Comparison of Mandarin and English - Essay Example

LANGUAGE SNAPSHOT: Compare and Contrast Mandarin versus English Due Date INTRODUCTION We live in a world of diversity. We encounter diversity on a daily basis; diversity in ethnicity, cultures, and religions. One of the greatest examples of human differences is the differences in language. Language is an incredibly important aspect of what it means to be human. Language allows us to communicate small and large scale information, helps explain simple and complex concepts to others, and grants us the ability to share our thoughts and feelings in detailed ways. Linguistics is the branch of science dedicated to the study of language itself; including phonetics, morphology, and syntax of the given language and dialect, as well as, how these languages compare and contrast with one another. English is often considered one of the most complex and difficult languages to learn and considered internationally valuable. However, Mandarin Chinese is actually spoken by more people than English, be it European countries or America states. These two languages have some similarities and a great many differences. BACKROUND English is spoken by nearly 350, 000,000 people and has been learned as a second language by another half a billion more people. It is traditionally considered a mix of influences includes old English, Nordic, and Germanic influences; we also derive much of scientific and medical terms from Latin (Nations Online Organization 1). However, despite the commonality of English it is still not the most commonly spoken language in the world. In fact, Mandarin Chinese is spoken primarily by those of northern China and is the predominant language in 70% of China. More than 870,000,000 people speak Mandarin, another billion and half have learned Mandarin as a second language, and is spoken traditionally throughout more than half of China and Taiwan (Li, and Thompson 1). DISUCSSION So it is no question that both of these languages are often spoken, are likely to be dominant languages in the future, and that they are very, very different. In order to truly understand the nature of the similarities and differences it is necessary to look at the languages in more detail, and further discuss individually, the phonology, which refers to the system of sounds that fundamentally found a given language, the morphology, which is more focus on the analysis and description of root words, parts of speech intonations, and context of a language, and, finally, the syntax, which refers to the arrangement of phrases that allow for well-formed sentences, of these two internationally dominant languages. Phonology Mandarin, like all Chinese languages, is called lexical tone languages, which is, essentially, where each sound or syllable in every word indicates the tone of statement. Mandarin can be traced back genetically to early Sino-Tibetan families. It possesses many aspects that are shared by most languages, heavy vs. light syllables and “foot structure.” (Duanmu 1-2) The phonology of the Chinese language is very different from what we are generally is accustomed by English speakers. There is an intonation of pitch, either high, falling, dipping, or rising sounds in Mandarin, which would dictate the emotion behind the statement being made (Li, and Thompson 1). While English speakers will change their inflection to convey emotion, but it does not change the specific word meaning as it does in Mandarin. In fact, there are a lot more vowel sounds in the English language than in Mandarin, which explains why those native Mandarin speakers attempting to learn English have difficulty pronouncing certain vowel sounds; for example, the “I” in ship and the “ee” in sheep. These are not the only aspects of the phonological differences but these are the most significant (Shoebottom 1). Morphology In English we are accustomed to having a formalized alphabet; the Chinese rely upon a logographic system, which means that symbols represent certain words, not letters that make up individual words. The language does not include consonant clustering and endorses a limited number of consonants at the conclusion of a word symbol (Li, and Thompson 1). The Chinese have no polysyllabic words and a limited number of potential syllables. Despite how different it may sound to an English speaking ear, the morphology, the words structure in Mandarin is not so very different from what we experience in English. The monosyllabic nature of Mandarin is, however, changing in the modern era. According to some experts, there is a process called “root compounding,” which presently is resulting in new two-syllable words now being introduced into modern Mandarin.(Pirani, 1-2) Syntax There is a structure to the telling of a sentence that makes clear exactly “what verb the noun is doing.’ In other words the words order is relevant in the context of the sentence. The subject comes first in the sentence structure. This remains pretty much parallel throughout both English and Mandarin, however there are a few differences, particularly when it comes to verb usage. English speakers conjugate their verb, like “I do,” “I did,” and “I will.” However, in Mandarin it is the adverb, not the verb that indicates when something was done. For example where in English one might say, “He is making a mess,” a Mandarin speaker might say “He make mess” (Lin 12-13). That lexical feature in English does not appear in Mandarin. The sentence structure in Mandarin follows this format. Subject-who or what is doing the action Time- when the subject did the action is conveyed immediately before or after the subject. Yesterday the man took a cab. Place- Where the event happened precedes what or who it happened to comes before the verb. Prepositional Phrase-they verify an activity and are placed before the verb Yesterday the man, with his friend, took a cab. Object- generally placed after the verb, but may also appear before the subject or the verb, as in the statement, “I like on the train read the newspaper” (Su 1). It is interesting that these two very unique languages are incredibly hard to learn to speak, especially when one is a native speaker of one or the other. A study done showed that while Native English speakers who learned to speak Mandarin, their pronunciation would always carry a foreign accent. The same can be said of the Native Mandarin speakers in their attempt to learn English. However, children who are raised with perpetual exposure to both languages prove to learn, speak, and tackle the linguistic differences with far greater success in both languages, even when they stopped regularly speaking their primary language in childhood (Chang, Haynes, and et al 2-3). Language is one of the most amazing aspects of being human. The ability to use words to convey important information, explain concepts, and share our feelings and ideas is priceless. Mandarin is an ancient and beautiful language that is continuing to evolve. Not unlike the recent development of new two-syllable words, there is also the invention of called “Hanyu Pinyin,” which is the presentation of Mandarin words using an English alphabet as opposed to the more traditional symbolic characters (Shoebottom 1). CONCLUSION Given that Mandarin is spoken by so many, considerably more than English, it is clearly a language that we will be interacting with for some time to come. It is truly a complex language that differs greatly from American and many European countries. Mandarin is unique language whose phonology is divergent from many languages, morphology is similar to many languages but still quite different, and, finally, the syntax diverges quite a bit from English. In the end given the growth of China and the commonality of Mandarin it may be wise to consider Mandarin as one of the world’s most powerful dialects. WORK CITED Chang, Charles B., Erin . Haynes, et al. "Production of phonetic and phonological contrast by heritage speakers of Mandarin." University of California, Berkeley Department of Linguistics. (2009): 1-33. Web. 4 Jun. 2014. . Duanmu, S. "Phonology of Chinese (Mandarin).” Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. (2005): 1-8. Web. 4 Jun. 2014. . Li, Charles N., and Sandra A. Thompson. "Chapter 5: An Exploration of Mandarin Chinese." Linguistics Research Center:The University of Texas at Austin, 2013. 1. Web. 4 Jun. 2014. . Lin, Jimmy. "Event Structure and the Encoding of Arguments: The Syntax of the Mandarin and English Verb Phrase." Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science-MIT. (2004): 1-194. Web. 4 Jun. 2014. . Pirani, Laura. “Bound Roots in Mandarin Chinese and Comparison With European “Semi-Words”” 20th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics. (2008). 261-277. Web. 4 Jun. 2014. < http://naccl.osu.edu/sites/naccl.osu.edu/files/12_pirani-l.pdf>. Su, Qui Qui. “Mandarin Chinese Sentence Structure.” Mandarin Language. (2014). 1. Web. 4 Jun. 2014. . Nations Online Organization, . "Most widely spoken Languages in the World." Nations Online Organization. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Jun 2014. . Read More