Speaking what you read and writing what you speak

[R. A. Stegemann]

Joe:

It was interesting to read your comments about the development of the
Vietnamese writing system. You spoke about something called Chu Nom
that was a written form  of Vietnamese using Chinese characters. Did
this orthography (writing system) employ full Chinese characters or
only their radical parts?  The modern Japanese syllabaries, hiragana
and katakana, were derived from parts of Chinese characters. Apparently
Japanese found it easier to create a phonological writing system than
to reinvent the Chinese writing system to accommodate spoken Japanese.

In Hong Kong it is not just a matter of being able to read, but not
speak English, it is also a matter of writing and reading Mandarin, but
only speaking Cantonese. Hong Kong youth are taught how to read and
write Mandarin, but they pronounce what they read and write in
Cantonese. Moreover, what they speak is grammatically different from
what they write, but the same sounds are used for both reading and
writing. This same tradition is carried over to their use of the
English language. They often use Cantonese sounds to pronounce English
words -- what Anthea has euphemistically referred to as a Hong Kong
English accent.

The Hong Kong government is now considering the extent to which they
should introduce standard Mandarin as a spoken language in Hong Kong
schools. More expense for an already strapped school educational budget
that is already over investing in the
English language.

Hamo

R. A. Stegemann
EARTH's Manager and HKLNA-Project Director
EARTH - East Asian Research and Translation in Hong Kong
http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/earth/
Tel/Fax: 852 2630 0349
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 1705 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20041101/5abccfd3/attachment.bin>