Q: Why do speakers from different provinces sometimes write in the air with their fingers while conversing?
A: Written Chinese is effectively universal (some scholars consider it a ninth dialect), so "air kanji" may succeed where differing oral traditions fail.
Q: Do Chinese characters really represent concepts rather than sounds?
A: Sort of. Chinese characters, called kanji, are based on ancient pictographs. Most of the 6,000-odd current characters retain an ideographic (concept-expressing) element, albeit one grown so abstract that etymologists alone can decipher it. (About 100 basic kanji remain true pictographs.) Over the years, most have also gained a second element indicating pronunciation, and so have become associated with specific syllables. Thus, they are evolving away from visual representation and toward phonetics.
Q: How could "Pepsi" become "Bite the Wax Tadpole" in Putonghua?
A: Chalk it up to corporate brand-name fanaticism. Writing foreign words in Chinese entails assembling kanji that are pronounced something like the newcomers' syllables. Trouble is, kanji convey ideas, too. Chinese scholars have displayed remarkable talent at transliteration, as when they synthesised "gene" from ji and yin, or "base factor" Usually they just generate a new, phonetically-unrelated term. Pepsi eventually took this route. Rendering foreign personal names into Chinese is a similarly refined art. Web sites that do this automatically are fun, but I recommend that readers actually dealing with Chinese speakers seek a professional foreign-to-Chinese name transliterator.
Q: How do computers deal with Chinese?
A: Chinese Internet users sometimes turn to Romanisation and graphic text, with the usual underwhelming results. Automatic Roman-to-kanji transliteration software and Bopomofo (a kanji-based syllabary) character sets are marginally more effective, but still far from satisfactory. Platform differences further complicate matters. Though some Western prognosticators predict that these problems will eventually kill kanji, Chinese technicians are working on sophisticated keyboarding programmes to cover their needs. (As always, such programmes produce gibberish on incompatible systems.) Also, Asian notebook technology, where the user writes on an electronic pad and the computer converts the writing to text, far excels typical Western efforts.
Q: What kind of Web presence does Chinese enjoy?
A: Chinese computing advice, online resources, and academic sites are very well-represented, as are newspapers, mailing lists and other resources.
I hope this information, and the links, inspire potential learners to delve more deeply into the fascinating subject of Chinese language and culture.
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