Chinese Number Websites • Hacker News Board

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#41

Post by mirkules » Sun, May 04, 2014, 5:31 PM UTC

"Hotmail.com might as well be Cyrillic".

This is not a good comparison because Cyrillic (at least, the slavic version) has almost a one-to-one relation to its latin counterparts. Russian Cyrillic is a little more complex, with letter modifiers (like "soft sign" and "hard sign") while in other flavors like Serbian Cyrillics, those characteristics were built into the language.

Hotmail.com directly transliterated to Cyrillic would be: хотмаил.цом (h=х, i=и, l=л, c=ц and the rest are the same).

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#42

Post by w1ntermute » Sun, May 04, 2014, 5:33 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #28

w1ntermute wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will literally ask you in advertisement to enter certain phrases in a search engine to let you find their web property. I have noticed this on occasion, and found it very surprising. They're basically handing control over access to their site to the search engine. That seems like a very bad idea.

No different to "Facebook.com/BigBrand" if that's where most of your audience spends their time online fighting it might be foolish

Well, in the case of Facebook, the audience is actually spending their time on your Facebook page. That's different from if they're just clicking through a search engine to reach your own website.

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#43

Post by briandh » Sun, May 04, 2014, 5:33 PM UTC

> In 2012, the United States refused to sign an international telecommunications treaty, supported by both Russia and China, that would shift the Internet away from its current U.S.-centric form of governance.

As the linked article expounds upon, this statement is strictly true but does not give a very good picture of the situation. It was rejected on free speech grounds, and not just by the US.

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#44

Post by dmoy » Sun, May 04, 2014, 5:35 PM UTC

danoprey wrote: post #37

ezl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chinese speakers like yao often because it sounds LESS like other numbers and is harder to miss. yao1 (1) and liu4 (6) should be pretty distinct. but if the way you pronounce them is similar for whatever reason, you can always use yi and chinese listeners won't flinch. in fact, taiwanese americans will be confused by yao, but zero people will be confused by yi so it's arguably better to use that if you don't know the…

Perhaps I'm mishearing but it sounds to me more like they are pronouncing it "yo" (English) or "you" (Chinese) here in Beijing, which does sound more like 6. yi/qi are slightly similar but I never have the same issue. I've given up on trying to be correct and use yi most of the time.

It's the tone. yao sounds very different from liu because of the tone. yi also sounds different from liu because of the tone. yi does not sound very different from qi, and yi is hard to disambiguate with multiple yi in a row.

you use yao because it's easier to understand

qi yao yao yao ba san

than

qi yi yi yi ba san

It's mostly the qi yi yi / yi yi yi that gets hard to disambiguate.

What is likely happening is that you don't yet have the ear for the tone.

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#45

Post by funkyy » Sun, May 04, 2014, 5:38 PM UTC

Great article - I bookmarked it - when our startup will go online I will buy associated number domain and redirect all Chinese traffic to it. I think that's a great idea!

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#46

Post by SoftwareMaven » Sun, May 04, 2014, 5:40 PM UTC

shanemhansen wrote: post #32

DanBC wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memorizing times tables used to be common in UK schools. They stopped because it doesn't appear to help children understand what multiplication actually is. It is probably going to come back because of our current minister of education's liking of memorization.

I find certain higher level concepts become much easier to grok when you've drilled/memorized the layer below. When I tutored calculus I found that most people rely struggled with the algebra, for example factoring and binomial expansion. I think there is actually value in memorization. Even in the age of google.

My kids' school went away from drilling for times tables when my oldest two were in elementary, in favor of a new math program that would "help them understand what multiplication is". The result is they struggled with math ever after because the mechanics of solving more complex problems was constantly interrupted by not having the needed basics.

They since changed to a more balanced approach: some memorization, some conceptual.

Personally, I've come to the point that I think they should fully embrace technology and make math completely about the conceptual while letting tools generally solve the mechanical. There is no reason a seventh graders needs to be challenged in algebra because they don't remember their times tables.

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#47

Post by franzwong » Sun, May 04, 2014, 5:42 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #9

But why is this phenomenon restricted to China? I haven't observed it with, for example, Japanese sites, even though they too use a non-Latin alphabet.

I heard some people say, Japanese use the same way to memorize the year of some historical events

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#48

Post by cpeterso » Sun, May 04, 2014, 5:45 PM UTC

Wouldn't numbers also be faster to enter because you wouldn't need an IME?

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#49

Post by Joyfield » Sun, May 04, 2014, 5:45 PM UTC

darklajid wrote: post #6

ytch wrote: post #2

When talking about QQ, does anyone remember ICQ? QQ uses number as ID mainly because it's a knockoff from ICQ at beginning

I still know my ICQ number by heart, but cannot remember my own land line and only recently managed to memorize my (company) mobile number.

Same here. 817598

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#50

Post by ientropic » Sun, May 04, 2014, 5:45 PM UTC

ezl wrote: post #24

autarch wrote: post #21

1688 is not prounounced as "yoh-leeyoh-ba-ba". The 1 is pronounced as "ee". This actually makes it closer to Alibaba.

Yao (pin yin first tone) is a common way to say "one" in northern china when reciting multiple digits and basically the only way Beijing locals say 1 in a phone number or a string of numbers. for going to a market and asking for 1 of something, "yi" is the preferred way. Pretty uncommon among southern Chinese people and Taiwanese (many American mandarin speakers are of Taiwanese descent).

yi-ga when asking for one of something