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

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#41

Post by leemailll » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 10:26 PM UTC

gfaure wrote: post #16

labster wrote: post #14

[work] + [fight] + [sun] is poor Huffmanization of the common English suffix -tion . That's what, 14 strokes when English just takes 7? Well, maybe that was the point, though -- that the priorities of the language may change over time, and eventually you're dealing with 2000 year old Cockney rhyming slang baked into your written language. But that's just the opinion of one guy sitting on his Vannevar.

That is a part of the analogy which definitely applies -- Chinese script (even Simplified) often completely ignores Huffman coding-like principles. Otherwise we wouldn't have words like 繼續 "continue" (41 strokes).

继续 21 strokes jixu 8 strokes

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#42

Post by ihaveahadron » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

I feel like English speaking people have come a long way to understanding Asian writing systems since 1999.

Edit: After reading the comments here I take that back.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#43

Post by ihaveahadron » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 10:31 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…

You have a hard time processing Chinese, mr. rocket scientist.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#44

Post by justinpombrio » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #33

muddyrivers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As a result Japanese people (probably Chinese too) have a hard time processing some of the English syllables. This creates difficulty in learning English for Japanese and Chinese." We can also say that American/English have a hard time processing some of the Japanese/Chinese syllables. All the languages I speak a little bit have distinctive sounds that are difficult for most non-native speakers to master unless you…

What I am saying is that in English, after learning 26 letters, you can read any combination of them. If you try to see how many possible syllables there are, there would be many thousands. Combinations like "eng" "lish" can't be properly put in Japanese phonetic characters because you can't put "eng" directly, you have to use "en gu ri shu", inserting vowels all over the place. Japanese can't properly learn English…

> But in turn why is it that there are so few syllable sounds in Japanese? It's because each syllable has to have its own ideograph (usually there are multiple ideographs) and you can't easily learn 10000 of them.

Please don't make up facts just because they seem plausible to you. A quick internet search reveals that the Japanese language predates any writing system for it:

"Before the 4th century AD, the Japanese had no writing system of their own. During the 5th century they began to import and adapt the Chinese script, along with many other aspects of Chinese culture, probably via Korea. However the Japanese were aware of Chinese writing from about the 1st century AD from the characters that appeared on imported Chinese goods."[1]

Thus Japanese had settled on having few syllable sounds before there was any way to write them down, so their syllables can't have been limited by their script (at least initially).

> Just look up Japanese people who have learned English from grade 1 to 12, and see how great their pronunciation is. It's so damn hard for them to make the sounds.

You should see English speakers try to pronounce Chinese...

[1] http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese.htm

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#45

Post by United857 » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 11:01 PM UTC

Kirth wrote: post #30

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.

They usually sort by number of strokes.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#46

Post by zyxley » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 11:22 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #33

muddyrivers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As a result Japanese people (probably Chinese too) have a hard time processing some of the English syllables. This creates difficulty in learning English for Japanese and Chinese." We can also say that American/English have a hard time processing some of the Japanese/Chinese syllables. All the languages I speak a little bit have distinctive sounds that are difficult for most non-native speakers to master unless you…

What I am saying is that in English, after learning 26 letters, you can read any combination of them. If you try to see how many possible syllables there are, there would be many thousands. Combinations like "eng" "lish" can't be properly put in Japanese phonetic characters because you can't put "eng" directly, you have to use "en gu ri shu", inserting vowels all over the place. Japanese can't properly learn English…

> What I am saying is that in English, after learning 26 letters, you can read any combination of them.

But those combinations are usually learned via oral tradition and rote rather than actually having anything to do with the letters themselves.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#47

Post by vorg » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 11:42 PM UTC

leemailll wrote: post #41

gfaure wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a part of the analogy which definitely applies -- Chinese script (even Simplified) often completely ignores Huffman coding-like principles. Otherwise we wouldn't have words like 繼續 "continue" (41 strokes).

继续 21 strokes jixu 8 strokes

继续 is 21 strokes when printed, but less when foreigners in China like me write them when we handwrite them quickly.

继 is 5 strokes handwritten (纟,䒑,丨,八,乚 each written in one stroke) and 续 is 4 (纟,十over乛,氵,人 each as one stroke), so that's 9 altogether.

Mainland Chinese who learn handwriting at school have a way of writing each character with only one or two strokes.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#48

Post by PeCaN » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 11:51 PM UTC

zyxley wrote: post #46

visarga wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I am saying is that in English, after learning 26 letters, you can read any combination of them. If you try to see how many possible syllables there are, there would be many thousands. Combinations like "eng" "lish" can't be properly put in Japanese phonetic characters because you can't put "eng" directly, you have to use "en gu ri shu", inserting vowels all over the place. Japanese can't properly learn English…

> What I am saying is that in English, after learning 26 letters, you can read any combination of them. But those combinations are usually learned via oral tradition and rote rather than actually having anything to do with the letters themselves.

Most notoriously “ou” and “ough”.

We have a solid 14-20 vowels, and 5 glyphs for them.

I suppose Spanish, Korean, and Russian might be easier to pronounce and less rote memorization, but you're certainly right about English.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#49

Post by PeCaN » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 11:53 PM UTC

Y_Y wrote: post #6

I've been waiting for years for somebody to do something like this with emoji. All we'd need is a way to add radicals and a central dictionary.

In a way, eyes and mouths are like the radicals for emoji.

I'm not sure how you'd sort emoji though, since there's no stroke order.

Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)

#50

Post by snaky » Sat, Aug 20, 2016, 11:58 PM UTC

disruptalot wrote: post #3

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.

With the added bonus that it's accurate. Referring to these characters as they are originally: Chinese. Some people don't seem to be very happy about that fact.

There's too much politics involved. Try to find any even the slightest mention of proto-Korean language roots (which are Japonic) in Korean.