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HK social media users writing phonetically spelled posts to shut out trolls

news.rthk.hk

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Re: HK social media users writing phonetically spelled posts to shut out trolls

#31

Post by yorwba »

floatingatoll wrote: post #29
zhte415 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many things are banned in China, especially web services, in order to create an internal (was possibly exportable incubation, but not since 'progression' over the past 5 years after the government - hegemony of leaders and follows on, rather than government workers, themselves the mules). But translate.google.cn is not banned on the mainland and Google services work very finely in Hong Kong. And forcing Mandarin does…

It’s not about forcing Mandarin being bad, it’s about prohibiting non-Mandarin being bad. US equivalent to this would be forcing English (which we do) while jailing anyone who teaches Creole (which we don’t).

No one is going to get jailed for teaching Cantonese in China. There are plenty of commercial offerings, e.g. this free introductory course I found: https://www.wanmen.org/courses/586d23485f07127674135d64

Mandarin being the primary language of education doesn't mean that Cantonese is prohibited; it's just not mandatory, so most native Cantonese speakers aren't going to get a formal education in it unless they specifically seek it out.

Re: HK social media users writing phonetically spelled posts to shut out trolls

#34

Post by rwbhn »

floatingatoll wrote: post #29
zhte415 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many things are banned in China, especially web services, in order to create an internal (was possibly exportable incubation, but not since 'progression' over the past 5 years after the government - hegemony of leaders and follows on, rather than government workers, themselves the mules). But translate.google.cn is not banned on the mainland and Google services work very finely in Hong Kong. And forcing Mandarin does…

It’s not about forcing Mandarin being bad, it’s about prohibiting non-Mandarin being bad. US equivalent to this would be forcing English (which we do) while jailing anyone who teaches Creole (which we don’t).

For the US equivalent, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_sch...

Re: HK social media users writing phonetically spelled posts to shut out trolls

#35

Post by stereo »

rwbhn wrote: post #34
floatingatoll wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not about forcing Mandarin being bad, it’s about prohibiting non-Mandarin being bad. US equivalent to this would be forcing English (which we do) while jailing anyone who teaches Creole (which we don’t).

For the US equivalent, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_sch...

For the Soviet equivalent, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

Re: HK social media users writing phonetically spelled posts to shut out trolls

#36

Post by toastal »

spacehunt wrote: post #20
s_Hogg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat off topic: any chance you know how come Google doesn't have an explicitly cantonese model for translation?

Not a Googler so I can only guess. But it seems like Google did try to treat Cantonese as a Chinese variant in the past, eventually they dropped it probably because they realised they're too different. I know Google is actively working on the Cantonese version of Google Assistant, though not sure when it'll be officially released.

It is a variant of Chinese though. Chinese is a language family, not a language -- which includes Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, et. al.

Re: HK social media users writing phonetically spelled posts to shut out trolls

#39

Post by spacehunt »

toastal wrote: post #36
spacehunt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a Googler so I can only guess. But it seems like Google did try to treat Cantonese as a Chinese variant in the past, eventually they dropped it probably because they realised they're too different. I know Google is actively working on the Cantonese version of Google Assistant, though not sure when it'll be officially released.

It is a variant of Chinese though. Chinese is a language family, not a language -- which includes Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, et. al.

Whatever it is, Cantonese has different pronunciation, vocabulary and even grammar from Mandarin. Which means it takes a non trivial amount of work to adapt a language model designed for one to the other.

Source: I'm a native speaker of one and fully fluent in the other.

Re: HK social media users writing phonetically spelled posts to shut out trolls

#40

Post by rolltiide »

loocsinus wrote: post #38

Hong Kong is not the only place where people speak Cantonese. The entire region of GuangDong (Canton) speak this dialect. Do they believe all "trolls" speak Mandarin?

Its just desperation when the solutions are nonexistent or inefficient

Not dissimilar to calling everyone that disagrees with you a Russian bot, which was very prevalent in the states for a few years

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