Subject: Re: Why Chinese is so damn hard
From: Donna Richoux
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 11:05:11 +0200
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
引文:
Peacenik <......> wrote:
Chinese expository writing has less emphasis on clear expression of thought and logical structure, and more emphasis on interpretation, euphony, and various concepts being assumed to be understood. It's often hard to know where one idea and another begins due to series of comma splices, chains of cause and effect, and redundancies. Punctuation is often applied haphazardly.
That fits in with some of the English writing we've seen submitted by Chinese participants -- often, long chains of abstract nouns and concepts. On one hand, there can be an utter disregard for English grammar (endings, articles, etc) although I can roughly intuit the meaning by bouncing from word to word, just looking at the roots. On the other extreme, one guy had pretty much mastered the grammatical side -- a feat to be proud of, I'm sure -- but when I tried to point out that good, effective English writing used short, concrete words and active verbs, he seemed quite taken aback. Your remarks imply this was not the custom in Chinese.
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Best - Donna Richoux
