Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
Isn't that because in Chinese there's really no grammer and no plurals?
Nouns don't change. It's characters!
|
It's a complex language, and trust me, there's a grammar. Fairly different from English, with unique properties. The pronunciation issues seem mostly with consonant sounds at the end of a syllable. Mandarin has fewer than Cantonese I believe, but I may be wrong. For instance, 'n' and 'ng' as in 'an', 'in', or 'ang', 'ing', are common enough in Mandarin, as are some 'r' endings. But that's about it. So you get words like "big" pronounced more like "pi-guh".
As for plurals, you're right, there are not plurals as we know them. Consider the noun "water", though. It's common to describe it as a "glass of water" or some other unit of "counting". In Mandarin almost all nouns are countable, so require something like a "glass" to indicate the unit. Everything becomes then, "One count of noun", or "Three count of noun", with no English style plural.
Sorry as well if this is more derailment, sort of on topic I guess.