Simplified or Traditional Chinese?

Lintuperhonen said:

Do you speak Old or New Xiang?

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i'm from changsha so i guess that's new xiang, but my father is from the loudi area to the west of hunan so i can also kind of understand the loudi dialect, (i used to be fluent in it as well) which i think would count as old xiang.

"old xiang" and "new xiang" are classifications used strictly by linguistical anthropologists. regular people don't classify dialects like this and simply say "changshahua" (changsha talk/speak) for changsha dialect, and "loudihua" for loudi dialect. the same common nomenclature applies to all other regions and towns of china as well.

I personally prefer Simplified, but that's because I grew up in it, and i find it extremely easy to recognize Traditional after seeing it the first time.

vesicles said:

FYI, the use of "yao" as #1 is not a regional dialect and has absolutely nothing to do with Beijing (I lived in Beijing for 10 years). It is military lingo, much like using "alpha" to substitute letter "a" and "delta" for "d" in the US. The same goes with using "dong" for #0, instead of the normal "ling". And #7 is "guai" or "making a turn". It's military lingo. And speaking English to someone whom you assume/know don't understand English is offensive. An old Chinese saying goes something like "go with the locals", which means adapting yourself to local customs. It shows respect. Forcing your host to accommodate you is also offensive.

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Well, here is the thing, when they do use the lingo and I understand it, I have no problem with that. If I don't understand, I will ask and learn. But, when someone understands at what you are saying and pretends they dont, that really bothers me a lot.

On Pissybits point:
"On the subject of Traditional vs. Simplified, I don't think it's a matter of personal preference but rather dependent on what you're used to. If you're from the mainland, you use Simplified, if you're from Taiwan/Hong Kong, you're used to the Traditional rendering. Using either rendering doesn't really change the way the words are used, so I don't see why it really matters unless you're trying to design something with an artistic or historic theme or something. "

That is exactly what I want to say. I do not understand why some linguist would argue that you loose the meaning of a word when you use simplified Chinese. If you are talking about the origin and how the characters have morphed, yes simplified Chinese does loose a bit of the lineage. But the meaning of a word does not change.

For dialect, definitely they have their history and interesting parts to it that worth the study and preservation. I should be a bit more clear about standardize pronunciation. I think in the education system, they should continue to teach courses in the regions dialect and Mandarin in standard pronunciation.

Language itself is a never ending evolution, as we see online, new meaning to words are added frequently and the internet have allowed people to be more connected and standardized meaning of words

While the content is interesting, this article's premise is ridiculous. The word "toad" (蟾蜍) is written exactly the same way in traditional and simplified forms!

ahho said:

Well, here is the thing, when they do use the lingo and I understand it, I have no problem with that. If I don't understand, I will ask and learn. But, when someone understands at what you are saying and pretends they dont, that really bothers me a lot.

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What makes you think they are pretending? It's NOT like people get bored and start making phone calls to you and give you a hard time. I don't know what kind of phone service you were doing at the time, but it's hard for me to believe that people would do that. They called because they wanted help. I don't think anyone would be in the mood to make fun of you when they were desperately seeking help. This is especially the case if you get a lot of these so-called "people pretending not to understand you" cases. Although Beijing is a big city, I don't think you will get many of these people who simply decide to pick up a phone and call a company # and make fun of the people who happen to pick up the phone. If people keep asking you what you say, it almost definitely means you are not saying it correctly.

The most likely scenario would be that they called to ask for help. You told them something that they can't understand. You got embarrassed and started speaking English to scare them off. I have no clue how well you speak Chinese and where you learned to speak Chinese. The only thing I know is that many Chinese words have very similar pronunciation and can be easily confused, even including numbers. For instance, number "1" in Standardized Chinese sounds almost identical to the number "2" spoken by someone whose native dialect is Cantonese. So if a Cantonese tries to tell a another Chinese whose dialect is northern Chinese a series of numbers that includes many 1's and 2's. The two will be seriously confused for a long time...

vesicles said:

What makes you think they are pretending? It's NOT like people get bored and start making phone calls to you and give you a hard time. I don't know what kind of phone service you were doing at the time, but it's hard for me to believe that people would do that. They called because they wanted help. I don't think anyone would be in the mood to make fun of you when they were desperately seeking help. This is especially the case if you get a lot of these so-called "people pretending not to understand you" cases. Although Beijing is a big city, I don't think you will get many of these people who simply decide to pick up a phone and call a company # and make fun of the people who happen to pick up the phone. If people keep asking you what you say, it almost definitely means you are not saying it correctly.

The most likely scenario would be that they called to ask for help. You told them something that they can't understand. You got embarrassed and started speaking English to scare them off. I have no clue how well you speak Chinese and where you learned to speak Chinese. The only thing I know is that many Chinese words have very similar pronunciation and can be easily confused, even including numbers. For instance, number "1" in Standardized Chinese sounds almost identical to the number "2" spoken by someone whose native dialect is Cantonese. So if a Cantonese tries to tell a another Chinese whose dialect is northern Chinese a series of numbers that includes many 1's and 2's. The two will be seriously confused for a long time...

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You are correct, there is no denying that people don't have the mood to make fun of me when they are asking for help, and I do agree that it could create frustration to people that genuinely don't understand what I am saying. I would try my best to help them and for the example that you put out, I would go the very basic way of identifying the number by listing them all out and verbally point the one that I am saying. But from experience as a call center agent, I can tell you that there are some individual customers would like to show their superiority and act like a "douche" when they are calling in. Cantonese is my mother tongue, so I understand at what you are presenting, but for my case, customers are given the choice of English, French, Cantonese and Mandarin, when they call in

And Vesicles I do apologize if I infuriated you, as my writing skills is not that great in expressing what I want to say.

I can say that I do not have problem pronouncing the number one in Mandarin, since I have spoken with a lot of Mandarin friends that have not correct me on that, but I will admit that the numbers that I have trouble pronouncing would be 4 and 10 in Mandarin.

Back on topic: I have a question for Solarz link. I am not even sure how they use comparison between traditional Chinese to simplified to describe losses rush to modernization. On the quote from the link "readers lost a cord that connected them to their written past", I can agree that the symbols of the character do loose a bit of meaning, but the actual meaning of the word is not lost.