Yiyan

Merci, m'sieu

that's what I was looking for.

Am chewing on it awhile.

cheers

David


----- Original Message -----
From: Yiyan Wang <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2001 9:48 AM
Subject: Re: Silent reading


> Hello everyone,
>
> I'll try my best by going back to David's initial question.
>
> I want to make the point what we call silent reading is only silent to
others
> but not to oneself. From the replies generated by the question I gather
the
> consensus is that silent reading refers to reading texts silently to
oneself
> without pronouncing audiably the sounds of the words. However, even if we
> don't read aloud, I believe our mind still reads on the basis of assuming
the
> pronunciation. Sometimes the phonetic assumption could be wrong or
different,
> but it does not really hinder the reading process. I suspect this applies
to
> all languages.
>
> What happens in reading Chinese is not particularly different or
'peculiar'.
> The readers automatically pronounce the words according their own
> pronunciations, be they southerners or northerns or Cantonese. The same
way
> Americans pronounce English words differently from the British or the
> Australians. Or for this matter, Japanese, Korean, Vitnamese or anyone
who's
> learnt the script. If we are talking about reading 'texts', rather than
> 'words', it does not matter when occasionally the reader comes across a
word
> that he does not know how to pronounce it.
>
> What make the Chinese speakers different from other language users is that
> they cannot communicate orally to each other because their pronunciations
> differ so much that renders each other incomprehensible.
>
> In contemporary China studies, some scholars suggest that China should be
> approached like the continental Europe because of its regional
differences.
>
> It is not accurate to say that Chinese is not a phonetic language. It is
> phonetic to some extent (quite similar to that of English as David points
> out), although its phonetic indication system differs from abphabetical
> languages. A Chinese character is usually made of two or more parts (this
is a
> generalisation about a human phenomenon called language so there are
certainly
> exceptions), one of which is often an indicator of how it's pronounced and
> another part(s) tells the reader its meaning. One does not have to know
the
> character's pronounced to know its meaning or vice versa. Classical
Chinese
> poems often do not rhyme properly with the pronunciation of modern
standard
> Chinese, for the characters used to be pronounced differently. This has
left
> for people from certain regions, such Canton in the southeast China, or
> Shaanxi in China's northwest, to argue that their pronuciation rhyme the
poems
> better therefore they are the more 'authentic' Chinese.
>
> All this started, in my understanding of Chinese history, with the first
> emperor of China, the one depected in the film The Emperor and the
Assasin. He
> unified China around 220 BCE and he did three things that had huge impacts
on
> unifying China as a nation, namely unification of roads, unification of
> measurement and unification of written language. From then on people from
> different parts of the Chinese empire could communicate in written forms.
>
> So, back to square one: when did the Chinese literati start silent
reading?
> Perhaps sometime in the first century? if there is such a thing as silent
> reading. On the other hand, the Chinese have favoured rote learning
perhaps
> until now. This may mean that many things they read are perhaps read aloud
to
> help with memorizing at some stage.
>
>
> with best regards,
>
> Yiyan
>
> ======================================
> Dr Yiyan Wang
> Chinese Studies A18
> University of Sydney NSW 2006
> AUSTRALIA
>
> tel+ 61 2 9351 4512 fax+ 61 2 9351 2319
> email: [log in to unmask]
> ======================================