>>5960527If I was Chang, I wouldn't call Chinese fucking retarded. I'd call Hanzi the greatest invention of humankind and I'd call for everyone to write in nothing but Hanzi.
>>5960538>My understanding is that every Chinese language utilizes the same script in different waysMy understanding is that the central differences in the Chinese dialects are in pronunciation and what the word actually is. The Hanzi always represent the same idea, but they stnad in for different words.
>>5960596 is a more extreme version of this, as these three are different languages, but the same principles apply within China.
>It's just the written forms of Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish.The thing is that these languages are written in Latin, which is an alphabet. Chinese is logographic.
Which means the way the language is written in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish is distinct, simply due to how the alphabet is used slightly differently. Which is why you can't really read books of a Nordic German language you don't know, despite knowing one of them.
German itself is interesting here. There are many German dialects, many of which are incompatible. A North German could not understand a Carinthian, if the Carinthian did not make an effort to speak the standardized "High German". And everyone writes in High German as well, which is why Swiss texts, despite the Swiss German language being nonsensical to German-speakers outside of Switzerland can be read by German speakers and are part of the German literary canon.
It's like Chinese, but to a much, much lesser extent.
