If English were written like Chinese (1999) • Hacker News Board

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#21

Post by gfaure » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #19

wodenokoto wrote: post #2

This article is actually a lot better at explaining the characters system used in both china and Japan, than the articles that have hit the front page today and in the last week or so.

It's a fucked up writing system that is pretty beautiful as well. Unfortunately it has limited the number of syllables (combinations of sounds) in the language. Why? Because they have to make due with just 2000 phonetic sounds (335 in modern Japanese) while English letters can combine in many more ways and form a much more diverse array of sounds. As a result Japanese people (probably Chinese too) have a hard time pr…

This is incorrect. You seem to be saying that the writing system is responsible for the fact that English is hard to learn for Chinese speakers because the phonetics are different? Many languages have phonetics very different from English and so are at a "disadvantage" when learning English as a second language -- this is orthogonal to the choice of writing system.

Chinese speakers learn Pinyin from primary school and so know exactly how an alphabetic writing system works. Indeed, many Chinese who are not fully literate in Hanzi know how to read Pinyin.

Furthermore, Japanese children in the fifth grade can already read about 850 characters -- this is not as difficult a feat as I think you imagine.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#22

Post by gerbilly » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 9:07 PM UTC

People might be interested to know that Egyptian Hieroglyphics, despite looking even more like pictograms are actually an alphabet.

Another cool fact, in hieroglyphics there is more than one way to write a word, because, unlike most alphabetic systems, some characters are multi syllabic and can represent two or more syllables.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#23

Post by hawkice » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

bleachedsleet wrote: post #17

jl6 wrote: post #12

What a breath of fresh air is a 1999-era web page. Fast loading, simple, readable.

...horrid color schemes, no support for mobile devices...yeah, what a breath of fresh air.

Looks fine on mobile, header picture could be a bit thinner but other than that it's basically perfectly responsive.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#24

Post by Ezhik » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

bleachedsleet wrote: post #17

jl6 wrote: post #12

What a breath of fresh air is a 1999-era web page. Fast loading, simple, readable.

...horrid color schemes, no support for mobile devices...yeah, what a breath of fresh air.

http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#25

Post by jl6 » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

bleachedsleet wrote: post #17

jl6 wrote: post #12

What a breath of fresh air is a 1999-era web page. Fast loading, simple, readable.

...horrid color schemes, no support for mobile devices...yeah, what a breath of fresh air.

I read the whole thing on a mobile and had no problem whatsoever.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#26

Post by golergka » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

https://xkcd.com/1709/

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#27

Post by crystaln » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

bleachedsleet wrote: post #17

jl6 wrote: post #12

What a breath of fresh air is a 1999-era web page. Fast loading, simple, readable.

...horrid color schemes, no support for mobile devices...yeah, what a breath of fresh air.

Yeah, I can't believe they didn't use responsive CSS in 1999. Such ignorance.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#28

Post by jshevek » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 9:43 PM UTC

bleachedsleet wrote: post #17

jl6 wrote: post #12

What a breath of fresh air is a 1999-era web page. Fast loading, simple, readable.

...horrid color schemes, no support for mobile devices...yeah, what a breath of fresh air.

Looks great for me on mobile. Maybe "supporting mobile" becomes more important when you do things that would otherwise make the mobile experience awful. Keeping it simple seems to support mobile automatically.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#29

Post by swort » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 9:49 PM UTC

The letter 'M' in the Roman alphabet is derived from the symbol for running water in phonecian, and the letter 'A' is a rotated cow's head.

Phonecian is partly derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics. I love this stuff.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#30

Post by Kirth » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 9:50 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #7

The increasing use of icons and emoji suggests that English will become like Chinese! (Ever try to look up an icon in a dictionary? This puts paid to the idea that icons are decipherable by people who don't know the language. Copyrighting the icons makes even that infinitely worse, as it prevents standardization.)

I'm not sure where you've seen this "increasing use of icons and emoji". When I encounter people (this is pretty much limited to teenagers) use emoji, they have very little communicative value.

In the modern era the use of pictographs has become Chinese's Achilles' heel: the hanzi are not sortable. The very things that define the Chinese are what makes it stupidly difficult to get computers to grok the language.