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WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

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Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#31

Post by jmadsen »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #27
mkr-hn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

That doesn't appear to be used for internal communication, but rather for communicating with foreigners. I'm sure many millions of young Chinese schoolchildren would love it if Pinyin was adopted as a native written language, so they wouldn't have to spend quite so much mental effort memorizing the tens of thousands of characters needed to qualify for a diploma. Same goes for Japanese schoolchildren, since they're pl…

Won't start a big argument, but replacing kanji with hiragana would make the language a vaguely-worded nightmare. Massive number of homonyms; huge number of verbs with slightly different nuance achieved through a different choice of kanji.

The language IS evolving toward hiragana for simple, everyday words, but ask any adult who has to read children's books (all in hiragana) how painful it is to group the words correctly and you'll agree a bigger change won't come soon.

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#32

Post by sneak »

cobrausn wrote: post #29
tibbon wrote: post #2

While some would make it sound as though Wikileaks was 'against' the US or any specific country, it seems clear to me that they are really just out to shine light on everyone that has secrets. I, for one, don't see this as a terribly bad thing. Governments and large corporations are under the impression that they can do as they please and no one will ever know the wiser. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

The cynic in me is waiting for the day they start releasing Russian internal communications and state secrets. I don't predict Russia's current government would react to that with words and legal action... or, at least, not just that.

They already released US state secrets and he's been under house arrest for over 500 days without charges.

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#33

Post by WiseWeasel »

jmadsen wrote: post #31
WiseWeasel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't appear to be used for internal communication, but rather for communicating with foreigners. I'm sure many millions of young Chinese schoolchildren would love it if Pinyin was adopted as a native written language, so they wouldn't have to spend quite so much mental effort memorizing the tens of thousands of characters needed to qualify for a diploma. Same goes for Japanese schoolchildren, since they're pl…

Won't start a big argument, but replacing kanji with hiragana would make the language a vaguely-worded nightmare. Massive number of homonyms; huge number of verbs with slightly different nuance achieved through a different choice of kanji. The language IS evolving toward hiragana for simple, everyday words, but ask any adult who has to read children's books (all in hiragana) how painful it is to group the words corre…

If there are many homonyms that could be mistaken despite context, how do people understand the spoken language? Are verbal inflections incompletely represented in hiragana versus kanji?

As for grouping into words, other languages have found spaces useful. ; )

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#34

Post by Wingman4l7 »

compay wrote: post #23
tibbon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I really like those visually. While non-standard, I just might have to start using those in my English typesetting/formatting of documents. As a complete tangent, I think that over the next 50 years, various Chinese phrases, language quirks and usage will start bleeding into English, much as Spanish has if not moreso.

> I think that over the next 50 years, various Chinese phrases, language quirks and usage will start bleeding into English Right on. That was one of my favorite elements of the Firefly TV series.

One of the criticisms of Firefly was that for a future that was supposed to have a large Chinese population / integration of Chinese culture, you never really saw any Chinese characters (aka whitewashing). That said, I always thought it was an elegant work-around to broadcast TV's limitations on cusswords.

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#35

Post by Natsu »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #33
jmadsen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't start a big argument, but replacing kanji with hiragana would make the language a vaguely-worded nightmare. Massive number of homonyms; huge number of verbs with slightly different nuance achieved through a different choice of kanji. The language IS evolving toward hiragana for simple, everyday words, but ask any adult who has to read children's books (all in hiragana) how painful it is to group the words corre…

If there are many homonyms that could be mistaken despite context, how do people understand the spoken language? Are verbal inflections incompletely represented in hiragana versus kanji? As for grouping into words, other languages have found spaces useful. ; )

There's a tonal accent, which is not conveyed in writing. I believe there are some regional variations of it, too.

In Japanese, it's related to something called the "accent nucleus." Googling that will give you a lot of random scholarly articles. Oddly enough the best simple explanation I could find was this:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100122132557AA...

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#36

Post by kruk »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #33
jmadsen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't start a big argument, but replacing kanji with hiragana would make the language a vaguely-worded nightmare. Massive number of homonyms; huge number of verbs with slightly different nuance achieved through a different choice of kanji. The language IS evolving toward hiragana for simple, everyday words, but ask any adult who has to read children's books (all in hiragana) how painful it is to group the words corre…

If there are many homonyms that could be mistaken despite context, how do people understand the spoken language? Are verbal inflections incompletely represented in hiragana versus kanji? As for grouping into words, other languages have found spaces useful. ; )

Homonyms usually have different pitch (accent). Which differs depending on the region you are from :D

In writing homonyms use different kanji so there is no problem differentiating them.

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#37

Post by commandar »

sneak wrote: post #32
cobrausn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cynic in me is waiting for the day they start releasing Russian internal communications and state secrets. I don't predict Russia's current government would react to that with words and legal action... or, at least, not just that.

They already released US state secrets and he's been under house arrest for over 500 days without charges.

>he's been under house arrest for over 500 days without charges

I feel this is somewhat disingenuous. He's been under house arrest pending extradition hearings because the UK received an arrest warrant for him from Sweden.

EDIT:

And while it's technically true that charges haven't been formally filed yet, it's my understanding that this is due to a peculiarity in Swedish law where they have to have a person physically present to bring charges. Hence the arrest warrant.

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#38

Post by MikeCapone »

mindcrime wrote: post #8
tibbon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

puts on tinfoil hat There's always the chance that Wikileaks in total is just a cover operation for all sorts of other activity, plus giving the US and allies 'reason' to act in various ways. We don't have much of a way to know that any of the documents they've ever leaked were authentic. Bradley Manning could just be a fall-guy for false information. takes off tinfoil hat I doubt this is happening, but stranger thin…

Bradley Manning could just be a fall-guy for false information. I doubt this is happening, but stranger things have happened. I'm sure the CIA has at least considered such... If you want to go all super-paranoid-conspiracy-whatever, we could speculate that all this Wikileaks stuff is total false-flag stuff, and that Bradley Manning was never arrested at all, and is actually vacationing in Bermuda somewhere right now,…

The thing is, if the information is released publicly, it is possible to verify some of the things and cross-reference them against things known to be factual. So they would not only have to fake information, but figure out a way to make it so that people checking it up to see if it's true get confirmation.. It's a nice conspiracy theory, but seems too hard to pull off.

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#39

Post by WiseWeasel »

Natsu wrote: post #35
WiseWeasel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are many homonyms that could be mistaken despite context, how do people understand the spoken language? Are verbal inflections incompletely represented in hiragana versus kanji? As for grouping into words, other languages have found spaces useful. ; )

There's a tonal accent, which is not conveyed in writing. I believe there are some regional variations of it, too. In Japanese, it's related to something called the "accent nucleus." Googling that will give you a lot of random scholarly articles. Oddly enough the best simple explanation I could find was this: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100122132557AA...

So not only does hiragana need spaces, but it also needs accents?

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#40

Post by treeface »

commandar wrote: post #37
sneak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already released US state secrets and he's been under house arrest for over 500 days without charges.

>he's been under house arrest for over 500 days without charges I feel this is somewhat disingenuous. He's been under house arrest pending extradition hearings because the UK received an arrest warrant for him from Sweden. EDIT: And while it's technically true that charges haven't been formally filed yet, it's my understanding that this is due to a peculiarity in Swedish law where they have to have a person physicall…

Thank you for clarifying that.
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