4 ms·
It is a lot like COBOL, but oddly with more punctuation (probably because of the lack of consistent use of whitespace in Chinese). I think it may be a fun way t
by microcolonel 7y ago
It is a lot like COBOL, but oddly with more punctuation (probably because of the lack of consistent use of whitespace in Chinese). I think it may be a fun way to practice my 漢字.
- Ericson2314 7y agoImperial Chinese COBOL is very natural sounding concept. That's for sure civil service exam material right there.
- knolax 7y agoThe punctuation seems extraneous to me. They all come either before or after keywords so they don't seem to be needed to parse the script. IIRC it's very similar to actual Classical Chinese, which relied on words like 曰、乃、也 to indicate when a clause or sentence starts or ends. IIRC typically the punctuation was added as a part of the excercise of reading.[0] [0] https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-hant/%E5%8F%A5%E8%AE%80 https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-hant/%E5%8F%A5%E8%AE%80
- colorincorrect 7y agonot sure if serious but this sounds like trying to learn english via python syntax
- Aardwolf 7y agoI learned English words like while, for and next from qbasic, for real (it had good help in your local language)
- wrboyce 7y agoOk but that is three words, what about the rest? Leaning three words is somewhat far removed from leaning a language. (Btw: I can’t grok your final statement in the parenthesis — it doesn’t make sense in English, what were you trying to say?)
- macintux 7y agoIt made sense to me: qbasic had good localized help.
- mcny 7y agoIt made sense to me as well but I can see how I got there and how I shamed the meaning of the sentence without thinking > I learned English words like while, for and next from qbasic, for real (it had good help in your local language) I replaced the word your with the word my in my head without conscious effort. I don't know if it is correct but it is kind of what I expected as I skimmed through the sentence. There was an article or something saying when we read we can read fast because we don't read every word but rather try to auto complete as we go.
- wrboyce 7y agoOh right I see, yes it does make sense you’re right. I was really struggling with that last night, cheers.
- aasasd 7y agoThe rest will come in when reading technical docs for libraries, APIs and such.
- microcolonel 7y agoIt's more like learning American English spelling from the names of DOM methods and interfaces.
- ngcc_hk 7y agoOr Shakespeare English or Latin. The Classical Chinese is hard for chinese even. They are crazy. And said it is like cobol. Bye.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> I think it may be a fun way to practice my 漢字. Bear in mind that this is Classical Chinese, not modern Mandarin. For example, as you can see in the helpful gloss a couple levels up, 是 in Classical Chinese is the demonstrative "this". (Whereas in modern Mandarin, 是 is the copula "to be [equating two nouns]", and "this" is 这 or perhaps 本.)
- microcolonel 7y agoI'm familiar with that sense of 是 (also as 昰) from seeing it in some obscure Japanese text, where it was used to signify これ, which was probably about right when writing was new to Japan. In Japanese, 是 is more commonly used in words that to me seem unrelated to either the old, very old, or modern Chinese use of the character. It's amazing how durable some of this stuff is, especially if you look at it from the perspective of recipients of Middle and Classical Chinese culture (such as Japan).