4 ms·

> This was a surprising one to me. Simplified Chinese was expectedly more efficient than Traditional Chinese, but both were beaten out by Cantonese (which also

> This was a surprising one to me. Simplified Chinese was expectedly more efficient than Traditional Chinese, but both were beaten out by Cantonese (which also uses traditional characters). Let's put aside the fact that this guy just equated "Chinese" with "Mandarin". This claim he's making suggests his entire measurement mechanism is broken. Simplified Chinese is more "efficient" in terms of Traditional Chinese only in that it requires fewer strokes to draw each character. But the author spent quite some time harping on information. Given that Simplified and Traditional chinese have (for purposes of discussion here) identical characters, just represented differently, from an information standpoint they are exactly the same. Information means something, and it is not number of pixels. I know this is outside the topic of the article, but it's worth mentioning that many Chinese scholars think Simplified Chinese has been a disaster. Traditional Chinese characters have strong visual relationships to one another depending on how they both sound, or whether they have similar meanings, or whether they were linguistically derived from the same historical source. This assists in memorizing them: a chinese person might come across some character she doesn't know but looks like a set of other characters, and can make a good guess as to what it actually is based on its relationship to them and its context in the sentence. The designers of Simplified Chinese broke a very large number of these rules: similarity didn't matter any more, just reduction in stroke count. As a result, Simplified Chinese is much harder to learn.

yakkomajuri 5y ago
Hey, appreciate the comment. The article is not about Chinese so I can't cover every bit of nuance associated with the language group. I have studied it for a bit, so I'm not completely lost in this space. But putting aside the discussion of Simplified Chinese being better or not, the Limitations section does say: "Maybe the fact that Chinese characters were originally representative drawings helps association in the brain despite the extra strokes?"
Jansen312 5y ago
Imagine you are limited to only pen and paper and need to communicate with another using written Chinese. Then even though what you convey will be exactly same meaning and characters count, simplified will consumed less effort (less ink and paper as well) to deliver equivalent same message in Chinese Traditional. From language studies perspective they view a token as basic unit of information, but in engineering and practicality, OP ideas of pixel measurement would be better. You can't transmit information to humans using "token" but displayed form via pixels. As for Simplified Chinese is much harder to learn, let just say Mao had proven you wrong with vast majority Chinese (outside of China) learning Simplified form much faster and less effort than Traditional form. Even Taiwanese using simplified form to describe the name "tai" in Taiwan.
- SeanLuke 5y ago
  I'm sorry, but information means something, and it does not equate to number of strokes. A character can have millions of strokes and still convey the same information as a character with a single stroke. There are other measures of "efficiency" of course. If the author wanted to argue for how long it took to write a sentence, then sure, Simplified is definitely more "efficient" than Traditional in this context. On the other hand, it's pretty odd to be defining languages in terms of written form rather than their spoken form. (And I'm not sure why Cantonese would be more efficient than Simplified Mandarin as Cantonese is normally written using traditional glyphs.) Anyway, the author inserted information into this discussion. And if efficiency is in terms of information, then this pixel argument doesn't hold water. As to the difficulty of simplified chinese: this is a well studied topic with a lot of scholarly analysis. I am pretty sure the literature as a whole strongly disagrees with your claim.
  - bllguo 5y ago
    uh, what? once we're talking about simplified vs. traditional it should already be clear that the discussion is about the languages in terms of written form? in fact the entire article makes clear that it is about written language. Not using "information" in a scientifically proper way is a fine criticism, I just don't understand why you seem to think the author did not define "efficiency" when it is one of the first points made.. re: simplified chinese, i guess im bad at searching? care to provide a review paper?
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> Given that Simplified and Traditional chinese have (for purposes of discussion here) identical characters, just represented differently, from an information standpoint they are exactly the same. This is not quite true; sometimes separate traditional characters have the same simplified form. For example, traditional 後 ("behind") and 后 ("empress") share the simplified form 后.
thematrixturtle 5y ago
> Traditional Chinese characters have strong visual relationships to one another depending on how they both sound, or whether they have similar meanings, or whether they were linguistically derived from the same historical source. This is not incorrect, but it's also less useful than you'd think, since Chinese writing has been around for thousands of years and both pronunciation and meaning have changed greatly in that time, so many combined characters are quite impenetrable. For example, the moon radical 月 yue plus the sun radical 昜 yang means, wait for it, 肠 chang "intestine". Now a student of Chinese will know that as a radical 月 is often (but by no means) always associated with internal organs, but all that really helps you do is avoid ordering dishes on the menu with an unfamiliar 月-something character.
spacehunt 5y ago
Once I took look at the original passages used, it's clear what went wrong. The "Cantonese" passage is neither in colloquial Cantonese, nor in proper modern standard Chinese. It just reads like a poorly machine translated jumble of characters. Traditional Chinese: > 當您開始使用 Google 服務，即表示您信賴我們對您個人資訊的處理方式。我們深知這份責任重大，因此會盡力保護您的資訊，並為您提供相關的管理功能。本《隱私權政策》旨在協助您瞭解 Google 收集的資訊類型以及收集這些資訊的原因，也說明了您可以如何更新、管理、匯出與刪除資訊。 "Cantonese": > 在您使用我們的服務時，您將個人資料托付給我們。我們明白這項責任重大，因此我們會盡力保護您資料，並確保一切由您做主。此《私隱權政策》旨在讓您瞭解我們收集的資料類型、原因和更新、管理匯出以及刪除資料的方法。 Here are a few problems that immediately jumps out just from an initial reading: * The Cantonese version uses "us"/"our services" instead of fully spelling out "Google" * Cantonese speakers don't usually use 您 as it is pronounced the same as 你 * "Data" is usually 資料 and not 資訊; similarly for 了解/瞭解 and a few others * Finally, the grammar and particles/conjunctions used would be totally different if colloquial Cantonese really is desired.

yakkomajuri 5y ago

Hey, appreciate the comment. The article is not about Chinese so I can't cover every bit of nuance associated with the language group. I have studied it for a bit, so I'm not completely lost in this space. But putting aside the discussion of Simplified Chinese being better or not, the Limitations section does say: "Maybe the fact that Chinese characters were originally representative drawings helps association in the brain despite the extra strokes?"

Jansen312 5y ago

Imagine you are limited to only pen and paper and need to communicate with another using written Chinese. Then even though what you convey will be exactly same meaning and characters count, simplified will consumed less effort (less ink and paper as well) to deliver equivalent same message in Chinese Traditional. From language studies perspective they view a token as basic unit of information, but in engineering and practicality, OP ideas of pixel measurement would be better. You can't transmit information to humans using "token" but displayed form via pixels. As for Simplified Chinese is much harder to learn, let just say Mao had proven you wrong with vast majority Chinese (outside of China) learning Simplified form much faster and less effort than Traditional form. Even Taiwanese using simplified form to describe the name "tai" in Taiwan.

SeanLuke 5y ago
I'm sorry, but information means something, and it does not equate to number of strokes. A character can have millions of strokes and still convey the same information as a character with a single stroke. There are other measures of "efficiency" of course. If the author wanted to argue for how long it took to write a sentence, then sure, Simplified is definitely more "efficient" than Traditional in this context. On the other hand, it's pretty odd to be defining languages in terms of written form rather than their spoken form. (And I'm not sure why Cantonese would be more efficient than Simplified Mandarin as Cantonese is normally written using traditional glyphs.) Anyway, the author inserted information into this discussion. And if efficiency is in terms of information, then this pixel argument doesn't hold water. As to the difficulty of simplified chinese: this is a well studied topic with a lot of scholarly analysis. I am pretty sure the literature as a whole strongly disagrees with your claim.
- bllguo 5y ago
  uh, what? once we're talking about simplified vs. traditional it should already be clear that the discussion is about the languages in terms of written form? in fact the entire article makes clear that it is about written language. Not using "information" in a scientifically proper way is a fine criticism, I just don't understand why you seem to think the author did not define "efficiency" when it is one of the first points made.. re: simplified chinese, i guess im bad at searching? care to provide a review paper?

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> Given that Simplified and Traditional chinese have (for purposes of discussion here) identical characters, just represented differently, from an information standpoint they are exactly the same. This is not quite true; sometimes separate traditional characters have the same simplified form. For example, traditional 後 ("behind") and 后 ("empress") share the simplified form 后.

thematrixturtle 5y ago

> Traditional Chinese characters have strong visual relationships to one another depending on how they both sound, or whether they have similar meanings, or whether they were linguistically derived from the same historical source. This is not incorrect, but it's also less useful than you'd think, since Chinese writing has been around for thousands of years and both pronunciation and meaning have changed greatly in that time, so many combined characters are quite impenetrable. For example, the moon radical 月 yue plus the sun radical 昜 yang means, wait for it, 肠 chang "intestine". Now a student of Chinese will know that as a radical 月 is often (but by no means) always associated with internal organs, but all that really helps you do is avoid ordering dishes on the menu with an unfamiliar 月-something character.

spacehunt 5y ago

Once I took look at the original passages used, it's clear what went wrong. The "Cantonese" passage is neither in colloquial Cantonese, nor in proper modern standard Chinese. It just reads like a poorly machine translated jumble of characters. Traditional Chinese: > 當您開始使用 Google 服務，即表示您信賴我們對您個人資訊的處理方式。我們深知這份責任重大，因此會盡力保護您的資訊，並為您提供相關的管理功能。本《隱私權政策》旨在協助您瞭解 Google 收集的資訊類型以及收集這些資訊的原因，也說明了您可以如何更新、管理、匯出與刪除資訊。 "Cantonese": > 在您使用我們的服務時，您將個人資料托付給我們。我們明白這項責任重大，因此我們會盡力保護您資料，並確保一切由您做主。此《私隱權政策》旨在讓您瞭解我們收集的資料類型、原因和更新、管理匯出以及刪除資料的方法。 Here are a few problems that immediately jumps out just from an initial reading: * The Cantonese version uses "us"/"our services" instead of fully spelling out "Google" * Cantonese speakers don't usually use 您 as it is pronounced the same as 你 * "Data" is usually 資料 and not 資訊; similarly for 了解/瞭解 and a few others * Finally, the grammar and particles/conjunctions used would be totally different if colloquial Cantonese really is desired.