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"the boxy prison of Chinese characters" What does it even mean? We are all "prisoners" of our language, because we can't easily think and express anything that
by gbog 10y ago
"the boxy prison of Chinese characters"
What does it even mean? We are all "prisoners" of our language, because we can't easily think and express anything that cannot be molded in this language. But Chinese characters may actually give more "freedom" to their users, in that they convey directly their meaning, without the necessity of a sound. See 凹 and 凸, they mean concave and convex. Avoiding the articulation over the pronounciation is a blessing in many respects. It allows more people from distant cultures to converge with the writen language, and share much more.
- ralfd 10y agoI guess it relates to this: "It is one of many slang or dialect words and phrases that you can say but not write using Chinese characters."
- gbog 10y agoThis is not true, Chinese people are very able to find Chinese characters to express slang or dialect words, they do it all the time, and the case of M. Chan's hair is a rare exception.
- yoo1I 10y agoExcept that's not what "concave" and "convex" look like. It also means that you need to agree with everyone, what the meaning of every symbol is. For instance symbol of "convex" you give, might also be a street intersection, so you can't really just rely on the shape of a character, and you need to spend many years memorizing each one of them. If you look at reality, your assertion that > people from distant cultures [...] converge with the writen language is really not true. Chinese writing systems aren't universal in a way that makes them easy to pick up to express yourself in. Quite the contrary.
- Chathamization 10y agoOnly a tiny minority of Chinese characters are pictographic, and most characters have a phonetic element. You'll have a better chance guessing the pronunciation of a random Chinese character than guessing the meaning of a random Chinese character.
- panglott 10y agoThe value of iconocity in the more pictographic characters is more of a mnemonic tool. It's much easier to remember the meaning of the more pictographic ones.