If English were written like Chinese (1999)
zompist.com
If English were written like Chinese (1999)
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Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)
#2This 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.
Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)
#3This 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.
Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)
#4The author really knocked it out of the park with this analogy. This explained things to me that I might have learned through experience but had never been explicitly told before. He even took the time at the end to point out where his own analogy breaks down. Zhongwen.com is also a fantastic site worth a look for students of Chinese. Overall extremely impressive, creative, and interesting.
Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)
#5Is this meant to be serious (surely not) or rather like Mark Twain's take on spelling reform?
Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)
#6I'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.
Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)
#7The 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.)
Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)
#8Is this meant to be serious (surely not) or rather like Mark Twain's take on spelling reform?
It's really meant to explain what Chinese characters actually are and how they work, by an elaborate analogy.
Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)
#9FYI we're close to this with the use of acronyms and abbreviations, not just emoticons, given English's phonetic basis, etc.
Re: If English were written like Chinese (1999)
#10He wrote this before the rise of emoji. We may see something like this as a cell phone writing form. Teenagers would use it to be incomprehensible to olds.