A Discussion on Ways in Which English and Chinese Differ concerning Linguistic Levels
The Chinese language is close to becoming an entirely isolating but is somehow inflecting and composed of derivation affixes and has a composition. An isolating language does not verbal conjugation and inflection of its words but instead uses supplemental terms regarding a specific context for the creation of meaning. Most of the Chinese words are composed of two or more morphemes in each word, which makes it not a highly isolating language. The language becomes a highly isolating one when one would quickly identify and individuate its morphemes. English also makes up an isolating language. However, English makes it up to be a perfect analytic language because its nouns have inflection and verbs conjugation. It has both short and long vowels, diphthongs, consonants, and diacritics.
The Case System of both Languages
A case system could determine grammatical categories to be followed by a language that may combine inflection to show the relationship between nouns, adjectives, or pronouns in a sentence about other words. Both English and Chinese fall into different typological language families, and this is the reason for very little being in common between them (Luk, 4). The passive voice as a syntactic phenomenon in English contains auxiliary be and a verb’s past participle. Another critical aspect is the intransitivity of verbs in both languages. The transitive go with a direct object while the intransitive do not regard a direct object in position. Passive in Chinese languages refers to sentences with the word 被 (bèi). When looked at the syntactic structure, both styles are similar because it is only transitive verbs that can be seen in sentences. 殺 (shā, ‘kill’) occurs in passive sentences for being a transitive verb while 死 (sĭ, ‘die’) can’t happen in passive sentences for being an intransitive verb. We can look at this as 李 四 被 殺 了。 Lĭsì bèi shā le Lisi BEI kill ASP ‘Lisi was killed.’ Looking at tenses and aspects, English has several of them, such as the present, past, among others, and an indication to the time of an event’s occurrence. Aspect shows a speaker’s views towards an event. In Chinese, 咗╱了 (zo2/le) shows the happening of an event in the past time. 咗╱了 (zo2/le) represents non-past events, and the Chinese do not have markers of a tense. Grammar words in Chinese are not subject to change, no matter their use or appearance position. There is no issue of verb conjugation and adjectives agreement. English grammar is different because it makes use of all these and other rules.
Comparison of the basic Word Order for the Languages
English is composed of syntax and morphology that are specialized hence their use in the expression of different types. In Chinese, the word order appears to reverse. English words follow both form and function, while those of the Chinese lean mostly towards the roles. Most of the English words are formed on the bases of various styles like affixation, blending, compounding and conversion, adoption. These are from proper nouns and backformation, and clipping of acronyms. Chinese words have no these formation strategies because they tend to be more flexible and dominate the following contexts, and the relationship to other words enhances grammatical meanings. Words, ‘strong’ and ‘strengthen’ are different in English while in Chinese, the word strong (巩 固 gǒng gù) applies to both scenarios. Events that took place at earlier times are the first to be described while those that took place later are described afterward. There are times in the English language when sentences are constructed following the sequence of actions and events.
An applicable example is from the Moonstone by Collins. Looking at the specific case of the matron, her act of seeing the lady is described first. Then what follows is the description of pointing out to a girl for the sake of seeing her by the name Rosanna Spearman (Zhao and Cao, 393). The word order for both languages is similar. English tends to strongly figure to ground, while the Chinese oppositely goes from ground to think. Both languages follow the same cognitive model for the word order. Chinese words have a rank, and this also applies to clauses, phrases, and sentences.
The Mistakes one can make when translating from Chinese to English.
Grammar is the skeletal framework for the pronunciation of the Chinese language, and this acts as the bases for learning the language. Generally, mistakes would result from the incoherent articulation of Chinese rules, lack of consistency when translating names, redundancy, spelling mistakes leading to embarrassment, information loss, and wrongly choosing words. The knowledge of the Chinese characters needs a mastery of the proper order to make sense. Differences between the Chinese language and English cultures would result in mistranslation. What might result from this is the Chinglish language, which neglects the English language rules and customs.
During translation, awkwardly mixing Chinese thinking minds would result in an ungrammatical expression of English. Such a problem is like in words, ‘pulling someone’s leg, which means joking with someone in English, but the Chinese think it is about one person trying to pull another’s leg out(Brazill, 31). Mistranslation can also result from the differences in grammatical rules. Confusing the gender of the pronouns, verb tenses, prepositions, articles, subject, and verb agreements lead to confusion and, thus, a mistranslation. One may fail to switch correctly between various tenses for the two languages. For instance, the words I will go to a seminar’ in Chinese may be said; I go to a seminar because of a lack of subjunctives and modals. The basic syntax in Chinese where a word would be used as both a verb and an adverb would lead to making mistakes.
The Way of Forming Questions in Both Languages
The 吗（ma and 呢（ne are the most common general questions in the Chinese language and form yes or no particles. The addition of these particles at the end of a declarative sentence makes it a yes or no question. A good example is in 你忙。（Nǐ máng.）à 你忙吗？（Nǐ máng ma? (HSK 1 Grammar 6).It applies in turning statements into questions and demanding answers to a previous situation that is most indicative of ”How about… and “What about…? Most of the questions in Chinese are thus Wh-questions. Most Chinese speakers use “什么,” “怎么,” “哪里,” “谁” and“为什么” particles in framing questions that are in what, how, where, who and why scenarios for instance; 去故宫怎么走？(Qù gù gōng zěn me zǒu?) How can I get to the Imperial Place? The phrase, “几,” “多,” is used in asking how many or how much about somebody or something.
On the other hand, the English language has many types of questions because of their appearance in diverse cultural fields. Some of these questions are yes and no, ‘W’ questions like what, which, where, who, when, why, and how. So the ‘Wh’ manner of questions in Chinese applies similarly to the English language. Other forms of items are indirect, tag, and negative questions used for confirmation. Various ways involve forming each of these questions, like applying the inversion method of creating them.
Comparison for the Relative Clauses
English speakers emphasize much on objective observation during the Chinese lean towards the subjective view. Most of the sentences in English are thus mainly made up of inanimate subjects and in passive voice while those in Chinese are inactive voices without subjects. Relative clauses form the majority of usage in the Chinese language, which is classified concerning a particular order with examples being passive, possessive, and adjunct relative clauses (Lin, 194). English mostly has a preposition before the relative pronoun, while Chinese have, in most instances, the head is on the right side with that of the compound pronouns appearing on the left side. English relative pronouns introduce relative clauses, and therefore their position depends on that of relative clauses and the object of reference. Inanimate head nouns dominate in the corresponding Chinese provisions. Both the English and Chinese languages, therefore, have relative pronouns. The Chinese language permits resumptive pronouns while English does not.
Works Cited
Brazill Shihua. Chinese to English Translation: Identifying Problems And Providing Solutions. Montana Tech of the University of Montana. Spring 2016. https://digitalcommons.mtech.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1066&context=grad_rsch.
HSK 1 Grammar. https://www.digmandarin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/HSK-1-Grammar-Points.pdf.
Lin Charles Chien-Jer. Chinese and English Relative Clauses: Processing Constraints and Typological Consequences. Indiana University.Volume 1, pp 191-199.
Luk Zoe Pei-sui and David C. S. Li. Chinese-English Contrastive Grammar. 2017. HKU Press. https://hkupress.hku.hk/pro/con/1615.pdf.
Zhao Guodong and Cao Zuoyu. Contrastive Study of English and Chinese Word Order from the Perspective of Figure-ground Theory—A Case Study of The Moonstone and Its Chinese Version. Journal of Language Teaching and Research.2016.Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 389-397.