Thread: Some Asian Languages

Regarding what francot said, Arabic does have separations. There are spaces between words, but some may be confusing if you don't look carefully at the ending of the word. Many letters change their form if they are written at the beginning, middle or end of a word.

Originally Posted by eidjit

Very interesting!
Is there a normative or rule for translators to know witch language to translate to and from? Or is this the standard 'goto' chart ?

I guess it´s all about the place where the translation is goind to be used and ask the client for more details

Originally Posted by danielr

Thank you for the details, iyuanobi.
Can you explain the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese? Which one should I learn if I want to speak with most people from Mainland China?

Definitely Mandarín which is the oficial language. In fact, you won´t find Cantonese courses out there in the market .

Originally Posted by solg

I'm no expert, but I all my Japanese teachers used to be able to make sense (somewhat) of Chinese writing. They used to say that because the Chinese don't use Kana, it was easier for them to understand Chinese that for a Chinese to understand Japanese.

What do you think iyuanobi?

Correct! All those derivations languages from Chinese can definitely give you some idea about the meaning of the word and even sometime a word can sound alike across languages.
However, since that all of them have developed its own language rules and event letters, it will be hard to figure out if you don´t understand them.

Originally Posted by francot

For what I see in that chart, most of these languages in the chart derive in one way or another from Chinese, because iyuanobi says "adaption of Chinese character". So, iyuanobi, to you, do these languages (at least from a writing perspective) look alien enough to render you completely clueless about what they say? I mean, speakers of languages using the Latin alphabet, even if they don't understand the meaning of the words in another language, can tell you where a word starts and where it ends, whereas, the Arabic alphabet looks completely puzzling.

Is there a similar affinity between those languages you listed there?

Yes and no lol You can definitely find affinity between them but now that they have developed their own system, you won´t understand them completely untill you study them.