4 ms·

This make me think of an alphabetic form of Chinese characters: semantic symbols, but decomposable (which I suppose those characters are in a sense).

schoen 6y ago
Charles Bliss was directly inspired by Chinese characters. (He didn't understand exactly how they worked but he was greatly impressed by them. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19092643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19092643 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23411941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23411941, I mentioned that Bliss, in an unusual case, learned to read Chinese without speaking it.)
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > Bliss, in an unusual case, learned to read Chinese without speaking it. If this is unusual, it's unusual by coincidence. It happens to me all the time that I'll hear something in Chinese, or see pinyin, and completely fail to understand it, even though it's easy for me to read the same phrase in characters and I know their pronunciation.
  - ThinkingGuy 6y ago
    Arthur Waley was one of the greatest translators of classical Chinese and Japanese poems. Supposedly he never learned to speak modern Mandarin or Japanese.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      That's not unusual by any standard at all. No one is surprised if you can read Latin but can't read Portuguese.
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        (Though I should note that Arthur Waley also translated vernacular Chinese works.)
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Now I'm wondering: how often can japanese read chinese without speaking it?
  - betterunix2 6y ago
    I am not Japanese but have spent enough years studying the Japanese language to develop some amount of literacy, so I can give some insight (but take this with a grain of salt, it's not my native language). I can read enough Chinese to understand the basic topic of some sentences, but Chinese grammar is completely unrelated to Japanese grammar and Chinese characters used for grammatical constructs (e.g. Chinese particles, aspect, etc.) are not really used in Japanese (or are used in totally different ways). Nouns are easiest, adjectives and verbs are sometimes sensible, but beyond that it is hard. My Chinese and Japanese friends tell me that when they have traveled to Japan or China they have used a pen and paper to communicate basic things. One challenge is that character simplification is somewhat out of sync between communist China (Taiwan and Hong Kong rejected simplification) and Japan, so sometimes a character will be hard to understand even though I know its original or differently simplified form. A final point: I can read enough Chinese characters to be amused when I see a Chinese takeout restaurant with an English name that has no relationship to its Chinese name.
  - anilakar 6y ago
    You are not the first one who has asked that question. In case you can't watch videos right now, the short answer is "you can guess, but don't expect it to be exactly correct". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E6vHCT0wpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E6vHCT0wpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzJqXd-1dEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzJqXd-1dEU
  - coopierez 6y ago
    This sort of thing happens in a lot of languages though. Your average Italian can comprehend a decent amount of French text without being able to keep up in conversation, or even speak the language. Same with Dutch and German.
    - jhbadger 6y ago
- oska 6y ago
  > He didn't understand exactly how they worked but he was greatly impressed by them. This tends to be the case for ppl impressed by Chinese characters from the outside. When you do have some understanding you realise that it is a very cumbersome writing system and one that places an unnecessary learning burden on its users.
betterunix2 6y ago
Actually the majority of Chinese characters are compounds where one "piece" is a semantic marker and the other is a phonetic marker. So for example, here are characters referring to various metals: 金 - gold 銀 - silver 鉄 - iron 鉛 - lead Note that the first one appears as the left side of the others as a semantic marker.
- needle0 6y ago
  The concept is taken to extremes in types of fish in Japan, where there are a huge number of characters with the "fish" character (魚) in the left side of the letter, and some element that relates to the characteristic of the fish on the right, eg 鱈鰯鰊鮭鮪鰹鯖鯛鮫鰈鱒鰤鯰鰊鯉鱚... So much that a cup adorned with a list of the various fish-related characters is often seen in sushi bars. https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01MRHI9ML/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_GU.kFbBZR4R1D https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01MRHI9ML/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_G... (No, I don't have it all memorized, and I doubt many do.)

schoen 6y ago

Charles Bliss was directly inspired by Chinese characters. (He didn't understand exactly how they worked but he was greatly impressed by them. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19092643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19092643 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23411941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23411941, I mentioned that Bliss, in an unusual case, learned to read Chinese without speaking it.)

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> Bliss, in an unusual case, learned to read Chinese without speaking it. If this is unusual, it's unusual by coincidence. It happens to me all the time that I'll hear something in Chinese, or see pinyin, and completely fail to understand it, even though it's easy for me to read the same phrase in characters and I know their pronunciation.
- ThinkingGuy 6y ago
  Arthur Waley was one of the greatest translators of classical Chinese and Japanese poems. Supposedly he never learned to speak modern Mandarin or Japanese.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    That's not unusual by any standard at all. No one is surprised if you can read Latin but can't read Portuguese.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      (Though I should note that Arthur Waley also translated vernacular Chinese works.)
082349872349872 6y ago
Now I'm wondering: how often can japanese read chinese without speaking it?
- betterunix2 6y ago
  I am not Japanese but have spent enough years studying the Japanese language to develop some amount of literacy, so I can give some insight (but take this with a grain of salt, it's not my native language). I can read enough Chinese to understand the basic topic of some sentences, but Chinese grammar is completely unrelated to Japanese grammar and Chinese characters used for grammatical constructs (e.g. Chinese particles, aspect, etc.) are not really used in Japanese (or are used in totally different ways). Nouns are easiest, adjectives and verbs are sometimes sensible, but beyond that it is hard. My Chinese and Japanese friends tell me that when they have traveled to Japan or China they have used a pen and paper to communicate basic things. One challenge is that character simplification is somewhat out of sync between communist China (Taiwan and Hong Kong rejected simplification) and Japan, so sometimes a character will be hard to understand even though I know its original or differently simplified form. A final point: I can read enough Chinese characters to be amused when I see a Chinese takeout restaurant with an English name that has no relationship to its Chinese name.
- anilakar 6y ago
  You are not the first one who has asked that question. In case you can't watch videos right now, the short answer is "you can guess, but don't expect it to be exactly correct". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E6vHCT0wpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E6vHCT0wpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzJqXd-1dEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzJqXd-1dEU
- coopierez 6y ago
  This sort of thing happens in a lot of languages though. Your average Italian can comprehend a decent amount of French text without being able to keep up in conversation, or even speak the language. Same with Dutch and German.
  - jhbadger 6y ago
oska 6y ago
> He didn't understand exactly how they worked but he was greatly impressed by them. This tends to be the case for ppl impressed by Chinese characters from the outside. When you do have some understanding you realise that it is a very cumbersome writing system and one that places an unnecessary learning burden on its users.

betterunix2 6y ago

Actually the majority of Chinese characters are compounds where one "piece" is a semantic marker and the other is a phonetic marker. So for example, here are characters referring to various metals: 金 - gold 銀 - silver 鉄 - iron 鉛 - lead Note that the first one appears as the left side of the others as a semantic marker.

needle0 6y ago
The concept is taken to extremes in types of fish in Japan, where there are a huge number of characters with the "fish" character (魚) in the left side of the letter, and some element that relates to the characteristic of the fish on the right, eg 鱈鰯鰊鮭鮪鰹鯖鯛鮫鰈鱒鰤鯰鰊鯉鱚... So much that a cup adorned with a list of the various fish-related characters is often seen in sushi bars. https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01MRHI9ML/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_GU.kFbBZR4R1D https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01MRHI9ML/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_G... (No, I don't have it all memorized, and I doubt many do.)