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Chinese Number Websites

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Re: Chinese Number Websites

#51

Post by zhemao »

nether wrote: post #20
manifesto wrote: post #7

One reason why Chinese have less difficulty remembering and using these numbers than the western fellows might be the difference in pronunciation. In Chinese, all single digit number has the same structure: a consonant plus a vowel. For example, 7, in Chinese is pronounced as [ch-i:], while in English is pronounced as [ˈsɛvən]. Also, every digit takes the same time to pronounce. For example, a string "123456" is [yi:…

This is Malcolm Gladwell nonsense and not backed up by the fact that Chinese-Americans who learn English first (e.g. Nobel laureate Steven Chu) do just as well as their Chinese counterparts.

It's not about being good at math, just at memorizing numbers. I'm Chinese American and was considered to be "good-at-math" in grade school, but damned if I can remember long sequences of numbers. Maybe I should try thinking about them in Chinese.

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#52

Post by raverbashing »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #40
raverbashing wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup (but sometimes up to 10x10) Of course, we would only need to memorize (10-x) items for the x table, except 1x anything, which is trivial so, know 2x2, 2x3, 2x4, 2x5, 2x6, 2x7, 2x8, 2x9 from 3, you can begin at 3x3, then 3x4, etc to be more advanced you only need to know up to 5, and do the rest with math... 9 7? easy peasy. (5+4) (5+3) = 5 5 + 5 3 + 4 5 + 4 3 -> 25 + 15 + 20 + 12 = 72 (there are other tricks you…

you wrote 9 * 7 then proceeded to calculate 9 * 8. I find the 9s easy to remember. simply take the other number, reduce it by 1, then add the complementary that together sum to 9. for 9 * 7, this is 63,

Ouch, true

Yeah, I know this trick for multiplying by 9, but I wanted it to be generic

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#53

Post by raverbashing »

raverbashing wrote: post #14
w1ntermute wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memorizing the times tables (up to 12·12) is standard in American schools.

Yup (but sometimes up to 10x10) Of course, we would only need to memorize (10-x) items for the x table, except 1x anything, which is trivial so, know 2x2, 2x3, 2x4, 2x5, 2x6, 2x7, 2x8, 2x9 from 3, you can begin at 3x3, then 3x4, etc to be more advanced you only need to know up to 5, and do the rest with math... 9 7? easy peasy. (5+4) (5+3) = 5 5 + 5 3 + 4 5 + 4 3 -> 25 + 15 + 20 + 12 = 72 (there are other tricks you…

(As pointed by several commenters, this is the multiplication of 9x8 not, 9x7)

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#54

Post by zokier »

dperfect wrote: post #36

I'm surprised there's no mention here of punycode and IDNs. Is there just not enough widespread support for IDNs (the article mentions a need for plugins, but I thought most browsers already support IDNs), or are numbers really that much easier to type and remember than short, meaningful domains in native characters? As I understand, punycode is translated by the browser to a standard ASCII string, so there's no need…

While it doesn't mention punycode directly, it has paragraph referring to IDN:

Why don’t Chinese web addresses just use Mandarin characters? Because that’s a pain, too. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which sets the rules for web addresses globally, has periodically hyped the expansion of domain names to include non-Latinate scripts, but Chinese web sites have yet to take full advantage. Some devices require a special plug-in to type in Chinese URLs, and even then it takes longer to type or write out characters than to input a few digits. Plus, for web sites that want to expand internationally but don’t want to alienate foreign audiences with unfamiliar characters, numbers are a decent compromise

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#55

Post by abrowne »

epo wrote: post #29
abrowne wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hope she doesn't want to text anyone.

These days if you have them in your address book you can just start typing their name and then pick from a list.

True, but most so do most email clients, and this still would be breaking her rule of "refus[ing] to communicate with anyone whose email address consisted of a string of numbers".

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#56

Post by aspidistra »

ezl wrote: post #26
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.

Japanese does have the phenomenon of being able to ascribe meaning to digits though, even though it's not common to do so in URLs. In school in japan, kids often learn tricks for memorizing multiplication tables and square roots this way, similar to how US high school students have a song for the roots of a quadratic (-b /- root(b^2-4ac... to the tune of Pop Goes The Weasel). For example: sqrt 2 = 1.41421356 (night a…

> -b /- root(b^2-4ac to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel

Woah. In the UK the most we got was SOHCAHTOA: "Smiles of happiness come after having tankards of ale", or "Some old hag cracked all her teeth on apples".

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#57

Post by myf »

cynix wrote: post #12
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

It was even called OICQ (OpenICQ) when they first started, even though there was nothing "open" about their service.

it also uses a penguin as the mascot...

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#58

Post by dperfect »

zokier wrote: post #54
dperfect wrote: post #36

I'm surprised there's no mention here of punycode and IDNs. Is there just not enough widespread support for IDNs (the article mentions a need for plugins, but I thought most browsers already support IDNs), or are numbers really that much easier to type and remember than short, meaningful domains in native characters? As I understand, punycode is translated by the browser to a standard ASCII string, so there's no need…

While it doesn't mention punycode directly, it has paragraph referring to IDN: Why don’t Chinese web addresses just use Mandarin characters? Because that’s a pain, too. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which sets the rules for web addresses globally, has periodically hyped the expansion of domain names to include non-Latinate scripts, but Chinese web sites have yet to take full advanta…

Sounds like the core problem is just "Chinese web sites have yet to take full advantage".

I'm really wondering how many (or what percentage of) devices actually need "a special plug-in". Seems like it would be a very small - and shrinking - fraction, but I could be wrong.

If the user's device is (presumably) already set to use Mandarin (or any specific language), then I assume that would be the default input method, so why does that take significantly longer to use than numbers? I'm genuinely curious, never having experienced that use case myself as a native english speaker.

As for websites wanting to expand internationally and avoiding unfamiliar characters, that doesn't really make sense to me - if they want to expand internationally, I don't think the numeric domains are going to help much (they'd be just as cryptic to me as Mandarin characters), so why wouldn't they just register alternate domains in the target regions/languages as many already do?

Re: Chinese Number Websites

#60

Post by khuey »

yzhou wrote: post #34

the point of using number in the domain is, a lot of Chinese people don't know letters, they don't know English words and they can't get "PinYin"(using letters to represent Chinese words) right. How do you make these people type urls in the browser? well, luckily, they all know numbers!

Are there really computer-literate Mandarin speakers in China who don't know pinyin? How do they input text? The only serious non-pinyin IMEs I'm aware of are the bopomofo ones for traditional characters in Taiwan.
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