issue is that even though you are somewhat correct, characters put the cart before the horse. You need to know an extraordinary number of characters before you can use them to learn more. With an alphabet, you're off and running in hours or days.
When you say "use them to learn more," do you mean encountering a new word and instantly knowing its meaning because you know the individual characters? Oh, I would bet my money only the most advanced of foreigners who have lived in China years and years would be able to do that. I was speaking strictly of pronunciation. While there are exceptions, generally, you do eventually build up a "feel" for unfamiliar characters, a sense of their meaning. But you're right, not all are meaning-sound combinations.
You do bring up very good counterpoints, especially the one about Chinese ethnocentric ignorance, and I don't doubt that plays a part in how slow they are to learn English. Then again, they're slow to learn anything that requires them to think.
AB ANTIQUO, AB AETERNO