Cantonese kinship terms

[Bacon]

Is that because of the Papyrus from the delta? I know that during the Roman Republic the Egyptians were paper heavyweights. I'm not sure how far back it goes, I just know that it was the most desirable paper for Roman aristocrats. It doesn't age very well, but it is my understanding that there are many hermetically sealed samples out there. Wax lids on pottery I imagine. Dunno tho. If you're an anthropologist then I'm sure you know better than me.

Yep. Once you get to a writing material where you're writing on the surface, like paper you can write rounded shapes. Chinese writing is theorized to have originally been carved into bamboo or wood similar.

I guess that's why their poetry is so admired. More words, more accuracy. No?

So the Latin roots make it easier for calque words(is that how you say that? or is it just calque?) and new words combined with older words rather than making a whole new word, or character in the case of Chinese? It sure makes it easier to translate.

Exactly. Latin allows a certain structural order, and in English the additional Germanic roots allow the language to be far more fluid.[/quote]

I find it difficult to wrap my head around a non phonetic alphabet, or whatever it's called. Surely it isn't all arbitrary???

According to Saussure yes. You have an idea represented by an arbitrary symbol. The difference between a writing system which uses logograms like chinese and a writing system like Latin script is that the symbols representing ideas in this system are based on recombination of letters which have no independent meaning in and of themselves. They do not require memorization of meaning, only their phonetic uses. So the symbol for computer is comprised of eight letters. In Chinese or traditional Japanese you must memorize the characters and either reconstitute other characters you've created or combine multiple characters to form a word (which are each in both cases comprised of multiple memorized characters). The alternative is constantly adding entirely new characters to the language.

The other advantage of phonetic writing systems is being able to read words from the symbols without prior memorization. Having an intuitive understanding of the Latin-Germanic construction of English you can take a huge word like "antidisestablishmentarianism" and not only hazard a guess at what it means but pronounce it even if you've never seen it before.
It quite simply requires less memorization and allows for more fluidity.

Is it harder to know Chinese and learn English(or any phonetic alphabet) or vice versa? Both, writing and speaking.

Well let's accept the fact that you're never truly fluent in an acquired language on the same level as native speakers. English is a tough language to learn to speak correctly because the rules are comprised of two distinctly different language bases which means pronounciation of words can vary using the same spelling, rules can be played with if you know how and when, or suspended entirely.

From what I've observed learning to construct English is difficult but once that is mastered the writing system is simple. On the other hand for Chinese in its various dialects learning the speech is easier because it tends to follow rules fairly well but the writing system is a nightmare for people coming from an unrelated writing system.