Wikipedia:In Chinese languages, both states and qualities are, in general, expressed with stative verbs (SV) with no need for a copula, e.g., in Mandarin, "to be tired" (累 lèi), "to be hungry" (饿 è), "to be located at" (在 zài), "to be stupid" (笨 bèn) and so forth. A sentence can consist simply of a pronoun and such a verb"I am hungry").

This is not unknown to Esperanto.

Mi tre lacas. (I am very tired) Mi soifas (I am thirsty) Vi pravas (You are right) Ne stultu (Don't be stupid).

By the way - how many keys are there on a Chinese typewriter?

sudanglo:
By the way - how many keys are there on a Chinese typewriter?

Typewriter

http://www.wired.com/2009/02/how-it-works-ch/

The second link states 72 keys. Wiki doesn't give any number of keys, it just explains the mechanism and how you could write thousands of hanzi with the typewriter.

If by any chance you meant keyboard and not typewriter, Chinese keyboards look almost the same as any other keyboard. You input hanzi by using pinyin or the bopomofo system:

Bopomofo
Pic

With pinyin it's the same logic as Japanese, if you write k + a you get the kana か, if you press the spacebar a list of all kanji with that reading will show up*, pick the one you want.　With hanzi it's almost the same, write something like 'li' and a list will horizontally appear (The JP one is vertical) with all the hanzi read like that, pick the one you want. Of course kanji and hanzi will show up as you write and many times you get the right kanji/hanzi as the system somehow reads the context. No need to press the spacebar. But always re-read when you're done typing to check that the right hanzi/kanji was used as both languages are fraught with homophones.

*Well, not really all, there are around 50k hanzi/kanji after all, but many will show up. For the rarer ones you'll have to go to a dictionary (Chinese) or use the IME writing tool of your keyboard and see the database (Japanese).

The (stupid) linguistic feud fought out in China between the simplified characters and the traditional characters and then pinyin as opposed to Taiwan's own version of pinyin and then Wades-Giles - these are my biggest stumbling blocks in advancing in Mandarin. The problem with Cantonese is that local Cantonese speakers are not extremely educated in Cantonese, so that each one speaks a different dialect. This makes studying Mandarin (or Cantonese) VERY difficult.
And for some strange reason, there are courses in Mandarin in Miami (50 km south of me) and West Palm beach (60 km north of me) but NONE in the district where I live which contains over 1 million residents. Yes, we have courses in Hebrew and Italian - not of much good for me - none in German (my mother tongue) - and of course, Spanish (for which there are waiting lists a mile long). Oh, and no courses in Japanese around here, either. And no courses in the other most spoken language in my area: Kreyol - the language of Haiti. I guess that this is why I am on lernu.net so much!

robbkvasnak:The (stupid) linguistic feud fought out in China between the simplified characters and the traditional characters and then pinyin as opposed to Taiwan's own version of pinyin and then Wades-Giles - these are my biggest stumbling blocks in advancing in Mandarin.

There's really no feud. Pinyin is also used in Taiwan. The only reason to ever learn Zhuyin is if you were to move to Taiwan and for some reason had zero access to foreign computers or cell phones.

As far as simplified vs. traditional, well I think the difference is often way overstated. Most people can read one if they know the other. I lived in China, and many of my friends were Taiwanese and Hong Kongers. They would text in trad. characters and I in simplified, with no problem.

It's not like traditional characters are banned in China, either. You see them a lot in books, anything old, a lot of times on restaurant menus too. Or when singing KTV, cause all the songs are from Taiwan or HK

I studied Chinese for 4 years. In that time, I learned pinyin, simplified, traditional (and tried, then failed, to learn Zhuyin). In my experience, don't worry about any romanization or phonetic system other than pinyin, and I would recommend using mostly simplified to learn, while also learning some traditional for common words that really differ from trad to simplified.

Tomcxjo:As far as simplified vs. traditional, well I think the difference is often way overstated. Most people can read one if they know the other. I lived in China, and many of my friends were Taiwanese and Hong Kongers. They would text in trad. characters and I in simplified, with no problem.

That's only because Cantonese speakers in general write in Mandarin. I don't know to what extent the Chinese law has affected them but it is beyond ludicrous to me that Cantonese speakers in general write in Mandarin when they speak Cantonese. That's like speaking Spanish but writing in French. There are some comics published in Cantonese and I think some newspapers, too, but it isn't the norm. I hope to see the day where in Macau, Guangdong and Hong Kong written Cantonese becomes the law. In Hong Kong Mandarin vs. Cantonese is a problem, I remember some news where some student asked the teacher to speak Mandarin at university when they had clearly stated beforehand that the courses were in Cantonese. The worst of all, the teacher agreed! In Hong Kong people speak Cantonese, no need to demand Mandarin .

To better illustrate:

The phrase ''Do you speak Cantonese?''

In Mandarin: 你会不会讲广州话? ni3 hui4 bu4 hui4 jiang3 guang3 zhou1 hua4.

If we simply pronounce that à la cantonaise it'll read: lei/nei5 wui5 bat1 wui5 gong2 gwong2 jau1 wa2. That's not Cantonese, that's like reading French with the Spanish reading rules. However it can sort of be understood, depending on the phrase, because, after all, Cantonese and Mandarin belong to the same linguistic family, but that's only the written part. You can't understand spoken Cantonese by only knowing Mandarin.

In proper Cantonese that'd be 你識唔識講廣東話? lei/nei5 sik1 m4 sik1 gong2 gwong2 dung1 waa2.

The issue isn't traditional vs. simplified. They're different languages, Cantonese has its own words, you don't say and write 他 you say 佢 for 'he', you don't say 是 but 係, not 不 but 唔, etc.

And this problem isn't only about written Cantonese, but also about the other Chinese languages like Xiang, Wu, Gan, etc. they speak one language and write in another. I understand that the government needs some union so unifying them in the written language helps, but at least let the Cantonese regions write Cantonese as it ought to. Especially Hong Kong which is kinda like a different country, it has its own laws and all.

Okay, tomĉjo, if you have the luxury of living somewhere with access to which you want. I attended the only locally available course in "Chinese" - they used Taiwanese pinyin (zhuyin?) and the traditional characters. I first took Chinese in college. We used the Yale system and our dictionaries used Wades-Giles. I then studied Chinese at the Universitat in Frankfurt am Main. We read some ancient texts with traditional characters but the professor used simplified characters to lecture. There are three newspapers in our area (weeklies) in Chinese. I know a Chinese Esperantist locally and she told me that one of my problems understanding the newspapers is that they do not always use standard Beijing hua (Putonghua). I order in Chinese in the local restaurants and the people there often "admire" my Chinese (I think that they are being polite) but several have told me that I speak better Mandarin than their children do (I believe that).
I do not have access to on-going courses and if there is one offered for adults (it hasn't been for the past two years - only for kids) it is taught using Zhuyin and the traditional characters. For a beginner, this is confusing. Don't forget, I do not live in China and am not in touch with the language on a daily basis (I wish I were).

Are simplified vs traditional characters really so big an issue?

I personally studied first Japanese, so that my first contact was with traditional characters. However I find the simplification (in most of the cases) straight forward and it is not too hard to find the traditional form of a simplified kanji. When you know how the radicals are simplified the rest is a (mostly) a piece of cake.
It is more like block letters vs cursives.

What is the actual problem with having both simplified and traditional characters?

Suzumiya:
That's only because Cantonese speakers in general write in Mandarin. I don't know to what extent the Chinese law has affected them but it is beyond ludicrous to me that Cantonese speakers in general write in Mandarin when they speak Cantonese.
...
And this problem isn't only about written Cantonese, but also about the other Chinese languages like Xiang, Wu, Gan, etc. they speak one language and write in another. I understand that the government needs some union so unifying them in the written language helps, but at least let the Cantonese regions write Cantonese as it ought to. Especially Hong Kong which is kinda like a different country, it has its own laws and all.

What you say isn't false. I agree with you 100% actually. But the problem is that it isn't as simple as saying there's standard mandarin that the north of China speaks natively, and Cantonese/other dialect speakers that speak their dialect and write Mandarin. The issue is much muddier.

For example, I have many many friends from both HK and Macau. When this issue comes up, they will all say "there is no written Cantonese". I have never heard a Chinese person or Cantonese speaker disagree with this statement. At best, some will say that Cantonese is only a spoken language, but most people have told me that Cantonese is just a dialect of Chinese and therefore shouldn't have a written standard. Of course I believe this isn't true, but my opinion as a foreigner doesn't really mean anything to them.

However, it isn't true to say that all Mandarin speakers write the way they speak, either. There are many, many dialects of Mandarin that are not only hard to understand for any speaker of Putonghua, but also deviate quite a bit from standard written Chinese. Every city, big or small, seems to have one. Even Beijinghua (at least hardcore Beijinghua) is pretty hard to understand for people not used to it -- it certainly was for me when I first arrived, and my native Chinese friends from other cities say it was for them too. True, standard Mandarin is based mostly off of this dialect, but it's not the same thing.

As far as learning, I guess you just have to find one standard and stick to it. To me, learning Mandarin in the 21st century, the clearest one to pick as a foundation is Standard Mandarin of Mainland China. This isn't to say the others aren't valid. There is a lot of cultural overlap these days between HK, Taiwan, and the Mainland, so to learn one way well will give you access to all the others.

The Italian movie director Federico Fellini once said that a different language is a different vision of life. I can only thank the different cultures of the different places in the world where English is spoken for existing. I surely had to make a considerable effort with learning English as a second language, but that effort did at one point start to pay off, proof of which is the fact that English is still my favourite language today (my mother tongue is Italian). It didn't come easy, though... The positive thing is that now I can enjoy not only the possibility of communicating in a different way with a variety of different people, but also the "mind-expanding" benefits of "lateral" thinking that a good level of knowledge of an additional language can bring about.
As I have mentioned, I am now trying to improve my French too (A-level exams in May, wish me luck!). But my best bet must be Mandarin. My teacher said that for at least the next two years I will still have to rely on ping ying, unless I want to study every day, intensively. So there is still a long way to go. I won't give in though. I have a feeling that a good knowledge of Mandarin Chinese could improve my thoughts' quality and broaden my horizons, unlike French, which works pretty much like Italian and I feel is not enriching me as Mandarin could. I do French only because it's a skill. Chinese? It's exotic and fascinating.
Esperanto? That's for the sake of linguistic democracy.
Thank you all for replying to my original post. Very interesting debate.

Tomcxjo:For example, I have many many friends from both HK and Macau. When this issue comes up, they will all say "there is no written Cantonese". I have never heard a Chinese person or Cantonese speaker disagree with this statement. At best, some will say that Cantonese is only a spoken language, but most people have told me that Cantonese is just a dialect of Chinese and therefore shouldn't have a written standard. Of course I believe this isn't true, but my opinion as a foreigner doesn't really mean anything to them.

I had the same experience. I first found it difficult to understand, but then I stared thinking about how strange it would be if some foreigner came to Europe, suggesting us to give up our numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on, "because the same symbols should not be used for totally different languages". Fourteen thus should be written with the four-symbol plus the teen-symbol. Dek-kvar should be written with the dek-symbol plus the kvar-symbol.
I am not aguing that such a reform would be the same thing as the denial of a Cantonese script. It is just an analogy, which helped me to understand, that people involved really may feel that there is an extremely strong reason for maintaining a unifying writing system.