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> Slowly, over decades, we're developing iconography for common operations. We did that already and called it written language.
by BubRoss 7y ago
> Slowly, over decades, we're developing iconography for common operations.
We did that already and called it written language.
- nine_k 7y agoBut this is how Chinese writing works, not like e.g. European written languages work.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoChinese writing works in exactly the same way European written languages work. It records more semantic information than they tend to do, but the functioning is no different.
- WalterBright 7y ago> It records more semantic information than they tend to do Are you sure? When I was in Japan I compared books printed in English with the same books in Japanese. The Japanese versions always had more pages. It looked like while the Kanji characters conveyed more meaning, they were larger and in the net required more space.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoA couple of points: - What I'm referring to is the fact that in order to write down a Chinese word, you often need to know what it means. The semantics inform the spelling, to a much greater degree than in European writing systems. I am in fact sure about this. - Translations are usually much wordier than the original texts they translate, for philosophy-of-translation reasons. Were you comparing Japanese originals to their English translations?