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Ugh, I was trying to get a good comparison of translations, but too bad I guess. Yeah I mean, there's no question ideographic languages have more meaning per c

Ugh, I was trying to get a good comparison of translations, but too bad I guess. Yeah I mean, there's no question ideographic languages have more meaning per character than alphabetic languages. But other comparisons and considerations aren't as obvious: - how do ideographic languages compare with each other? - do people using ideographic languages write more? - are ideographic languages as effective at compression as general (or special) compression algorithms? Moving up the conceptual ladder from "average bytes per codepoint" to "average size of encoded tweet" (for example) is a big leap is all I'm saying.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
> are ideographic languages as effective at compression as general (or special) compression algorithms? That one we know; the compression algorithms are more compressive. For example, compressed Chinese text takes up less space than the same text uncompressed. Ideographic languages are still languages that real humans have to use, and they feature redundancy because that helps everyone. Compression algorithms have the luxury of stripping that redundancy out. > how do ideographic languages compare with each other? Of modern languages, only Chinese and Japanese could really be described as ideographic. (Japanese much more so than Chinese, in fact.) Chinese will have more meaning per character, because Japanese makes heavy use of the comparatively less meaningful kana. (Interestingly... it has to do this precisely because of its more ideographic nature.) > do people using ideographic languages write more? No idea.
- jhanschoo 7y ago
  > do people using ideographic languages write more? A related question is if people using ideographic languages write electronically when they do, and I suspect yes. Language Log has several articles on the phenomenon where Chinese seem to be forgetting how to write characters due to IT input methods. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=7142 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=7142
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    Handwriting isn't exactly uncommon in China. Nobody's forgetting how to write characters they write all the time, and if they do need to write a character they can't quite remember, they can squiggle something and rely on the reader to understand it. Handwriting is actually a moderate-level problem for me -- I can't recognize most handwritten characters. Often a special handwriting form will be used.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> are ideographic languages as effective at compression as general (or special) compression algorithms? That one we know; the compression algorithms are more compressive. For example, compressed Chinese text takes up less space than the same text uncompressed. Ideographic languages are still languages that real humans have to use, and they feature redundancy because that helps everyone. Compression algorithms have the luxury of stripping that redundancy out. > how do ideographic languages compare with each other? Of modern languages, only Chinese and Japanese could really be described as ideographic. (Japanese much more so than Chinese, in fact.) Chinese will have more meaning per character, because Japanese makes heavy use of the comparatively less meaningful kana. (Interestingly... it has to do this precisely because of its more ideographic nature.) > do people using ideographic languages write more? No idea.

jhanschoo 7y ago
> do people using ideographic languages write more? A related question is if people using ideographic languages write electronically when they do, and I suspect yes. Language Log has several articles on the phenomenon where Chinese seem to be forgetting how to write characters due to IT input methods. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=7142 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=7142
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Handwriting isn't exactly uncommon in China. Nobody's forgetting how to write characters they write all the time, and if they do need to write a character they can't quite remember, they can squiggle something and rely on the reader to understand it. Handwriting is actually a moderate-level problem for me -- I can't recognize most handwritten characters. Often a special handwriting form will be used.