Some Differences Between Chinese and English
How English and Chinese Pronunciation, Writing, and Grammar Differ
Oct 1, 2009
It is unsurprising that Chinese and English are so markedly different, considering that these languages have developed largely in separation from each other. Chinese and English differ in terms of how they are written, how they sound, and their grammatical structures and rules.
Languages and Dialects
"Chinese" can be an ambiguous term. There are many dialects of Chinese, including Mandarin, Wu, Min, and Cantonese. "Chinese" can refer to the language family which is made up of these many dialects. At the same time, "Chinese" can refer to individual dialects of this language family. For example, by saying "I speak Chinese," one is most likely implying, "I speak Mandarin."
"English" is a term that refers to a single language, rather than a language family. There are dialects of English, such as American English, British English, and Manx English, but these dialects are largely mutually intelligible. This is unlike Chinese dialects, which can be very different in terms of phonetics, lexicon, and grammar.
In this article, "Chinese" refers primarily to Mandarin, but much of the below information can be extended to other Chinese dialects.
Writing Systems
The fundamental difference between the Chinese and English writing systems is that Chinese employs a logographic writing system, while English uses an alphabetic writing system. An alphabetic writing system is one which uses individual letters—each of which roughly corresponds to particular phonemes—to "spell out" how words sound.
A logographic system is made up of visual symbols which represent words but not sounds. This means that the pronunciation of Chinese characters is not implied by the way the character is written. And while there may be elements within individual Chinese characters that hint at pronunciation, for the most part the pronunciation of a character cannot be learned by looking at the logogram itself.
The Pronunciation of Chinese and English
Unsurprisingly, some of the consonantal and vocalic sounds of Chinese and English are similar. For example, b, k, p, d, and t (as expressed in the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system) share essentially identical pronunciation in both Chinese and English. However, other Chinese sounds such as x, ü, and q do not exist in English's phonetic inventory.
Many full Chinese syllables (such as pang, xiong,and dun) are not found in English. Likewise, consonant clusters (such as those in train, backed, and thread) are never found in Chinese.
Another major difference is that Chinese is a tonal language. This means that the meaning of a Chinese word depends not only on the phonemes which make up the word's pronunciation, but also the pitch and contour used when pronouncing the word.
While English is not a tonal language, it does use intonation and stress. For example, compare "You like pudding" with "You like pudding?". Because the latter sentence is a question, it ends with a rising intonation. This intonation is different to tone as used in Chinese dialects.
Chinese and English Grammar Differences
Unlike English, there is no grammatical tense in Chinese. For example, while the English verb "do" becomes "did" to express past tense, Chinese verbs do not change in this way. Instead, Chinese relies on expressing aspect. For example, the aspect particle "le" can be used after a verb or at the end of a sentence to imply that an action has been completed. Expressing completion and expressing tense are different things.
Chinese does not, in general, pluralize words. In English, there can be "one dog" or "two dogs", with the "s" indicating plural. But in Chinese, there is "one dog" and "two dog". That is, the noun "dog" (in Chinese, gou) does not change when the number changes. However, the suffix "-men" can be used in Chinese to indicate plural in pronouns such as "he", "she", and "it", and in words such as "classmate."
One major similarity between English and Chinese is that they are both SVO languages, as they both follow the same basic order of Subject-Verb-Object. For example, the English sentence "I eat pumpkins" has identical structure in Chinese.
More Language Differences
English is almost always written from left to right. However, Chinese can be written from top to bottom, right to left, as well as left to right.
English has a significant number of polysyllabic words. For example, even the word "polysyllabic" has 5 syllables. On the other hand, one Chinese character is never longer than one syllable. The majority of Chinese words are made up of two characters (and therefore two syllables), but Chinese words are not commonly tri- or polysyllabic.
Chinese and English differ in terms of dialects, orthography, phonetics, grammar, and in many other important ways. While the above examples only begin to describe the ways these languages differ, they provide a fundamental understanding of the major differences and similarities between Chinese and English.
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