[Ads-l] Question on Chinese writing

Amy West medievalist at W-STS.COM
Tue May 14 12:45:35 UTC 2024


On 5/14/24 00:00, ADS-L automatic digest system wrote:
> Date:    Mon, 13 May 2024 17:53:43 +0000
> From:    James Landau<jjjrlandau at NETSCAPE.COM>
> Subject: Question on Chinese writing
>
> I was under the impression that all dialects of Chinese, such as
> Mandarin and Cantonese, use the identical Chinese writing system.
> However, I have in front of me an announcement of interpreter service
> from Humana.  It is in English, Spanish, Tagalog, French, Vietnamese,
> German, Korean, and "Chinese Mandarin" and "Chinese Cantonese".  The
> characters shown for Mandarin are totally different from those for
> Cantonese, and there are not the same number of characters.
> Can someone please clear up what is happening here?
> I can email a scan of the sheet to anyone who requests it.
> James Landau
> jjjrlandau at netscape.com

I'm curious to know the answer as well. I have a Cantonese speaker in my 
ESOL class, and I make use of the Chinese Traditional, as opposed to 
Simplified, translation from Google Translate (as opposed to the Chinese 
translation available from DeepL, which I'm assuming is Simplified). I 
used to have a Mandarin-reading and -speaking student support 
coordinator: she could double-check the written translations, but wasn't 
able to speak to the student.

---Amy West

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