Hacker News Reader

My understanding was that written Chinese has a great deal of phonetic information (even though it is not exclusively phonetic like the alphabet or Japanese Hiragana/Katakana). I had understood that many ideograms essentially could be interpreted as topic + pronunciation: e.g. 驰 could be interpreted as "the word about 马 horses read as 也 chí".

View on HN

At least one of the Chinese languages is tonal too, so the same sequence of vowel and consonant sounds can have totally different meanings when spoken at different pitches. (The humorous example is “grass mud horse,” which is a bit NSFW and a great act of someone thumbing their nose at censorship.)

I wonder if native speakers have a greater emphasis on subvocalized pitch, or if that’s even a part of subvocalizing? Paying attention to my own internal reading now, I suspect that it is.

English is my first language, but I find that when I read in Mandarin, I can focus on intonations, personality, etc or leave it out as sort of monotone.

The intonations that give the characters their meaning are so engrained in the flow of the sentences it can feel monotone, as it is just the way it is said.

If I am reading a poem or idioms I usually like to over emphasize the tone like a classic theatrical reading because it’s fun and helps me remember what I read.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com