倪小明香腸國日記

They say, you have to learn so many chinese characters, it's too difficult so they're too lazy to learn it. I say, you european languages, using 26 or slightly more alphabets, you had a great chance to make your language simple and easy to learn, why do you make it so complicated?

In Chinese, a bus is called a "public wagon", we don't need a new word for it. Shampoo is "wash hair water", Perfum is "fragrance water", envelop is "letter seal". If you are bad in chemistry, you would probably have no clue what an "Isotope" is, while the chinese name suggests it's a "same-position-element". If you heard about the periodic table, you could have a chance to guess the correct meaning, but even if not, at least it's clear it's an "element". Why name communism "communism", while you can name it "share-property-ism"? Why make life so complicated by specifying everything? You'll say it's too long. So? There are German words as long as "Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft". Ok, this is an extreme example, but if you know a bit German, you would know there are many very long words.

I think this also reflects the living attitude of the Europeans and Chinese. Chinese like everything simple, doesn't have to be too exact, if you build a tool, it's the best to be able to use it under many conditions. In a chinese kitchen, only ONE knife, ONE wok, a big spoon, a pair of chopsticks are needed. You use the same wok to stir fry vegatables, boil soup, cook fish, fly meat....etc. I was shocked when I came to Germany and saw such thing as a "fish pan". I don't understand why own a whole set of knives, while I believe the meat knife can cut everything.  Grarlic presser, spice grinder, eggcup, cups and glasses for every single kind of drink, eggbeater, Salad mixer, pasta pot...... what are all these? Alcohol is invented in every culture, but instead of annoying themselves with a cork, most of the alcohols can be opened with bare hand or simple tools. And the cuisine? Does the cuisine also reflect this variety? I don't think so. That's ok, not everyone is a gastronome; but why such a fuss???

Chinese is easy, according to a survey in 2006, 8128 different characters appeared in newspapers (we're talking about traditional characters here), but 80% of the 700 million words which appeared in all medias are combinations of 581 characters, 90% of it use only 934 characters, and if you know 2314 characters, you can already read 99% of the articles. For simplified, surprisingly you need slightly more characters, 591 for 80%, 958 for 90% and 2377 for 99%.

So tell me, how can people complain chinese being difficult, while they call a hanging lamp a "chandelier", a word which I can't correctly spell out without looking up the dictionary?