Extended metaphor: Chinese vs English

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Disclaimer 1: I have taken many ideas off the Internet so they aren't 100% original.
Disclaimer 2: I learnt Chinese before learning English, so I have always regarded Chinese as my first language and English as my second language.
Disclaimer 3: Unlike some Aspies, I'm not really on friendly terms with most of the NTs around me. In fact, certain NTs ought to count themselves lucky that I haven't demanded any apology from them yet.
Disclaimer 4: I have absolutely no idea why English-speaking countries like USA are mostly low-context while Chinese-speaking countries like China are mostly high-context. In my own opinion, English is a high-context language (more roundabout) while Chinese is a low-context language (more straightforward).

English=The NT (non-autistic) community
Chinese=The Aspie (autistic) community

Both English and Chinese are languages despite belonging to different families. One needs to invest time and effort to translate English into Chinese and vice versa.
(Both NTs and Aspies are humans despite occupying different positions on the neurodiversity spectrum. An NT needs to invest time and effort if he/she wants to understand Aspies. Likewise, an Aspie needs to invest time and effort if he/she wants to understand NTs.)

Written from the POV of a native Chinese speaker learning English...

1. English is the most widely used language in the world.
(If we define NTs as "non-autistic", then NTs form the largest community in the world.)

2. The English alphabet consists of 26 letters. Letters cluster together to form words. Some letters, usually vowels, seem to be more prominent than other letters because they are more frequently used in words.
(I acknowledge that every NT is unique. However, I notice that NTs around me tend to derive their identities from the social groups that they belong to. Such NTs feel that isolated lives=meaningless lives. Letters are meaningless until they cluster together to form meaningful words, just like how some NTs feel that their lives are "meaningless" until they cluster together to form "meaningful social groups". Some social groups seem to be more prominent than other social groups because they hog their limelight more often.)

3. Every letter in the English alphabet has two forms--uppercase and lowercase. Beginning learners sometimes write in uppercase when they are supposed to write in lowercase and vice versa, resulting in writings that seem "off".
(Throughout history, countless NTs have championed for egalitarianism. However, the sad reality is that most social groups consist of two types of members--THOSE IN POWER and THOSE NOT IN POWER. Aspies sometimes have difficulties identifying THOSE IN POWER, resulting in social interactions that seem "off".)

4. If you don't know how to pronounce any English word, fear not! Rely on phonics! Even though exceptions always exist, phonics reminds learners that every letter plays a more or less "stable" role in affecting a word's pronunciation. For example, in "cat", c contributes "ker", a contributes "ar" and t contributes "ter". Ker+Ar+Ter=Cat!! !
(Even though exceptions always exist, unwritten social norms are always there to remind people of the roles that ought to play in their social groups. If you can't figure any social group out, try figuring its norms out first.)

5. The same word takes on different forms in different circumstances thanks to tenses.
(Some NTs proudly proclaim themselves as "chameleons" when they want to show off how adaptable they are. Even though both NTs and Aspies adopt different social roles in different circumstances, generally speaking, I notice that NTs can juggle a higher number of social roles with greater ease as compared to Aspies.)

6. Many nouns have a singular form as well as a plural form.
(Some NTs confess that their personalities differ when they are alone and when they are with people.) (Hey, I confess that I often "modify" certain aspects of my personality when I am with people to come off as politically correct, but such modifications don't come naturally to me.)

7. English contains three articles "a", "an" and "the" that might seem "Oh, so meaningful!" to many native English speakers. But if you ask me for my honest opinion, I'll gladly tell you that even if I eliminate articles from my writings, I believe that my writings will still make sense.
(I'm ambivalent towards pleasantries such as Merry Christmas. On one hand, I often take the initiative in exchanging pleasantries, but on the other hand, I believe that even if I eliminate pleasantries from my conversations/writings, I believe that anything that I say or write will still make sense.)

8. I dare boast that I write beautifully. Despite being tone-deaf, I dare boast that I can instinctively sense whether a piece of writing flows well or not. A well-written piece of writing should flow like music. However, just because I can write beautifully doesn't mean that I can speak beautifully. (I have gone through speech therapy before...) Personally, I dislike conversing in English because I frequently mispronounce words. I don't really know how to explain this, but I'll try... Every time I speak English, I feel as though I'm twisting my tongue into all sorts of weird positions just to get a sentence out. The moment my tongue fails to coordinate with my teeth is the moment I mispronounce yet another word. Maybe it's just me, but I once read that in South Korea, parents often send their kids off to undergo surgery to snip off the tongue's frenulum. Kids allegedly no longer mispronounce English words after undergoing surgery because their tongues have become longer and hence more nimble.
(Personally, I have difficulties ensuring that the conversation will flow well whenever I converse with NTs. Every time I converse with NTs, I feel as though I'm twisting my mind into all sorts of weird positions just to get a clear, understandable and non-offensive sentence out. The moment my tongue fails to coordinate with my mind is the moment I say something wrong that disrupts the conversation's flow.)

9. English is a stress-timed language, meaning that not every syllable takes the same amount of time to be spoken. When speaking English, one should spend more time on stressed syllables and less time on unstressed syllables.
(NTs usually have the ability to multi-task well because they can always filter out anything in their environment that they deem as irrelevant. I would like to remind you all that NTs mostly don't treat all their friends equally well because they rank their friends.)

Written from the POV of a native English speaker learning Chinese...

1. The Chinese "alphabet" (if there is any) consists of goodness-knows-how-many radicals that cluster together to form words. Most Chinese words consist of 1-3 radicals. English words are mostly polysyllabic whereas Chinese words are mostly monosyllabic. Most English learners begin by learning all 26 letters of the alphabet. As far as I know, most Chinese learners begin by learning how to write "the 8 types of strokes" that form the basis of all Chinese words before progressing to learning how to write words. I know of some Chinese teachers who teach radicals explicitly but um, most native Chinese speakers (including myself) only think in terms of radicals when referring to the dictionary because most dictionaries group Chinese words by their radicals.
(I acknowledge that all Aspies share some common characteristics just like how all Chinese words originate from "the 8 types of strokes", but every Aspie is unique. I might be wrong, but I think that even Aspies who enjoy joining social groups don't fully derive their identities from the social groups that they belong to, just like how a Chinese word retains its own meaning even if people pair it up with another Chinese word to form a compound word. Some NTs tend to stereotype Aspies based on 1-3 traits that they see. As an Aspie, I admit that I start examining why I possess certain traits only when NTs ask me about such traits.)

2. Uppercase and lowercase are non-existent in Chinese.
(I was surprised when I read about an Aspie blogger who frequently described himself as "power hungry" because I had always thought that Aspies aren't very interested in dividing members of various social groups into THOSE IN POWER and THOSE NOT IN POWER.)

3. If you don't know how to pronounce any Chinese word, I'm sorry that you can't rely on phonics. You can either ask a native Chinese speaker (not always accurate) or refer to a Chinese dictionary (always accurate, but you must learn hanyu pinyin first).
(Maybe I'm unaware of exceptions, but as far as I know, no unwritten social norms exist among Aspies. Therefore, if an NT can't figure Aspies out, he or she might have to ask Aspies themselves for advice. Alternatively, NTs might have to refer to literature written about Aspies, but they must understand beforehand that some pieces of literature might be outdated and even downright wrong.)

4. The same Chinese word retains the same form in different circumstances because tenses don't exist in Chinese.
(Generally speaking, many Aspies vs NTs conflicts occur when an Aspie retains his or her "true self" when he or she is supposed to take on different social roles in different circumstances.)

5. As far as I know, many Chinese nouns retain the same form throughout, meaning that its singular form as well as its plural form are one and the same. Maybe the only exception is the the Chinese word "men" which indicates plurality when placed after pronouns and certain nouns.
(I think that most Aspies behave the same when they are alone and when they are with people. Maybe the only exception is when Aspies "modify" themselves to come off as politically correct.)

6. I highly doubt that Chinese contains equivalents of "a", "an", "the", although I sometimes use "one" to mean "a" or "an" in Chinese and "that" to mean "the" in Chinese.
(Just because an Aspie enjoys exchanging pleasantries with NTs doesn't mean that the Aspie thinks that exchanging of pleasantries is a meaningful process.)

7. Chinese is notorious for having four tones. Chinese does sound terribly wrong if a speaker ever mixes the tones up. However, as a tone-deaf person, I can assure you that tone-deaf people will have no trouble at all mastering the four tones because there is no need to vary your pitch. (I dare boast that I speak Chinese monotonously but more fluently than English.) I can understand the pain of non-native Chinese speakers who frequently mispronounce words because of wrong tones because I made many similar mistakes when I first began learning Chinese. However, once you get all your tones correct, you will realize to your delight that Chinese is actually very relaxing on your tongue unless you want to perfect a Beijing accent. (On an unrelated note, Chinese does have the "r" sound contrary to popular belief.)
(As an Aspie, I admit that conversations with NTs do go terribly wrong if we fail to communicate on the same wavelength. However, NTs, as long as you manage to get onto the same wavelength as the Aspies that you communicate with, you will realize to your delight that communication with Aspies is actually very relaxing because you don't have to worry much about "the need to be politically correct".)

8. Chinese is a syllable-timed language, meaning that every syllable takes the same amount of time to the spoken.
(Aspies usually experience sensory overload when they can't filter out certain things in their environment. As far as I know, many Aspies don't have the tendency to rank the people around them, but one possible disadvantage is that if somebody else in your social group offends an Aspie, the Aspie might blame your entire social group if he or she ranks all members of your social group as equal.)

To Stalk: Hi. To me, I feel that a high-context culture might be more NT-friendly because "majority of things are left unsaid so you need to infer those things" whereas a low-context culture might be more Aspie-friendly because "majority of things are said out loud for you to understand". High-context cultures are more roundabout whereas low-context cultures are more straightforward. I think that English is more roundabout whereas Chinese is more straightforward, hence I don't understand why English is popular in low-context cultures whereas Chinese is popular in high-context cultures. Um, to be blunt, when I describe English as a "stress-timed language", I'm describing its rhythm, not the amount of time that people expect to lapse before you reply them in English. To me, English, being stress-timed, has some sort of "Daaaa Dum Daaaa Dum Daaaa, Dum Daaaa Dum Daaaa Dum" rhythm whereas Chinese, being syllable-timed, has some sort of "Ching Ching Ching Ching Ching, Ching Ching Ching Ching Ching" rhythm.

Here are some Youtube videos of poetry recitation, one in English and one in Cantonese Chinese. I hope that these two videos will show viewers how English and Chinese differ in terms of rhythm. The Chinese poem, "Song of Everlasting Regret" by Bai Juyi, revolves around the tragic love story between an emperor and his concubine. The English poem, "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes, is a tragic love story like "Song of Everlasting Regret". Unlike "Song of Everlasting Regret", it is features a highwayman and an innkeeper's daughter. (Warning: Even though I'm Chinese, I must admit that Chinese's "Ching Ching Ching Ching Ching" rhythm can sound dreadfully monotonous, so listen to "Song of Everlasting Regret" at your own peril.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjfUT9KKAPg[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv21tdqXW7Y[/youtube]

I worry that "Song of Everlasting Regret" might be too long a poem, so here's a shorter poem. (Note: The recitation only lasts for the first 20 seconds.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we0O2BZKKm8[/youtube]

Normally, I'd be game to tackle a large post like this point-by-point, especially since I like linguistics.

But today, all I want to do is point out that articles ('the', 'a', 'an') are actually a relatively new addition to both the Germanic and the Romance languages. In either language family, they were derived from other word classes: definite articles ('the' in English) were derived from demonstrative pronouns and determiners, while indefinite articles ('a'), were derived from the numeral 'one'. This is how the Latin ille/illa became el/la, il/la, and le/la in Spanish, Italian, and French, respectively. Other languages did have articles, but for the Germanic and Romance languages, it's a new addition from after or around the time of the collapse of Rome, (Romance languages, of course, being in their infancy, as they were, at most, dialects of Vulgar Latin at that point in history).

It's interesting to note that people who speak languages that don't feature articles, will sometimes translate them as demonstrative determiners or the numeral one respectively, exactly as you do when you say you'll sometimes translate it to this/that if there is a need for it. I know that Indonesian speakers sometimes use 'ini' and 'itu' (this and that) in places where English doesn't require a demonstrative determiner, but just a definite article 'the'.

What is the point of the original post?
That Chinese is an aspie language, and English is NT?

As a post script- One suggestion to the original poster. Since he hates articles so much and likes to dispense with them- he ought to study the Slavic Languages (like Polish, Russian, Slovak, etc) because they dispense with articles in normal conversation. When American comics and actors 'do' a russian character in dialect they also dispene with articles in English . Indeed it IS thought provoking to realize how well Eastern Europeans all manage to live without wasting time say "a" and "the" constantly!

I have my own version of English in which I removed articles and tense, cuz those things annoy me. I speak English bester than Chinese, but Chinese words were easy for me to learn to read and write due to picture for pictur recognition, and echo due to monosyllabic nature. Some kinds of Chinese culture are also very autistic friendly due to being very straightforward, more so than USA, but other kinds might be different.

Perhaps funny to note that Callista made the opposite comparison in a thread earlier this year:

Callista wrote:

It's a little like English vs. Mandarin. Mandarin is a tonal language: You can say something with one sort of pitch and it means one thing; say it with another sort of pitch and it means anther thing. In English, the word is the same. Aspie looking at NT is like a tone-deaf English speaker learning Mandarin, unable to get the extra inflections and missing some of the information.

The NT "language", with its simple words and many non-word elements, is something I think we can learn; but just like that English speaker learning Mandarin, we'll never speak it as well as a native speaker. I wouldn't call it "dumbing down", though. Those extra meanings are there; they're just not being communicated in words.

That is a fantastic metaphor. Or is that simile? (Don't immediately know the big word for that one. )

But seriously, I like the comparison you make between Mandarin v. English and 'neurotypical' vs. autistic language. Other factors also play a part in the other direction, with Chinese-speakers learning English: 'p' 'b', for example, are differentiated in English because one sound is voiced and the other is unvoiced. Mandarin in turn differentiates between an unaspirated sound and an aspirated sound (in Pinyin represented by 'b' and 'p' respectively). So for some Chinese speakers it's difficult to get the difference between minimal pairs like 'big' and 'pig', though it helps a little that most English dialects aspirate the initial 'p'.

More than before, lately I've sometimes felt as though I'm speaking a different language compared to most people. I'm not sure why that's intensifying.

Does "Gun HOE-tze bee DIO-se" really mean "Please go away quietly"?