The Cultural Identity Within Asian Writing Systems
The style of Asian writing seems to be completely different from that of the western writing systems. For starters, many western languages are phonetic: words are spelled out with symbols that represent sounds. The way that a word looks has nothing to do with the meaning of the word. On the other hand, the most recognized form of Asian writing, Chinese characters, are completely pictographic. A single character is correlated to one sound or meaning. To convey more complicated meanings, pictographs are either combined into new pictographs, or multiple characters are simply used in succession. The meaning of words is depicted through pictographs, but for the most part, there is no information about their pronunciations. Asian and western languages appear so different because they had evolved in isolation from each other for hundreds of years. However, the evolution of each group of languages is similar. Whether Asian or western, languages borrow from each other and evolve together when they are in close quarters.
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are perfect examples of languages that have evolved together because they are spoken in countries that are so close together. Their cultures are also arguably similar when compared to western cultures. All three have used Chinese characters exclusively as their writing system for a period of time and parts of the Korean and Japanese vocabularies are actually derived from Chinese. Up until a few hundred years ago, the three written languages have developed quite closely. But in the present day, the three systems appear to have taken very different evolutionary paths. The Korean language has developed a phonetic alphabet syste...
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Mao Zedong was a very influential man in history. He forever changed the face of Chinese politics and life as a whole. His communist views and efforts to modernize China still resonate in the country today. Jonathan Spence’s book titled Mao Zedong is a biography of the great Chinese leader. Spence aims to show how Mao evolved from a poor child in a small rural village, to the leader of a communist nation. The biography is an amazing story of a person’s self determination and the predictability of human nature. The book depicts how a persuasive voice can shape the minds of millions and of people. It also shows the power and strength that a movement in history can make. This biography tells an important part of world history-the communist takeover of China.
Many scholars, such as Russell Tomlin and Jae Jung Song, discussed the diverse word orders of languages. Yet the fact that many languages have distinct word orders could be explained through discovering
Artists communicate their identity through their work in different ways. Identity can be influenced by culture, community, and diversity, it can be represented and communicated in many different ways as well. The two artists I will be comparing are Ah Xian and Kerry James Marshall. Both artists represent culture identity in their works but in different ways as well as have different views on the subject of cultural identities.
The Asian American history is the history of the ethnic and racial groups in the United States who are of Asian descent. Spickard (2007) shows that the "'Asian American' was an idea created in the 1960s to bring together the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Americans for a strategic and political purposes.
York, Geoffrey. 2007. “Text-messages: the new Chinese protest tool.” Globe and Mail, Friday, June 1: A13.
Mao was under the impression that Communism was so perfect that intellectual criticism would not be hurt, but benefit the attitudes in the country. This was a major chan...
People form East Asian immigrate to the Unite States, which is an ethnic cultural crucible, that only is a small ethnic group. However, they have been considered to be different from other minority ethnic groups because of their high school achievement. According to Huang, Asians get higher score than whites get at schools, especially in mathematics, science and other technical areas(cited from Pang, Han,& Pang,2011; Peng& Wright,1994). As immigrants, Asian American are not only adjusting themselves to acculturation, but also bringing and keeping their own culture, habits, behaviors, and belief system. The questions are: Are there any relations between culture and achievement in Asian American family education? How does their culture influence
Multiple sources have proven that memories are important in establishing one’s identity. In The Outsiders, Johnny’s violent and rough past affected the way people see him and the way he views himself. S.E. Hinton wrote about her memory of dreaming to be a writer, her true identity. Finally, in Julian Baggini’s lecture, he introduces the idea that multiple factors shape a person. Appearance may paint what a person looks like on the outside, but memories help incorporate emotion and movement to a painting of oneself.
These are the two questions that I get asked regularly by non-Asians. I always reply “Well I was born and raised in America but my family comes from Hong Kong.” I grew up constantly being told to take pride in being Chinese, however, I was also consistently told by my family to be proud that I even have the opportunity to grow up in America. There was never a definite answer as to what I was, so I learned to accept both. I am Asian American. Many people have questions about what “Asian American” really means and their questions brought on questions of my own. It was not until recently that Asian American influences became more prominent in my life. I was able to find books,
The most distinctive features of Chinese civilization were in the Song period. This was the scholar-official class certified through highly competitive civil service examinations. These elite were better educated than others in Chinese history. Aristocratic habits and prejudices largely disappeared when examination system was fully developed. This system came to be considered the normal ladder to success. The invention of printing should be given a little credit. The art of carving words and pictures into wooden blocks was developed by Tang craftsmen. They would ink the blocks then press paper onto them. An entire page of text and illustrations was held on each block. In the eleventh century movable type, on piece of type for each character, was invented. In China whole-block printing was cheaper. The spread of literacy was
More murderous than Hitler, more powerful than Stalin, in the battle of the Communist leaders Mao Zedong trumps all. Born into a comfortable peasant family, Mao would rise up to become China’s great leader. After leading the communists away from Kuomintang rule, he set out to modernize China, but the results of this audacious move were horrific. He rebounded from his failures time and again, and used his influence to eliminate his enemies and to purge China of its old ways. Mao saw a brighter future for China, but it was not within his grasp; his Cultural Revolution was not as successful as he had wanted it to be. Liberator, oppressor, revolutionary, Mao Zedong was the greatest emancipator in China’s history, as his reforms and actions changed the history of China and of the wider world.
McDougall, Bonnie. "Problems and Possibilities in Translating Contemporary Chinese Literature." The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs (1991): 37-67.
Asian American Literature Asian Americans seem to be fighting an unwinnable battle when it comes to the content of their writing. Writers are criticized by whites for speaking out against discrimination, and by their fellow Asian Americans for contributing to the stereotypes through their silence. I believe that Asian Americans should include politics in their writing as they so choose, but should not feel obligated to do so, as Frank Chin suggests. For those Asian Americans who make known their discontent with the injustice and discrimination that they feel, in the white culture, this translates to attacking American superiority and initiating insecurities. For Mura, a writer who dared to question why an Asian American was not allowed to audition for an Asian American role, his punishment was “the ostracism and demonization that ensued”.
Eventually, in 1949, after a grueling civil war, the Communists took the leadership of China, starting the new era of “the People’s Republic of China”. Mao led the PRC with ambition, and made many sacrifices, both himself and as a nation. Although Mao’s ambition and sacrifices did lead to the better China that is known today, there are many that question the necessity of the harsh choices he made during his rule over the PRC. One can even question the morality of the decisions made by Mao, both direct and indirect for his nation. During the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” of China, countless Chinese bourgeoisie were persecuted with almost no logical reason. His powerful and stern leadership turned into an iron fist. Mao in the long run did improve China, but many of his actions were unnecessary and actually hindered the progress of his
Before observing some results of experiments with MT between Japanese and English, it must be mentioned that Japanese has its characteristic that strongly distinguishes it from other languages, the Japanese honorifics or politeness system. Every time, when Japanese people speak or write Japanese, they have to determine which style they should apply, a “polite style” or a “flat style”, to their utterance or writing. Of course, this decision is made unconsciously and then with no time lag according to a situation they are in.