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View Full Version : Are there any advantages to asian writing sytems?


Zay
2008-07-19, 16:51
Is there something they can do that phonetic alphabets can't? IS there something they express better or differently?From everything I've read about them, they're slower to write, take years longer to learn(cyrillic and arabic alphabets can be learned in a matter of hours) and are just downright inefficient. Furthermore, japanese, chinese, and all the others can be fully expressed with alphabets, and they are easy to learn(romanjii, pinyin, vietnamese etc.) So, I'm just curious, is there any PRACTICAL advantage to maintaining these cumbersome pictograms? Japanese smartened up a bit and mixed in 2 sets of syllables, and that brought the amount of pictograms needed for literacy down. Chinese tried a different approach, they simplified the pictograms, but you still need to know thousands to be literate so theyre literacy rate is not yet something to brag about. Iunderstand preserving the culture blah blah, but that's not a practical thing.

BSK
2008-07-19, 17:50
they are better in math ..

Run Screaming
2008-07-19, 17:56
Most Asian writing systems are phonetic.
I assume that you are referring to the one used in China.
They don't all speak the same language, but they can all read the symbols, which is why you sometimes see them as subtitles in Chinese movies.
Japanese people can read most of them as well.

buy porn -pay with snakes
2008-07-20, 03:42
Is there something they can do that phonetic alphabets can't?

lol wat

The Korean script is easy to learn, the Thai script isn't too difficult, the Vietnamese write in the roman alphabet... etc etc.

The only one you seem to be referring to is Chinese hanzi/japanese kanji. So I'll assume that's what you meant.

If so, then yeah there are advantages to the system, but whether those advantages offset all the disadvantages is debateable.

The advantages to Chinese script (off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more) are:


If you've never seen a word before, you can look at the component parts of the characters used to make it, and you can more or less guess what it means.
Due to the fact that each character has a 'meaning', if a Japanese speaker were to look at a Chinese text, he or she could figure out the basic meaning and vice versa.


There's a story of some Japanese guy who's wife fell really ill while they were on holiday in China. The husband couldn't speak Chinese, and the people in the shop couldn't speak Japanese, so they communicated through Chinese characters.

Zay
2008-07-20, 20:29
Ok, I just started studying japanese and the excuse I came across is that japanese's limited phonemes create a lot of homonyms and you need to be able to distinguish words fast without context, so kanjii does it best. For example, in we all konw aoubt het sudty dnoe taht swohed polepe porcsse entire words and not groups of letters in english, and thus we can read scrambled words like that. What's china's excuse?

DerDrache
2008-07-27, 23:52
they are better in math ..

That's a function of the languages themselves, as well as the culture, not the writing system. Psychologists believe that in Asian languages it's more clear, for instance, that 17 is "10 and 7".

I realize you were just giving your typical troll response, but hey, knowledge is power.

monotoned
2008-07-29, 09:24
That's a function of the languages themselves, as well as the culture, not the writing system. Psychologists believe that in Asian languages it's more clear, for instance, that 17 is "10 and 7".

I realize you were just giving your typical troll response, but hey, knowledge is power.


agreed

Speaking as a Chinese (or Taiwanese, doesn't matter), the characters does have a lot of advantages. It is possible to write quickly and effectively also. Don't jump to conclusions when you don't understand the language.

BSK
2008-07-29, 10:41
effectively

explain. and keep in mind we´re in the information technology age ..

monotoned
2008-07-30, 04:50
explain. and keep in mind we´re in the information technology age ..


Ok. But beginners(or those that are not familiar with Chinese) may have a hard time understanding.

I know many of you know how one symbol represents something, and two put together represnents another. This is true, if you're using it in a "casual" way. But in formal documents, a lot of characters can be omitted. These "extra" characters are not needed to understand the whole sentence. With English, you can't do that (except like it is = it's, can not = can't etc.). If you get any chance to come across an English paragraph translated into Chinese(manuals, instruction booklets for instance), most of the time the Chinese translation would be shorter.

Having less to read = less time = effective.
But only if you're familiar with the language. So that's why we still use the characters, and have before since....a long time ago(sorry I don't know the exact year, please excuse my sucky knowledge in history).







BTW I support Traditional Chinese, but who cares?

DerDrache
2008-07-30, 05:00
monotoned:

I don't know from first-hand experience, but it would seem that just by the pure amount of memorization required, character systems are fatally flawed.

With alphabets, you simply learn the sounds of letters and no matter what combination they are in, they can be read. Unless the strokes that define different characters have consistent meaning, I just can't see an argument for character-systems being better than alphabetic systems. The only reason Japanese and Chinese people can understand each other's characters is because the systems happen to be related.

Obviously both systems work well , but I think it's fair to say that phonetic systems ultimately are more efficient.

Zay
2008-07-30, 05:03
Why do the chinese type with western keyboards and need software to draw the characters for them? It seems they understand the limits of their characters.

BSK
2008-07-30, 07:11
Having less to read = less time = effective.

so I will give you a hint about the usage of the word effective. a big dick is useless if you don´t know how to use it.
if you compare multivariable objects just in one dimension your comparison will simply fail. any language could simply induce abbreviations and your point was useless.

having less to read if you have to remember 400 times more "letters" for the standard language with faint hearted standardized writing systems ruled just by the biggest mob, hundreds of incompatible languages, crippled terms to general expressions in mails and undistinguishable pronounciation for oversea phone calls can barely be called effective.

prove me wrong ..

DerDrache
2008-07-30, 07:28
having less to read if you have to remember 400 times more "letters" for the standard language with faint hearted standardized writing systems ruled just by the biggest mob, hundreds of incompatible languages, crippled terms to general expressions in mails and undistinguishable pronounciation for oversea phone calls can barely be called effective.

prove me wrong ..

Let's give BSK a hand for once again butchering the English language.

buy porn -pay with snakes
2008-07-30, 08:38
so I will give you a hint about the usage of the word effective. a big dick is useless if you don´t know how to use it.
if you compare multivariable objects just in one dimension your comparison will simply fail. any language could simply induce abbreviations and your point was useless.

having less to read if you have to remember 400 times more "letters" for the standard language with faint hearted standardized writing systems ruled just by the biggest mob, hundreds of incompatible languages, crippled terms to general expressions in mails and undistinguishable pronounciation for oversea phone calls can barely be called effective.

prove me wrong ..

I actually burst out laughing when I finished reading that.

What the fuck are you talking about?

laundrysoap
2008-07-30, 10:12
I actually burst out laughing when I finished reading that.


Me too.

:o

jackketch
2008-07-30, 13:42
Let's give BSK a hand for once again butchering the English language.

Sounds to me like someone still has his nose in plaster cos we decided BSK would make a better mod than him. BSK's English may be a bit *cough* unique *cough* but at least he doesn't give babelfish answers.

BSK
2008-07-30, 14:03
maybe I should have used chernoff faces to explain it for those who are not involved and can´t understand a 3 line summary of the languages, writing systems and pronounciation of east asian languages ..

monotoned
2008-07-30, 14:40
so I will give you a hint about the usage of the word effective. a big dick is useless if you don´t know how to use it.
if you compare multivariable objects just in one dimension your comparison will simply fail. any language could simply induce abbreviations and your point was useless.

having less to read if you have to remember 400 times more "letters" for the standard language with faint hearted standardized writing systems ruled just by the biggest mob, hundreds of incompatible languages, crippled terms to general expressions in mails and undistinguishable pronounciation for oversea phone calls can barely be called effective.

prove me wrong ..


First of all, I did not intend to prove that characters were more effective than the alphabet. I just wanted to say that characters can be effective, which most of you disagree upon.
Second, we do not memorize 400 "letters". Those are "words". Characters are not compsed of letters. Yes, we need to remember the pronounciation, but we don't need to remember 400 pronounciations. Many of them can be "guessed" in a way. And even though there are 400+ different characters, we don't need 400+ keys on the keyboard to type.

(And about "crippled terms to general expressions in mails and undistinguishable pronounciation for oversea phone calls " LOL That was funny)

but I still need to defend the language...
English and Chinese are two very different systems. There are some expressions that are nearly (if not) impossible to translate, some are just habits, others are the lack of vocabulary. For example: Open the door, and turn on the light. In Chinese, "Open" and "turn on" are the same exact word (same character, same sound). So you will hear many Chinese say "open the light". It is not because he/she is retarded(although that might be in some cases), it's because his/her brain is still operating in "Chinese mode", and failed to recognize that you "turn on" the light.
I would give more examples but I can't think of any at this moment.

DerDrache
2008-07-30, 18:02
Sounds to me like someone still has his nose in plaster cos we decided BSK would make a better mod than him. BSK's English may be a bit *cough* unique *cough* but at least he doesn't give babelfish answers.

Neither have I. Ever. Don't start being as stupid as him, ketch.

I also could care less about being made mod of CL. BSK gives people shit when they make a mistake in German, so I'm going to give him shit when he butchers English.

Social Junker
2008-07-30, 19:10
Ok, I just started studying japanese and the excuse I came across is that japanese's limited phonemes create a lot of homonyms and you need to be able to distinguish words fast without context, so kanjii does it best.

Yep. Kanji are needed to distinguish among homoyms if context doesn't make it clear.

One thing that I have noticed about learning a Chinese character-based writing system: it really makes you pay attention to details, and this starts to bleed over into your daily life. For example, a kanji can differ from another kanji by just one radical, and if you're not paying attention, you'll make a mistake and read it wrong. Perhaps another reason why they kick our ass when it comes to product quality? ;)

buy porn -pay with snakes
2008-07-30, 19:36
Sounds to me like someone still has his nose in plaster cos we decided BSK would make a better mod than him. BSK's English may be a bit *cough* unique *cough* but at least he doesn't give babelfish answers.

How can you have a moderator of CL who's not even prepared to open a book on grammar?

The guy's an idiot, and possibly the least qualified member of Totse for the position of moderator.

Meh, your call I guess.

BSK
2008-07-30, 21:07
First of all, I did not intend to prove that characters were more effective than the alphabet. I just wanted to say that characters can be effective, which most of you disagree upon.
Second, we do not memorize 400 "letters". Those are "words". Characters are not compsed of letters. Yes, we need to remember the pronounciation, but we don't need to remember 400 pronounciations. Many of them can be "guessed" in a way. And even though there are 400+ different characters, we don't need 400+ keys on the keyboard to type.

this reminds me to a quote of some vulcanian ambassador, if you don´t understand the question, you won´t be able to answer.

a language is made of several parts. letters, words, grammar, stylistic elements, pronounciation, dialetcs and so on. these parts can be called variables, therefor my reference to multivariable objects. you claim that reading asian signs is more effective because there is less to read. what makes you think this variable is independent from all other variables (parts) of a language? or to speak in a language those who flame fast without thinking first will understand, how the fuck can you read signs faster than words if you speak the words for these signs in your head or have to create a visualisation?

and if you had taken a closer look you had seen that I wasn´t talking of 400 letters/words. I was talking about a number of 400 times more than the latin letters have. let´s say a language has 100.000 signs. now let´s say you need 20.000 to read a normal newspaper. now let´s say the computer makes 10.000 signs available. surely no one will remember how to create all these signs with a 100 key keyboard, so a very popular, common, vulgar and therefor crippled core of that language will be used for internet communication. and no one´s got the balls to create a working standard that includes the spirit of a language.
about pronounciation, the hamming distance of several words is too small to be usable for low quality phone calls like via internet or via satellite, therefor oversea.

so this was a long explanation of my 3 line summary which someone who is involved or had relevant knowledge would have understood. if you don´t want to understand you won´t. make fun of me and you make fun of yourself. It doesn´t matter which language I have used to write this, my thoughts had been the same. so from this point I will simply not allow anyone picking on me about my language. derdrache, I will read your posts in this forum although you stay on my ignore list. if you attack me again for what I say without asking first in a polite way or not proving your accusations and I will move or delete your posts immediately. use bitch and moan for complaining, or I will stick my mod penis in your mouth to make you shut up.

monotoned
2008-07-31, 08:48
I'm not good at fights, so ok I lose.

But to answer the original question "Are there any advantages to asian writing systems?" The answer would be yes.

BSK
2008-07-31, 10:06
I'm not good at fights, so ok I lose.

this is not a fight, this is just asking for an explanation how reading less signs is more effective if you have to think more and have to use the same time to speak the words in your head when reading them.

and derdrache you will ask your question again and not take words out of context. you had your warnings.

monotoned
2008-07-31, 11:27
this is not a fight, this is just asking for an explanation how reading less signs is more effective if you have to think more and have to use the same time to speak the words in your head when reading them.

and derdrache you will ask your question again and not take words out of context. you had your warnings.


What language are you most familiar with?


We are just more familiar with Chinese, and forcing someone to switch to another language just because it is "easier, takes less time to write, and effective" would just cause the exact opposite of that intended.

And I still wouldn't say that Chinese is harder. It's only seems harder because you have to think differently. As I've said in my earlier posts, it would be hard to understand, mainly because the lack of familiarity with the language and culture (culture and language can never be taken apart).








For those who are still interested:
Other advantages of Chinese are: Easier handwriting analysis (it's true but don't take it seriously). There is an idiom (we have lots of idioms lol) that goes "Writings are like your own personality" which would be "字如其人". I don't know how many of you can actually see the characters, on some computers they don't show up. A lot of idioms are composed of four "words". The first character in this example would be "words" or "writings" in this case. The second character means "likeness, or resembling", the third and forth put together would be "the person, or that person" (The third character is a little complex, it would take too much explaining).
A lot of sentences could be concentrated in to merely four characters.
I think Chinese is just misunderstood and stereotyped.

[edit] It just came to mind(concerning math), it's easier to remember the times table in Chinese than in English. There is a certain rhythm when you say it.

BSK
2008-07-31, 12:44
(culture and language can never be taken apart)

which is what you did by saying reading less signs is more effective. that´s why I asked.

let´s say a language has 100.000 signs. now let´s say you need 20.000 to read a normal newspaper. now let´s say the computer makes 10.000 signs available. surely no one will remember how to create all these signs with a 100 key keyboard, so a very popular, common, vulgar and therefor crippled core of that language will be used for internet communication.

you showed an example with 4 chinese symbols, would you please explain exactly what you had to do to write them down?

this example contains 4 symbols whereas the english translation contains 6 words. some of these are filler words (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_common_words_in_English), which make 50 percent of the written language. the german version (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_h%C3%A4ufigsten_W%C3%B6rter_der_deutsche n_Sprache) even differentiates much more between the importance of wordtypes. rankings can be downloaded here (http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/html/wliste.html). as they are needed to understand relations of subjects and objects in sentences writing them down makes probably more sense than having to merge all signs for words to one big word and then guess the missing parts.

about math, as far as I know all asian languages don´t have special forms for numbers like eleven, twelf, thirteen etc. they call it "ten one". so children learning numbers and math don´t have to take that extra step. but from my point of view this doesn´t balance out the flaws these languages have for global, phone and internet communication.

Social Junker
2008-07-31, 15:59
Other advantages of Chinese are: Easier handwriting analysis (it's true but don't take it seriously). There is an idiom (we have lots of idioms lol) that goes "Writings are like your own personality" which would be "字如其人". I don't know how many of you can actually see the characters, on some computers they don't show up. A lot of idioms are composed of four "words". The first character in this example would be "words" or "writings" in this case. The second character means "likeness, or resembling", the third and forth put together would be "the person, or that person" (The third character is a little complex, it would take too much explaining).
A lot of sentences could be concentrated in to merely four characters.


Haha, I love the four-letter idioms. I don't know what they're called in Chinese, but in Japanese, they're called "四字熟語". They're pretty handy when you want to really impress a native, because as a foreigner, no one expects you to know them.

DerDrache
2008-07-31, 16:33
flaws these languages have for global, phone and internet communication.

What makes you think that Chinese people can't efficiently and properly use their language over the phone and internet?

BSK
2008-07-31, 18:22
as repeatedly said, the languages using symbols are reduced to a very small amount of digital available tokens. compared to the whole language and culture it is crippling the effect of emergence that is the spirit of a language. as the pronounciation of words is very close and shows a much smaller variety than the symbols show, any phone calls with low quality will cause misunderstandings. voice recognition programs have huge problems to get a reasonable success rate. so these languages are bounded to local groups, incompatible dialects will always be endemic. the faint hearted standardization to make global usage and communication possible won´t help ..

and on a side note, if you really ask why chinese people can´t communicate over the internet you should ask some journalists for the olympic games ..

niggersexual
2008-07-31, 18:27
I have a question, monotoned. I'm assuming you're a native speaker. Do native speakers ever have problems remembering symbols for basic words? I know people from Taiwanese backgrounds and they have this problem. But then again, I knew a Taiwanese girl who said that a word I don't know to write ( jiji? ) was slang for the female genitalia when everyone else I've known has said it means penis. Maybe it's not a problem for the actual Chinese but I would imagine you'd forget some every once in a while. Can you figure out how to write any characters if you've completely forgotten them?

Zay
2008-07-31, 18:33
What makes you think that Chinese people can't efficiently and properly use their language over the phone and internet?

It's a stretch, but, you know how when the line is blurry/weak signal and you're trying to spell out something, you hear letters wrong? THAT is why the military has alpha, charlie, foxtrot, etc. Now think of chinese. German and Spanish letters are even more easily confused over phones. Now Chinese, their language is comprised of 3-4 letter syllables muttered fast with changing intonation. haa, haA, hAa, w/e. The sounds are so similar, like beh, veh, and peh in the spanish alphabet. Now imagine that over a blurry phone line. Some chinese guy goes "ming ching chang chong bang bAng chika waoh wow!' and it comes out as "ming ching ch*krrr*ng ch**krrr*** bang b*krr*ng chika wa*krrr* wow!" Poor Mr. Wang is clueless :confused:

DerDrache
2008-07-31, 18:39
It's a stretch, but, you know how when the line is blurry/weak signal and you're trying to spell out something, you hear letters wrong? THAT is why the military has alpha, charlie, foxtrot, etc. Now think of chinese. German and Spanish letters are even more easily confused over phones. Now Chinese, their language is comprised of 3-4 letter syllables muttered fast with changing intonation. haa, haA, hAa, w/e. The sounds are so similar, like beh, veh, and peh in the spanish alphabet. Now imagine that over a blurry phone line. Some chinese guy goes "ming ching chang chong bang bAng chika waoh wow!' and it comes out as "ming ching ch*krrr*ng ch**krrr*** bang b*krr*ng chika wa*krrr* wow!" Poor Mr. Wang is clueless :confused:

Haha. Okay, gotcha.

I definitely am an advocate of languages with alphabets and phonetic systems, but I always considered the problem with Asian languages to be in learning them. I figured an actual fluent/native Chinese person would have no problems, though I guess you and BSK bring up a good point.

+10

monotoned
2008-08-01, 05:30
I have a question, monotoned. I'm assuming you're a native speaker. Do native speakers ever have problems remembering symbols for basic words? I know people from Taiwanese backgrounds and they have this problem. But then again, I knew a Taiwanese girl who said that a word I don't know to write ( jiji? ) was slang for the female genitalia when everyone else I've known has said it means penis. Maybe it's not a problem for the actual Chinese but I would imagine you'd forget some every once in a while. Can you figure out how to write any characters if you've completely forgotten them?


Basic words...hmmm
Everyone forgets things once in a while, just as sometimes Americans would have spelling errors also. It depends on the person, whether he/she uses them on daily basis. There are some that are confusing at first, but you just know them once they become familiar. Sorta like whether the word has a silent "e" at the end, or "ph-" pronounced "f-", those are just things you have to remember.
And "jiji" means penis.
If I completely forgot a character I would look it up in the dictionary. But it hasn't happened to me yet.



and "四字熟語" would be "成語" in Chinese.

As for blurs over phone calls, I think it happens in any language, but you can guess what the person is trying to say by the whole sentence.
For instance: Sail and sale is pronounced the same in English. But you could tell the diffenece between the two words by what the person is saying. So it would be "garage sale" instead of "garage sail".

I think there are more questions but my break is over and I will reply when I get home.

BSK
2008-08-01, 06:05
As for blurs over phone calls, I think it happens in any language, but you can guess what the person is trying to say by the whole sentence.

as already mentioned the hamming distance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_distance) for asian languages is smaller which leave out filler words. this is a simple algorithm to measure reliabilty of communication. if the hamming distance between a greeting and an insult is too small there surely will be misunderstandings.


荷兰 菏兰

one of these words means holland, the other one means netherlands, can you tell the difference in a smaller font size?

niggersexual
2008-08-01, 06:15
Basic words...hmmm
Everyone forgets things once in a while, just as sometimes Americans would have spelling errors also.

The difference is that I could write "froot" instead of "fruit" and people would still know what I'm talking about, whereas I would think forgetting how to write a character makes one unable to write the word at all.

If I completely forgot a character I would look it up in the dictionary. But it hasn't happened to me yet.

This is something I've always wondered. How do you go about looking up stuff in a Chinese dictionary. Is everything alphabetized using pinyin or what?

I should study Chinese someday. It's cool stuff.

buy porn -pay with snakes
2008-08-01, 17:44
This is something I've always wondered. How do you go about looking up stuff in a Chinese dictionary. Is everything alphabetized using pinyin or what?

I should study Chinese someday. It's cool stuff.

They're listed by how many strokes are in it, and then by the radicals.

monotoned
2008-08-02, 12:33
as already mentioned the hamming distance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_distance) for asian languages is smaller which leave out filler words. this is a simple algorithm to measure reliabilty of communication. if the hamming distance between a greeting and an insult is too small there surely will be misunderstandings.


荷兰 菏兰

one of these words means holland, the other one means netherlands, can you tell the difference in a smaller font size?


I can't tell you which one is Holland, and which is the Netherlands, not because I cannot tell the difference between the characters, but because my insufficeint knowlegde in geography.
But I can tell you the difference between the two characters itself.
Notice the lower left hand corner of the first character differs from the look-alike.
The ladder is composed of three "dots"(not exactly dots), while the first character is not. 側 and 測 has the same difference.
To tell you the truth I think 菏兰 is a typo, I haven't seen these two characters together before. I may be wrong, or it just may be the different translation in China and Taiwan.

I admit there are misunderstandings, but don't just point the finger at asian writing systems since they may happen in any language.

In an earlier post you asked "you showed an example with 4 chinese symbols, would you please explain exactly what you had to do to write them down?" I don't understand what you want me to do. Are you asking me to shoot a video of myself writing them down? If you're just asking how long I had to take to type them, it took less than 5 seconds, maybe just around two or three.
I don't even have to think when I'm writing them down, they just sorta flow from my pen, just like when you're writing German or English. Are you German?


To niggersexual:
I learned to write in English before I could in Chinese(spent four years of my childhood in the States), when I moved back to Taiwan I went through shit to learn it, so don't give up when you're stuck, I'd be happy to help if you need any. I have been studying the language for 10+ years now, and I am fluent in writing, reading and speaking. I use Chinese 90% of the time now.

Sentinel
2008-08-02, 17:00
That's a function of the languages themselves, as well as the culture, not the writing system. Psychologists believe that in Asian languages it's more clear, for instance, that 17 is "10 and 7".

I realize you were just giving your typical troll response, but hey, knowledge is power.

meh, the sapir-whorf hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_Hypothesis) is shit, IMO. And also in Steven Pinker's opinion...

DerDrache
2008-08-02, 20:41
meh, the sapir-whorf hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_Hypothesis) is shit, IMO. And also in Steven Pinker's opinion...

Apparently most believe that the relationship between language and thought is somewhere in the middle ground. Our thinking processes are without a doubt tied to the languages we speak (consider those cases where someone was not able to learn a first language), and since languages have different structures, it's reasonable that such structures would affect the way people think.

So, in other words, I don't think calling it "shit" is really reasonable.

Psychiatrist_7
2008-08-02, 23:05
What language are you most familiar with?


We are just more familiar with Chinese, and forcing someone to switch to another language just because it is "easier, takes less time to write, and effective" would just cause the exact opposite of that intended.

And I still wouldn't say that Chinese is harder. It's only seems harder because you have to think differently. As I've said in my earlier posts, it would be hard to understand, mainly because the lack of familiarity with the language and culture (culture and language can never be taken apart).








For those who are still interested:
Other advantages of Chinese are: Easier handwriting analysis (it's true but don't take it seriously). There is an idiom (we have lots of idioms lol) that goes "Writings are like your own personality" which would be "字如其人". I don't know how many of you can actually see the characters, on some computers they don't show up. A lot of idioms are composed of four "words". The first character in this example would be "words" or "writings" in this case. The second character means "likeness, or resembling", the third and forth put together would be "the person, or that person" (The third character is a little complex, it would take too much explaining).
A lot of sentences could be concentrated in to merely four characters.
I think Chinese is just misunderstood and stereotyped.

[edit] It just came to mind(concerning math), it's easier to remember the times table in Chinese than in English. There is a certain rhythm when you say it.

First off I would like to say, fucking awesome. I'm a student of Japanese and I must agree with you. I know these characters only by their meaning and your translation can easily be seen in it.
字 Character
如 Likeness
其 Tool
人 Person

Lol actually reading it like that makes it a stretch, others wont make a connection at all Im sure.

Whoever it was you were fighting with needs to stfu because languages are different. Chinese and Japanese REQUIRE these characters. Too many words are pronounced the same to understand them just by context/phonetics. Thats why Japanese USE kanji even though everything can be said/written in the 'letter' writing system of Hiragana.

With these languages you don't NEED to know a word to be able to understand what is being said when its written in characters UNLIKE english. They may have to memorize more characters but english you have to memorize more words simply by their phonetic/letter structure.

Theres also so many sub rules for english/roman characters its equally flawed.
You have to LEARN each and every one.

Pizza pronounced pEEtsa
Technology pronounced teKnology
Cancer looks like it should be pronounced canKer

I can't think of any really good examples but you get the point. Alot of foreign learners of english have this problem and its just retarded. I don't think any other language has this. Pretty sure spanish doesn't. In chinese/japanese 'letters' keep their phonetic sounds which is of course, easier and more 'efficient'.

DerDrache
2008-08-02, 23:16
F

With these languages you don't NEED to know a word to be able to understand what is being said when its written in characters UNLIKE english. They may have to memorize more characters but english you have to memorize more words simply by their phonetic/letter structure.

Theres also so many sub rules for english/roman characters its equally flawed.
You have to LEARN each and every one.

Pizza pronounced pEEtsa
Technology pronounced teKnology
Cancer looks like it should be pronounced canKer

I can't think of any really good examples but you get the point. Alot of foreign learners of english have this problem and its just retarded. I don't think any other language has this. Pretty sure spanish doesn't. In chinese/japanese 'letters' keep their phonetic sounds which is of course, easier and more 'efficient'.

English's writing system is indeed flawed, but it's an exception. The vast majority of languages with phonetic alphabets have consistent rules and predictable pronunciations.

Our writing system is so chaotic because the language has had tons of foreign influences, and although pronunciations changed over time, spelling rules often did not. The only other language I can think of with a fucked up writing system is Polish, but that's simlply because the Roman alphabet isn't well-suited to the language. Even so, that language still has consistent pronunciation rules.

My point: English needs to update it's writing system, but it's basically alone in that category.

Psychiatrist_7
2008-08-02, 23:18
Im curious how chinese manage to understand each other when speaking with words that are the same phonetically besides context. I heard the words for buy and sell are the same in chinese. Is that true? Also what is the chinese writing that is script. It makes me think of english cursive and its not what the japanese call calligraphy. I've only seen it written once as a display from a chinese man. Everything is in tact there is no break between the strokes and its linear.

monotoned
2008-08-03, 01:32
Im curious how chinese manage to understand each other when speaking with words that are the same phonetically besides context. I heard the words for buy and sell are the same in chinese. Is that true? Also what is the chinese writing that is script. It makes me think of english cursive and its not what the japanese call calligraphy. I've only seen it written once as a display from a chinese man. Everything is in tact there is no break between the strokes and its linear.


買 = buy
賣 = sell

The diffenence between the two are the 士 on top of sell.
They sound different slightly, but it's hard to explain over the internet. If you have a friend that can speak Chinese you could ask him/her to pronounce them for you.
買 is "mai" sorta pronounced with a "hook", or in Taiwan we would call it third sound, using " ˇ" to indicate. 賣 is pronouced with the fourth sound, a downward accent (like the stress we use in English), using "ˋ" to indicate the sound.


Hard to explain, so I don't expect anyone to understand.
There are four major sound indications ("注音", the first chactacter meaning "indication", the second meaning "sound".) There is a fifth one but is often confused with the third one, so I will be leaving that out.
The first "sound" is flat, with no indication.
The second rises up (上揚), using "ˊ" as indication
The third (I'll repeat myself) uses "ˇ"
And the fourth uses "ˋ"
These are the symbols I used to learn the pronounciation of Chinese, not how to write them. But they are important, in order to distinguish between "buy" and "sell" and many others. When we need to distiguish between words that are phonetically the same, all I can think of right now is using the whole sentence to know what they are talking about. I think I explained that in one of my previous post, using the "sun" and "son" as an example (I think). "Sun" and "son" are pronounced the same, but you are able to immediately distinguish the two words by the whole sentence.
I don't understand your question "Also what is the chinese writing that is script. It makes me think of english cursive and its not what the japanese call calligraphy. "
Are you asking about the form of Chinese writing?
There are many many many forms, as there are many many types of calligraphy. The form we use most is called "楷書". What the Japanese call calligraphy, I would guess it is "草書" in Chinese (I don't know Japanese that at all, so forgive me if I've made any mistakes). There are other forms that can be written in the calligraphy form, for example"小篆", and I don't know the others from the top of my head.

Here are some pics:
楷書 -- the form we use most, and the only form used pratically(I use this form in my posts), written in calligraphy form: http://vr.theatre.ntu.edu.tw/fineart/chap13/13-03-03x.jpg

草書(the hardest form of calligraphy, which I cannot read and don't intend to): http://www.yatsen.gov.tw/chinese/art/image/treasure/E-5-25.jpg
I think this is the one you are talking about. How it is written depends on the person (just like everyone has different handwriting), so I guess his style would be like what you said.

Other forms :
小篆 (my personal favorite form, which I don't know how to write): http://zhongwen.yangtzeu.edu.cn/gdhy/uppic/1931052006204241_5.gif
隸書: http://www.ly.gov.tw/ly/upload/06_directory/0601_antique/4/ly1610_4_276.jpg

I would put more on but I think you get the picture already. Plus I'm not familiar with other forms.

BSK
2008-08-03, 09:47
Originally Posted by monotoned View Post 買 = buy 賣 = sell
The diffenence between the two are the 士 on top of sell.
sorry if I sound racist, but there are not many asians I have seen without glasses, and even I can hardly see what you explain here, I don´t even see the three boxes anymore and the lowest box is now not filled. that only proves one of the several points I explained about the flaws of internet communication with asian tokens. To tell you the truth I think 菏兰 is a typo, I haven't seen these two characters together before. I may be wrong, or it just may be the different translation in China and Taiwan. erm, you DO see my point about misunderstandings, don´t you? It´s not a typo .. In an earlier post you asked "you showed an example with 4 chinese symbols, would you please explain exactly what you had to do to write them down?" I don't understand what you want me to do. Are you asking me to shoot a video of myself writing them down? If you're just asking how long I had to take to type them, it took less than 5 seconds, maybe just around two or three. no, I just want to know which keys you press to type these 4 signs. Whoever it was you were fighting with needs to stfu because languages are different. and we don´t need someone stepping into a normal discussion and telling us what we already discussed. we do know that everythings has it´s pro and contra, we just discuss if there are more facts on the contra side for asian languages. we´re not waiting for your godlike message. we can do that without someone not understanding correlated facts and telling us to shut up ..

monotoned
2008-08-03, 15:32
I typed "y4bj6fu6bp6" for "字如其人" it's the input system I use. There are many different input systems for Chinese, some take less strokes than the one I use, but I'm too lazy to learn a new set of input, so I'm sticking to the one I use.

You can't see the boxes doesn't mean the Chinese can't. And you don't even have to see the boxes to read it either. The form simply is. But no amount of expalining can convince you, just as you've said before, we see what we want to see, that goes for the both of us.

If you say it's not a typo, then it's not a typo, I believe you. Our "differences" with China has been here a long time, and we still communicate fine. It's like Spain Spanish and Mexican Spanish, different, but only some parts.

And I don't know why so many Asians wear glasses, but what does that have to do with what we're disscusing?


[Edit] Would you like to discuss this over MSN?

DerDrache
2008-08-03, 16:24
BSK, your impression of Chinese characters is not going to be the same as that of a fluent reader of the language.

Zay
2008-08-03, 18:17
Great post monotoned. this is exactly the kind of informed discussion the forum needs. Thanks for your patience and didactic posts. sorry if I sound racist, but there are not many asians I have seen without glasses, and even I can hardly see what you explain here, I don´t even see the three boxes anymore and the lowest box is now not filled. that only proves one of the several points I explained about the flaws of internet communication with asian tokens.

You're just not trained to see it. You probably haven't studied any other scripts before. It's the same in Arabic, one little dot can change the meaning of a word or render it senseless. I've started learning kanji and everything past the number 3 is detailed like that.

BSK
2008-08-03, 22:21
I typed "y4bj6fu6bp6" for "字如其人" it's the input system I use. There are many different input systems for Chinese, some take less strokes than the one I use, but I'm too lazy to learn a new set of input, so I'm sticking to the one I use.

are you kidding me? you only give my list of flaws another entry. so you got several languages that divide into uncountable dialects which though use the same writing system but with incompatible different pronunciations and many different input systems? maybe that´s why the number of analphabets has risen by 30 million in the last 5 years, because you forgot to make a step europe did in the middle ages ..

And I don't know why so many Asians wear glasses, but what does that have to do with what we're disscusing?
[Edit] Would you like to discuss this over MSN?
well maybe because in some of the symbols I can hardly see any different strokes, just smudges. in latin letters I can´t see a difference between a huge i and a small l in many fonts, giving me a break of up to 2 seconds if I´m reading right, and you want to tell me you can do this with every symbol you have to read faster than me with my language?


why should we leave out the people of the forum who are interested in this. we can exchange information for anyone here, only if you have to hide your shame ..

I've started learning kanji and everything past the number 3 is detailed like that.

so you pick a japanese ideogram as an example to explain how easy chinese phonograms can be read? I got a tokyflash watch not just because my lessons started before this board was even born ..

DerDrache
2008-08-03, 22:40
What exactly are you arguing here? Are you trying to say that Chinese people can't read/speak/communicate effectively with their own language? That's obviously not the case, so there's no need to keep trying to push it. Ignoring the fact that people have been reading the language just fine for thousands of years, you have a fluent Chinese person telling you that it isn't an issue. Until you are fluent in his language (or at least have a reasonable knowledge of it), then no, you won't be able to give a truly valid opinion on the efficiency of the language. Someone learning English might wonder how the hell we can read, given that our spelling rules are practically nonexistent. To the untrained eye, combinations of the handwritten Cyrillic letters м, и, л, and ш can just look like a series of cursive u's.

Also, it appears you misinterpreted his comment about inputs. He did a set of keystrokes to produce the symbol, and then said that there are easier alternatives, but he was familiar with that one. It's like one person being familiar with QWERTY keyboards, and another being familiar with DVORAK ones.

A question for monotoned: Do Chinese keyboards have individual strokes that allow you form the symbols like words?

BSK
2008-08-03, 23:03
why the fuck, seriously, why the fuck do people forget in a discussion the definition of the word effective? and why do people with a crippled definition then say that their opponents with a different opinion don´t see any pros of the discussed object? I really would like to know when this way of retarded communication won´t waste my time anymore ..

and yes mr.-I-use-an-online-translator-and-pretend-to-be-a-native, as I said so many times, this language system is missing an effective standardization and is therefor a locally useful, but global useless system.

jackketch
2008-08-03, 23:14
I'm with BSK when it comes to this kinda thing.

Many thousands of years ago some guy with far too much time on his hands realised that if you turned the pictogram for 'bull' upside down and declared that 'A' was no longer just 'A for Aleph' but also for aardvark and anal sex that the whole writing thang got a whole lot easier.

Which was arguably one of the greatest advancements in history.

Chinese never evolved that far but then what can you expect from a people whose greatest gift to humanity was Egg Fried Rice and who think ground rhinoceros horn will give you a hard on?

DerDrache
2008-08-04, 00:29
why the fuck, seriously, why the fuck do people forget in a discussion the definition of the word effective? and why do people with a crippled definition then say that their opponents with a different opinion don´t see any pros of the discussed object? I really would like to know when this way of retarded communication won´t waste my time anymore ..

and yes mr.-I-use-an-online-translator-and-pretend-to-be-a-native, as I said so many times, this language system is missing an effective standardization and is therefor a locally useful, but global useless system.

Rofl. Here's a tip: Just because someone has made mistakes in a foreign language, that doesn't mean they are using a translator. I'm honestly shocked that you have the balls to say something like that after the crap you've written in this thread. I don't think you've written more than 2 or 3 sentences in this entire thread that didn't have major mistakes in them. Most of your replies in this thread are literally gibberish. (You didn't think people were making fun of you for no reason, did you?) You rape English grammar beyond recognition and your vocabulary is shit, but you still have the nerve to harass people when they make some errors in German. Wow.

Now, you can either stay on topic and have a civil discussion about Asian writing systems, or we can all make fun of you as you continue to post like a retarded, angry, 12-year-old, German Maedchen that sucks at English. The choice is yours.

DerDrache
2008-08-04, 00:39
I'm with BSK when it comes to this kinda thing.

Many thousands of years ago some guy with far too much time on his hands realised that if you turned the pictogram for 'bull' upside down and declared that 'A' was no longer just 'A for Aleph' but also for aardvark and anal sex that the whole writing thang got a whole lot easier.

Which was arguably one of the greatest advancements in history.

Chinese never evolved that far but then what can you expect from a people whose greatest gift to humanity was Egg Fried Rice and who think ground rhinoceros horn will give you a hard on?

If over 1 billion people are speaking, reading, and writing the language without any problem, then that's all that matters. When languages don't work, they don't exist.

As for Chinese being "globally useless"? Pure nonsense. Miscommunication via phone technology is a problem faced with any language, and as monotoned has told us, fluent Chinese readers have no problem recognizing slight differences in symbols.

Social Junker
2008-08-04, 03:36
so you pick a japanese ideogram as an example to explain how easy chinese phonograms can be read? I got a tokyflash watch not just because my lessons started before this board was even born ..

I'm not sure I understand your criticism here; nearly all of the Japanese kanji were imported from China. Except for the fact that the Japanese, in some cases, have simplified some of the borrowed characters, one would think that the difficulty in reading them would be the same.

monotoned
2008-08-04, 05:35
A question for monotoned: Do Chinese keyboards have individual strokes that allow you form the symbols like words?

First off, I'm a she, but don't worry about it, I'm not offended.
Yes there are several input systems (I only can think of two right now but I'm sure there's more) that allow individual strokes. My cellphone can do that too. But I don't use that input system, sorry if I can't tell you more about it. Maybe I'll take a picture of my keyboard sometime and post it here.

mr.-I-use-an-online-translator-and-pretend-to-be-a-native
To whom are you referring? How would you know if someone is using an online translator? Pretending to be something you're not will just make things worse than it already is. And, no I have no shame in defending my language. I just thought MSN would be quicker and I would've posted our conversation if you allowed me to. As you can see I'm not a regular and I'm still not very used to how totse works. I only replied to this thread because Zay thought asian writing systems were trash and I wanted to clear some misunderstandings. No need to lose your temper, BSK. This is not a fight, remember?

jackketch
2008-08-04, 07:07
.

To whom are you referring? How would you know if someone is using an online translator? ?

Don't worry he, he ain't referring to you but Der Drache.

And when someone tells you to 'kiss his donkey' then you can be fairly sure babelfish was involved.

DerDrache
2008-08-04, 07:25
Don't worry he, he ain't referring to you but Der Drache.

And when someone tells you to 'kiss his donkey' then you can be fairly sure babelfish was involved.

Any syntactical or vocabulary error that a translator can make, a person can easily make as well. A translator error would be along the lines of "Je comme aller a la plage.", which literally translates to "I like to go to the beach", except "like" is the simile, not the verb. (To make that type of error, someone would have to be completely oblivious to the concept of verb conjugation, which is unlikely, but possible.)

The errors that BSK pissed herself over were along the lines of incorrect word order (very easy mistake to make in German), or using the wrong form of "haben".

Looking at some of your posts here, ketch, it isn't surprising that you are so fond of the single least helpful person in this forum.

BSK
2008-08-04, 08:01
you still have the nerve to harass people when they make some errors in German.

and here´s a tip from me, you either show me where I did what you say or I will delete your post in 2 days. there´s a difference between someone learning a foreign language and making mistakes, and some troll from the internet pretending to be a native and telling all others that the native has no clue.
as long as I´m mod in this forum I will not allow this mobbing with false facts, because I have never harassed people for making an error in german. I can remember when you ruined a thread when I tried to correct someone who said neutral would be unseitig in german.
but if you think I make huge mistakes in english feel free to send me a message to correct me, because I´m here to learn and I will be thankful for this. as long as you don´t come up again with capitalization rules, because I don´t give a shit about anything except the I ..

If over 1 billion people are speaking, reading, and writing the language without any problem, then that's all that matters. When languages don't work, they don't exist.

over 1 billion? which language are you talking about? mandarin chinese? 836 million people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_dialects). if you don´t even know their correct number, why should I even argue about the problems that you think don´t exist? and as already said, languages are a multivariable defined object, the keyword is emergence. they don´t have to work, they only have to be used ..

the Japanese, in some cases, have simplified some of the borrowed characters, one would think that the difficulty in reading them would be the same.

reading probably, but pronunciation is the big problem. so if pronunciation differs in every dialect as you can read in the link above, then how useful is a phonetic writing system? and just to give you an impression about simplifying, you can find a list of all traditional chinese characters here (http://ash.jp/code/cn/big5tbl.htm).
of all? no, because big5 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big5) is only used by 35 million chinese people in taiwan and hong kong with several extensions adding another 100.000 signs. it has more than 13.000 symbols and the chinese gb system has 7.000 symbols including latin, greek, russian and japanese symbols. just because of these 2 sign collections the unicode had to add another 2 bytes. so instead of 8 bits that would be enough for a standardized and useful alphabet or 2 bytes for 65.000 symbols including all used letters in the world, we have to use 32 bits for more than 4 billion signs.
on a sidenote, the electrical power used for computers is rising so high nowadays, that if all of them have to double the used ram, disk space, processor time and communication capability, we seriously can speak of a environmental pollution because some don´t-think-just-follow-orders-communists can´t fucking use their heads to make an effective standard ..

Yes there are several input systems (I only can think of two right now but I'm sure there's more) that allow individual strokes. My cellphone can do that too. But I don't use that input system, sorry if I can't tell you more about it. Maybe I'll take a picture of my keyboard sometime and post it here.

oh no need, we can take a look at wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers) to get an impression about the variety. and I´ve come to a point where the word variety doesn´t really describe the reality. so we got myriads of languages with myriads of cultural dialects with myriads of locally dialects with myriads of pronunciations with myriads of sign collections with myriads of extensions with myriads of input systems. and we discuss about being effective for so long?
that´s why I said you have to make a step that europe had done in the middle age, selection of the best and using it as a standard. all these asian systems come down to the latin alphabet anyway, it´s just reluctance to use something foreigners have invented.
and that´s why I asked how many keystrokes you had to make to write the 4 symbols, because you needed 3 and 4 would be needed for all. that´s why the language is crippled and shrinked to a vulgar and common used vocabulary.
you know, when you add all colors of the rainbow together you get white light when it´s a positive addition, you get some dirty grey when it´s negative addition. and right now there´s not just smog in china ..

DerDrache
2008-08-04, 08:30
Rofl.

There's just so much BSK-goodness in that post, I don't know where to start.

I will say the following, however:

1) There are over 1 billion Chinese people. The discussion about Chinese languages (phonetics, their writing systems) extends to both Mandarin and Cantonese. Regardless, my point was that both languages have functioned just fine for a few thousand years, despite what BSK thinks.

2) I'm not going to go shifting through a year of posts. Everyone remembers your immature, irrational tantrum (how can they forget?), and you even repeated your translator nonsense in this very thread. If you want to delete any posts in this thread, you can begin with your own off-topic rantings. Otherwise, suck it up.

3) Your misinterpretation of monotoned's comments about Chinese typing is really getting out of hand. China: It has 2 major languages, and just about everyone speaks one or the other. Do dialects exist? Probably, but who cares? There are dialects of practically every language. The languages that will allow one to be understood in China are Mandarin or Cantonese (depending on location, of course). How do they type their characters on computers? Various methods exist over the whole of that massive country. If there happens to be absolutely no standardization, then what does that have to do with the language itself? It would be a result of crappy organization on the part of the government.

jackketch
2008-08-04, 08:51
If over 1 billion people are speaking, reading, and writing the language without any problem, then that's all that matters. When languages don't work, they don't exist.

As for Chinese being "globally useless"? Pure nonsense. Miscommunication via phone technology is a problem faced with any language, and as monotoned has told us, fluent Chinese readers have no problem recognizing slight differences in symbols.

Mein Gott Walter...

Personally I would have thought that the 'a for aardvark and anal sex' comment gave the game away.

Meh, maybe I will have to start using those awful smileys.

BTW on the topic of 'helpfulness': thats why I got you Zay who is without doubt certifiably helpful, but manages to do it without having his head up his arse.

BSK
2008-08-04, 13:08
1) There are over 1 billion Chinese people.
true
The discussion about Chinese languages (phonetics, their writing systems) extends to both Mandarin and Cantonese.
836 million + 71 million = 907 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_dialects). that´s not over a billion, so fail.
my point was that both languages have functioned just fine for a few thousand years, despite what BSK thinks.
we´re talking about efficiency and global communication. every language works fine, just some others work better for obvious reasons. eskimo works great too, but just in the arctic areas and the endemic culture. it is good for what it was developed for, hunting animals and celebrating rituals, it´s not efficient for global communication at a high technology level. and chinese isn´t either.
2) I'm not going to go shifting through a year of posts.
it took me 2 minutes to find one of the threads (http://www.totse.com/community/showthread.php?t=2118119) you´ve ruined and I was talking about.
you authenticate that german neutral gender means "unseitig", which can´t be found (http://dict.leo.org/ende?lang=de&lp=ende&search=unseitig) in the biggest german-english online dictionary with 469.213 entries. the word "sächlich" (http://dict.leo.org/ende?lang=de&lp=ende&search=s%E4chlich), which I said, directly links to neuter. so I will not tolerate that someone makes people feel awkward to ask in this forum because some exposed troll tries to abstract from his failure by attacking a mod, and this is my proof. if you attack me again you will have a to prove your statement or it will be deleted, moved to bitch and moan if possible. I´m done with this.
Do dialects exist? Probably, but who cares? There are dialects of practically every language.
take a look at the above given link about distinction between dialects and languages, it´s a start for you to argue with facts and not dreams ..

monotoned
2008-08-04, 14:47
BSK, I just don't know what to say anymore. You can go on believing what you believe. I think I've already made my point to those who are open-minded.

Thank you all for taking the time to read my posts.

Bye-bye now.

The Methematician
2008-08-05, 16:15
if :


1) There are over 1 billion Chinese people.true

but :
836 million + 71 million = 907 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_dialects). that´s not over a billion, so fail.

are you implying that there's over a billion Chinese but some of them are not speaking or writing chinese?

we´re talking about efficiency and global communication. every language works fine, just some others work better for obvious reasons. eskimo works great too, but just in the arctic areas and the endemic culture. it is good for what it was developed for, hunting animals and celebrating rituals, it´s not efficient for global communication at a high technology level. and chinese isn´t either.

well, the most efficient form of communication at hi-tech level is to speak "00 01 01 00 01 11 10", are you saying maybe we should change from speaking whatever we are speaking right now to binary ?

oh, maybe Spanish, Swedish, Polish, German, and such should cease to exist too because they're using too many funny symbols as opposed to English. Oh, not to mention put an end to cyrillic too since they're inefficient...

=======================================

edit : ok, take it a step further.... maybe we should stop using caps and spacing and punctuations too since they are not very efficient and are wasting bits and bytes,...

soiproposethatwestarttypinglikethisfromnowonsointh atwaywewontbewastinganyvalueablespaceshowsthat

BSK
2008-08-05, 17:49
well, the most efficient form of communication at hi-tech level is to speak "00 01 01 00 01 11 10"

there´s so much endless and useless discussion because some people simply don´t know the definition of the word effective, especial in a multidimensional comparison. I´ll try to explain. if you want to kill someone you can use a sword to cut his head off. you have to get close to him and therefor you might leave some traces for the police, e.g. the blood you stepped in and some cameras that show you entering the building. another alternative is to shoot him from a distance with a silenced gun. you might miss the person, but until someone has found the place where you had been shooting you are miles away. the last alternative would be a suicide bomb. it doesn´t matter if you leave traces or cameras got you and you won´t miss.

perfect kill - you might get caught
you might miss - perfect getaway
perfect kill - no getaway needed

this example compares just 2 dimensions, a language has much more and you picked only one. if you think binary is the most efficient form then you are the suicide bomber, because you have all advantages of safely killing him without getting caught. but as you only compare 2 dimensions, you did your job and are dead now. it somehow has a flaw, as you don´t see the third dimension, your life.
humans can´t understand binary as fast as they can understand words. so if latin letters need 8 bits to be represented in a computer and their permutable arranging to create words makes it possible to use the whole language and it´s whole complexity, then yes they are more effective than a symbol language that doesn´t fit the whole variety of the culture, has no standards for input systems, no standards for symbols anyway, and needs 32 bits in a computer.

and for the rest of your arguments I give you a hint, don´t step into a longass discussion without having read and understood the last 5 posts ..

Zay
2008-08-05, 23:13
oh, maybe Spanish, Swedish, Polish, German, and such should cease to exist too because they're using too many funny symbols as opposed to English. Oh, not to mention put an end to cyrillic too since they're inefficient...


Meh, that screams red herring to me. Even BSK knows that spanish has one of the most efficient uses of the alphabet of any languages. Spelling bees are not very popular in latin america because there's no need to memorize. It's all logical.

Zay
2008-08-22, 19:58
Ran into this in another forum: « Shī Shì shí shī shǐ » Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī. Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī. Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì. Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì. Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì. Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì. Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì. Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī. Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī. Shì shì shì shì. The amount of ambiguity can become impossibly high. This is clearly illustrated in the Classical Chinese poem "Lion Eating Poet in the Stone Den". 《施氏食獅史》 石室詩士施氏,嗜獅,誓食十獅。 氏時時適市視獅。 十時,適十獅適市。 是時,適施氏適市。 氏視是十獅,恃矢勢,使是十獅逝世。 氏拾是十獅屍,適石室。 石室濕,氏使侍拭石室。 石室拭,氏始試食是十獅。 食時,始識是十獅,實十石獅屍。 試釋是事。

Zay
2008-08-22, 20:00
It's just the way the language is built. Can't get around that.

DerDrache
2008-08-22, 20:04
It's just the way the language is built. Can't get around that.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

The Methematician
2008-08-22, 22:12
there´s so much endless and useless discussion because some people simply don´t know the definition of the word effective, especial in a multidimensional comparison. I´ll try to explain. if you want to kill someone you can use a sword to cut his head off. you have to get close to him and therefor you might leave some traces for the police, e.g. the blood you stepped in and some cameras that show you entering the building. another alternative is to shoot him from a distance with a silenced gun. you might miss the person, but until someone has found the place where you had been shooting you are miles away. the last alternative would be a suicide bomb. it doesn´t matter if you leave traces or cameras got you and you won´t miss.

perfect kill - you might get caught
you might miss - perfect getaway
perfect kill - no getaway needed

this example compares just 2 dimensions, a language has much more and you picked only one. if you think binary is the most efficient form then you are the suicide bomber, because you have all advantages of safely killing him without getting caught. but as you only compare 2 dimensions, you did your job and are dead now. it somehow has a flaw, as you don´t see the third dimension, your life.
humans can´t understand binary as fast as they can understand words. so if latin letters need 8 bits to be represented in a computer and their permutable arranging to create words makes it possible to use the whole language and it´s whole complexity, then yes they are more effective than a symbol language that doesn´t fit the whole variety of the culture, has no standards for input systems, no standards for symbols anyway, and needs 32 bits in a computer.

and for the rest of your arguments I give you a hint, don´t step into a longass discussion without having read and understood the last 5 posts ..

b.s king your[sic] so full of shit. You want to talk about multi-dimensional, have it ever occur to you that perhaps Chinese character is much easier to understand and more descriptive per character than latinized words, just like when you said humans can understand words better compared to binaries ?

And perhaps Chinese characters can be considered as a multi-dimensionaled approach to written language too...unlike latin words that are somewhat linear...

oh, maybe Spanish, Swedish, Polish, German, and such should cease to exist too because they're using too many funny symbols as opposed to English. Oh, not to mention put an end to cyrillic too since they're inefficient...Meh, that screams red herring to me. Even BSK knows that spanish has one of the most efficient uses of the alphabet of any languages. Spelling bees are not very popular in latin america because there's no need to memorize. It's all logical.

Can you fucking read you piece of inbred fucking shit....re-fucking read what I said...I said it used too many fucking funny SYMBOLS you fucktard, I didn't say anything about spelling you fuck-fuck-fuck fucking piece of cunt.

Fuckin' symbols such as this :

ñ, ó, ¿, í, é.......

Gaaaa...tards..

*proceed to shove that piece of red herring up your ass*

DerDrache
2008-08-22, 22:33
While they're all symbols, the difference is that Western symbols form a phonetic alphabet. With several Asian writing systems, however, there is no alphabet and each symbol is a unique word.

We can see a word like "thalamus", and even if we've never seen it before, we can still read and pronounce it.

The Methematician
2008-08-22, 22:49
While they're all symbols, the difference is that Western symbols form a phonetic alphabet. With several Asian writing systems, however, there is no alphabet and each symbol is a unique word.

We can see a word like "thalamus", and even if we've never seen it before, we can still read and pronounce it.

GAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What's wrong with this place,.....dumb fucks came and say dumb fucking stuffs all the fuckin time trying to sound like they're some piece of fuckin intellect, fuck you.

All language changes all the time, for fucks sake. English and old english were pronounced differently and spelled differently. The fuckin english or german spoken on the street 1000years ago were fuckin different from what is spoken today, and some words although spelled the same, were pronounced differently back then...they all changes.

fuck,

buy porn -pay with snakes
2008-08-23, 00:02
While they're all symbols, the difference is that Western symbols form a phonetic alphabet. With several Asian writing systems, however, there is no alphabet and each symbol is a unique word.

We can see a word like "thalamus", and even if we've never seen it before, we can still read and pronounce it.

How do you pronounce Cholmondeleigh?

O wait lol, it's not spelled phonetically. You'll never know how to say it without asking someone.

DerDrache
2008-08-23, 00:14
How do you pronounce Cholmondeleigh?

O wait lol, it's not spelled phonetically. You'll never know how to say it without asking someone.

Chol-mon-deh-lay.

English is an exception to the rule when it comes to the efficiency phonetic alphabets, because both our pronunciation and spelling have mutated over time. Once you've learned enough words, however, you can still usually pronounce the obscure ones. For instance, the "eigh" combination is always pronounced "ay", even though it doesn't seem to make sense considering the phonetics of the individual letters. (Though, I would guess that a long time ago "eigh" was pronounced with a hard H sound (kind of like German or Arabic), thus the spelling discrepancy.)

Move along.

buy porn -pay with snakes
2008-08-23, 00:32
Chol-mon-deh-lay.

English is an exception to the rule when it comes to the efficiency phonetic alphabets, because both our pronunciation and spelling have mutated over time. Once you've learned enough words, however, you can still usually pronounce the obscure ones. For instance, the "eigh" combination is always pronounced "ay", even though it doesn't seem to make sense considering the phonetics of the individual letters. (Though, I would guess that a long time ago "eigh" was pronounced with a hard H sound (kind of like German or Arabic), thus the spelling discrepancy.)

Move along.

Actually it's pronounced 'Chum-lee'.

Comes from the time when signmakers/scribes charged by the letter, and figured why not make English words have as many letters as humanly possible to get more money. So they came up with impossible spellings like 'Cholmondeleigh'.

You won't find many of these in the US to be fair, but there are a few obscure ones in England. I'm being pedantic more than making a legitimate point.

I get your argument, but the roman alphabet isn't always phonetic, simply because it covers so many different languages.

DerDrache
2008-08-23, 00:45
Actually it's pronounced 'Chum-lee'.

Comes from the time when signmakers/scribes charged by the letter, and figured why not make English words have as many letters as humanly possible to get more money. So they came up with impossible spellings like 'Cholmondeleigh'.

You won't find many of these in the US to be fair, but there are a few obscure ones in England. I'm being pedantic more than making a legitimate point.

I get your argument, but the roman alphabet isn't always phonetic, simply because it covers so many different languages.

Heh. Well, there you go.

I think English is definitely the biggest offender. Polish is also a bit sketchy. It has uniform rules, but since it has many sounds that aren't part of the Roman alphabet, they assigned such sounds to bullshit letter combinations. How they ever came up with "rz" being a "shsh" sound...I'll never know. But I digress...most languages with phonetic alphabets don't have the same problem that we have with English.

BSK
2008-08-23, 09:54
b.s king your[sic] so full of shit. You want to talk about

if you want to make a point, do it without endless useless flamewords, or I don´t care about your obviously flawed opinion ..

The Methematician
2008-08-23, 11:04
if you want to make a point, do it without endless useless flamewords, or I don´t care about your obviously flawed opinion ..

If there's some fuckin' intellectual capability left in your shitbrain, you'd be able to harness my points from among all those "flamewords", get back to me and present your argument, or you are unable to do so, then citing "falmewords" here as an excuse to avoid further confrontation...

Oh, yeah, don't fuckin forget who's the fuckin cunt who used the so-called "flamewords" here in the first place. You piece of fuck. Well, I guess it's hard for you to argue here outside SF huh...without all those "protection" afforded to you in SF.

Oh,...p/s, you suck at making analogies.

BSK
2008-08-23, 12:05
If there's some fuckin'

stopped reading there. one last try for you ..

The Methematician
2008-08-23, 12:31
stopped reading there. one last try for you ..

It's ok. Keep the last try option. I do not wish to argue with intellectually impaired person[s] anyway.

Go fornicate thyself.

monotoned
2008-08-27, 05:16
Ran into this in another forum: The amount of ambiguity can become impossibly high. This is clearly illustrated in the Classical Chinese poem "Lion Eating Poet in the Stone Den".

Hey so I'm back. Couldn't help myself.

To Zay:
That one was intended. I think it was even re-written into a tounge twister.
Even though the pronounciation is ambiguous, the written text is not. In fact it is clear, even a Taiwanese middle school student could read it and understand it.

In my opinion, tounge twisters should not count if to determine whether a language has high ambiguity or not.

BSK
2008-08-27, 08:16
In my opinion, tounge twisters should not count if to determine whether a language has high ambiguity or not.

if told during a phone call, would the other person recognise it because he knew the poem or would the person be able to understand each one of the words without context?

monotoned
2008-08-27, 10:44
if told during a phone call, would the other person recognise it because he knew the poem or would the person be able to understand each one of the words without context?

If he knew the "poem" well, then yes, if not, it would take quite some time to explain.

But normally we do not use this type to communicate verbally, unless you're show-off or just not normal. The "poem" is written as a form 文言文 (I'm sorry I don't know how to translate this), which is rarely used nowadays. Just like there is old English, or old German. Although 文言文 is rarely used anymore, it is still a required course (like Shakespeare, I think, but how would I know) and is taught and learned in middle school and throughout high school (at least in Taiwan that is the case).


You seem to be concerned about how Chinese speakers manage phone calls. It's really not a big deal to understand each other. We just do. Don't worry, Chinese is a very flexible language.

DerDrache
2008-08-27, 16:07
if told during a phone call, would the other person recognise it because he knew the poem or would the person be able to understand each one of the words without context?

I think anything in the style of that "Shi shi shi" poem would be difficult to understand without context. In English there is a sentence "Buffalo buffalo bufallo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo." Although it makes perfect sense, it's still likely to be viewed as just meaningless repetition of the word "buffalo", as opposed to an actual sentence.

Zay
2008-08-27, 16:51
I think anything in the style of that "Shi shi shi" poem would be difficult to understand without context. In English there is a sentence "Buffalo buffalo bufallo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo." Although it makes perfect sense, it's still likely to be viewed as just meaningless repetition of the word "buffalo", as opposed to an actual sentence.

Nobody uses "buffalo" as a verb. Fuck that shit.

DerDrache
2008-08-27, 17:00
Nobody uses "buffalo" as a verb. Fuck that shit.

It's not common, but it's still a verb that most people would know.

monotoned
2008-08-28, 05:05
I'm confused about the Buffalo buffalo thing. (Sorry at first I just thought DerDrache was just messing around)

Anyone care to explain?

DerDrache
2008-08-28, 05:29
I'm confused about the Buffalo buffalo thing. (Sorry at first I just thought DerDrache was just messing around)

Anyone care to explain?

Buffalo buffalo (whom) Bufallo buffalo buffalo(,) buffalo bufallo.

Buffalo is a city, an animal, and a verb meaning "to bully". In its simplest form, it just means "Buffalo from the city of Buffalo bully (other) bufallo." The added clause tells you that the initial group of "Buffalo buffalo" are bullied by other Buffalo buffalo.

It's a ridiculous sentence, of course, but just a cool little grammatical "trick".