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China is spending billions on soft power

economist.com

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Re: China is spending billions on soft power

#131

Post by herbst »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #130
herbst wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that is why this happens totally unnoticed to many other western countries, if you cut it down to percentage on national income this is nothing compared to anyone else. On that scale United Arab Emirates did 6 times as much as the U.S. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...

I'm sorry, I don't understand your point. Could you explain?

I was wondering which affords the U.S. makes to be more loved in world. Your example is something that obviously nobody speaks about in other western countries as it is way less they contribute on a %/countries income factor than anyone else.

Nearly every country does a lot of foreign aid, the U.S. just happens to be one of those who do less than others so that surely does not help their global image.

Re: China is spending billions on soft power

#132

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

herbst wrote: post #131
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I don't understand your point. Could you explain?

I was wondering which affords the U.S. makes to be more loved in world. Your example is something that obviously nobody speaks about in other western countries as it is way less they contribute on a %/countries income factor than anyone else. Nearly every country does a lot of foreign aid, the U.S. just happens to be one of those who do less than others so that surely does not help their global image.

Everyone I've ever spoken to who was serious about foreign aid and development spending was aware of the US, because they spend much more thab those nations by dollars.

I think you're just making a tangential nationalist dig, because this tangent has nothing to do with the US a) getting recognized for their work in poor countries (they do) or b) being able to use their money more effectively (which is what I was talking about).

Re: China is spending billions on soft power

#133

Post by david-given »

foldr wrote: post #126
david-given wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any examples of multisyllable words in Mandarin which don't break down like this? I have yet to find one. Note that just because a word is a compound word doesn't mean it's not a word. A compound word has a meaning which is distinct from the sum of its parts; otherwise it wouldn't be used. But the meaning of a picture book museum, or fly machine, or language law, though, is still quite clear. But a librar…

>A compound word has a meaning which is distinct from the sum of its parts Right. That's the point. This clearly shows that Chinese has multisyllabic words. And yes, there are plenty of examples of compounds with meanings that have nothing to do with their components, e.g.: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%8A%B1%E7%94%9F But of course, if you already have the preconception that the parts of a compound word are inde…

> Right. That's the point. This clearly shows that Chinese has multisyllabic words.

...but I never said it didn't.

I think you're trying to respond to a different argument than the one I'm making. I'm not trying to say that Chinese only has single-syllable words. I'm saying that it has multisyllable words made up out of single syllable words --- that's what compound words are. All the examples you've given are clearly compound words, including 'flower born' (which I'll admit is not very like a peanut).

The article you just linked to uses jī as an example of a word which is only used to make up compound words. But they're still compound words. jī has a meaning of its own (well --- several meanings, depending on context). You glue it together with another word to produce a compound word with additional meaning. That's pretty much the definition of a compound word.

I don't know where you're going here --- sorry.

Re: China is spending billions on soft power

#134

Post by foldr »

david-given wrote: post #133
foldr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A compound word has a meaning which is distinct from the sum of its parts Right. That's the point. This clearly shows that Chinese has multisyllabic words. And yes, there are plenty of examples of compounds with meanings that have nothing to do with their components, e.g.: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%8A%B1%E7%94%9F But of course, if you already have the preconception that the parts of a compound word are inde…

> Right. That's the point. This clearly shows that Chinese has multisyllabic words. ...but I never said it didn't. I think you're trying to respond to a different argument than the one I'm making. I'm not trying to say that Chinese only has single-syllable words. I'm saying that it has multisyllable words made up out of single syllable words --- that's what compound words are . All the examples you've given are clear…

>But they're still compound words.

Only in an orthographic sense. For example, the linguist list post that I linked to talks about the bound morpheme -zi. This is written using the character which in classical Chinese was the word for 'child'. But clearly there's no sense in which 'zhuozi' (table) is a "compound word" containing the word for child. It's just that since the final syllable of the word happens to be pronounced the same way as the classical Chinese word for child, it's written using that character. This is a purely orthographic fact. And in fact 'zi' cannot be used by itself as a noun in modern Chinese (except in a few fixed idioms).

It's as if English (a) was written like (b):

(a) I realize that.

(b) I real eyes that.

And we then said that 'realize' is a compound word made up of the monosyllabic words 'real' and 'eyes' (which of course "have a different meaning depending on the context").

Re: China is spending billions on soft power

#135

Post by dang »

amgin3 wrote: post #25

If they really want people to like them, they really need to teach their citizens how to behave before they travel, or prevent them from traveling altogether. Maybe force them to take a mandatory etiquette class or something.

This breaks HN's civility guideline. You can't post comments attacking entire populations here. Please don't do it again.
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