Wednesday, August 31, 2005

what she said

I saw Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together when it was in theatres. In a post on her blog Pam says she noticed something that I'm sure went right by me. In one scene two characters speak to each other in different Chinese dialects; Pam compares it to one person speaking correct Portuguese to another who holds up his side of the conversation in correct Italian. The languages are not so dissimilar that, have you an ear for this sort of thing, you can tune the ear to get the gist of what's being said.

Interestingly, different dialects of Chinese are written using the same character set. A Chinese character may be pronounced quite differently when spoken in different dialects. Chinese language movies are often subtitled with Chinese characters so all who are literate in Chinese (despite the differences in dialects) can read what is being said.

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