/lit/ - Literature

>>15934256
Danish word "seks" means six. "sex" means sex. They are pronounced the same.
See how the latin writing system allows you to compress way more information into a single word than oral speech does? It lets you tell the difference between six and sex in Danish!!!

That's what you sound like. Chink runes spell homophones differently depending on the meaning, that's it. It's no different from "sex" vs. "seks" in Danish. Or "they're" vs. "their" vs. "there" in English.

Stop romanticizing a writing system just because it's used by japs, you weeb pseud.

chinese is a hellishly inefficient system, you might like the look of the purty gook runes but if you actually need to use them they're nothing but a nuisance... i recently began studying sanskrit and it's a joy in comparison, the devanagari script is so logical and efficient, i love it

also, chinese is not ideo/pictographic

>>15934256
Ching ching ching Chang ching.ni hair ching chong wanton Wally Walla. Bing ching wok tok bing hai. Arigato nihao niga ching bong. China numba wan. Asiaaaan centurrrrrrrry

>>15934256
this is such a stupid point that has been disproven
yes the spatial density of information is much higher in these east asian languages, but in multiple studies the information is conveyed at about the same speed regardless of the script.
the same goes for spoken language

>>15934256
I think a pictograph language is better than the pluralist ones.
I would rewrite it because although it's interesting it really needs a rework due to antiquated and defunct signs that exist simply because they did prior with no reason why.
I also would hierarchize the radicals and the rest of the characters better.
(For instance god or is as the primary radical then split it off to truth justice etc have them build off correctly).

It'd be great and I'd also make a full sentence be in a circle you can pick up at a glance, perhaps a paragraph if it's efficient enough.

>>15934256
>Does anyone here have any inkling of the book in question?
Poor poor poor naive fool
No one here knows anything, all anyone will do is tell you what a fucking moron you are for ever thinking the board was worth shit and tell you how much they hate women and love christ because they can't get laid

the book was probably Fennelosa's The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry fwiw

I’m not gonna say moonrunes are superior, but they do have some advantages.
They’re easier to read, since the brain reads by recognizing the shape of a whole word, even in alphabetic writing. Because runes are so distinctive, when scanning a paragraph the meaning jumps out at you.
They’re also more resistant to language change and dialectal evolution. As romance languages diversified, people couldn’t keep writing in Latin without serious training. Using phonemic writing for the new languages isolated them from each other, and that could have helped to balkanize the former roman empire. If the chinese wrote phonemically, I wonder if the same thing would have happened to them.

>>15935048
do you speak/read chinese or is this just a theoretical opinion?

>>15935076
Bit of both, I’m learning. But it’s not wild speculation, even to this day all chinese people can write standard chinese (which is just standardized mandarin), even if they don’t speak mandarin at all. The just read the characters in their own languages, even though the grammar will sound strange. Cantonese pop is almost never composed the way cantonese is actually spoken, in vernacular. They use mandarin grammar with cantonese readings.

>asians superior, therefore, open borders and let 6 year old boys transition by punching holes into the flesh where their dicks should be

No but some thoughts
>pure kanji isn't really pure: japanese is never written as such for any considerable length and chinese has a heap of compound words (multi-character) used normally
>density isn't density of information but density of notation, the only benefit to this is saving space/paper which it doesn't really. density of information is cognitive, hence why japanese is spoken much faster than english (has more syllables to get through which are all evenly pronounced)

>>15935048
>They’re also more resistant to language change and dialectal evolution
t. doesn't know anything about languages
that said, writing does impact how language change works. but 99% of east asians were illiterate defacto slaves until recently so that's irrelevant.

>>15935134
but you genuinely believe they're “easier to read than words” written in script? my chinese is okay, intermediate-ish, i passed hsk5 last year, it's far from fluent but i can read it... BUT it's still a massive pain in the ass when you run into a character you don't recognize because unlike a word written in script, the sound it represents isn't necessarily apparent ... most runes have a radical component representing a category and a phonetic element but the phonetic element isn't always reliable, sometimes it can be way off... reading online i can google a character, but when reading a book it's way more hassle

whereas i've only been learning sanskrit for a few months, my vocab range is tiny, my understanding of the grammar is close to non-existent BUT i already know how to read and pronounce all words i come across, so i can quickly look up its meaning in a dictionary, this makes it infinitely more efficient and logical than chinese to me

>>15935166
I meant that runes were standardized 2000 years ago and they have changed very little since then, until the commies got their hands on them. Phonemic writing has to be updated at some point before it becomes a complete mess.

>>15935208
>but you genuinely believe they're “easier to read than words” written in script
Kind of... but not for unknown runes, of course, just normal reading. It’s kind of a reach, but the neurological process of reading is different for different scripts:
>The four genes thought to cause dyslexia in alphabetic language speakers have not been confirmed as factors in Chinese dyslexia. Instead, scientists have found two other genes that could be related.
Theoretically, when reading Chinese you could skip the sound-to-meaning mapping stage and and speed through sentences. I know it’s far-fetched and probably wouldn’t make a big difference anyway.

>>15934256
yes. but that only works if you write in the classical/literary Chinese style.
if you write in modern vernacular all benefits disappear and actually turn to negatives.
this also doesn't make the language superior at anything but being space efficient on paper while greek is a language where it's impossible for another to be superior since it is the best language in the world.

>>15934256
why couldnt the japs come up with their own writing system? arent they supposedly smart? why suck chink cock?

>>15935137
Yes. Blond whitoids are already one step away from being women.

>>15935210
You say that phonemic scripts have to be updated before they become a complete mess, but what you refer to as a mess (i.e. appearance and sound are uncorrelated) is the default state of hanzi. They've already hit rock bottom.

>>15935764
no language is phonetically written
its impossible.

>>15935751
why couldn't Europe come up with their own writing?

>>15935772
It's actually very possible. Finnish is like that. Followed by Italian and Spanish. Least phonetically written language is English.

>>15935787
They did, it's the Latin alphabet.

>>15934827
this while dismissive is a rough encapsulation of the matter. I've got a Ph.D in Tungusic Linguistics and part of the reason they all eventually lost ground to Chinese (middle Chinese especially) they are just too difficult to learn properly in comparison to Chinese, which is a relatively straight-forward compositional style in comparison to say, Mongolian -- with its stress on minute morphology.

The Khans had the Secret Histories dual-composed in Mongolian and Chinese because they realized that their only hope of preserving their own language against Chinese encroachment was by giving people a ready mirror translation.

There is a similar path for Portuguese in Asia. All of the overly complex fisher-tribe languages in Southern Malaysia eventually got subsumed into a Portuguese-Chinese Patois thanks to the Portuguese putting down stakes in Malacca and using it as a part of their Pacific triangle trade with Japan.

Portuguese is basically unmolested vulgar latin and stupid-easy to learn in comparison with whatever gubgub the Indianized Malay were speaking at the time.

>>15935792
finnish isn't like that. no one actually pronounces finnish as it's written.
and English isn't the least phonetically written.

>>15935816
>and English isn't the least phonetically written.
Out of the main Western ones? Yes, it is. English is a mess, you're just accostumed to it.

>>15935816
You're right that English isn't the least-phonemically written; that award would probably have to go to Japanese. Either way, though, orthography lies on a sliding scale. Yes, no writing system can perfectly reproduce the intricacies of sound. But that doesn't mean that all systems are equally non-phonemic. If you read a Spanish word you've never seen before, you'd be able to pronounce it well enough to suffice in any conversation. Take a kanji/hanzi you don't know, though, and you'd be completely lost.

>>15935832
fuck off. cunt.
im not English. utter insulting.

>>15935838
yeah I know.
but you're not going to find a word you don't know in Japanese unless you aren't educated and that's the same with any language.

>>15935848
Cope. Never said your were English, nigger.

>>15935838
>You're right that English isn't the least-phonemically written; that award would probably have to go to Japanese.
Out of the European languages, English is the least phonetically written, though.

>>15935860
>you're just accostumed to it.
get to fuck.
>>15935867
>phonetically
prove it

>>15935838
>If you read a Spanish word you've never seen before, you'd be able to pronounce it well enough to suffice in any conversation
The pronunciation is completely predictable from the spelling, actually. But not the other way around.

>>15935938
I already posted a source with that table, retard. Here's the full source: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED360613.pdf

>>15935938
Here's a shorter source for plebs like you: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4fBz1ljo0mjbGwxQzJzZTVKVFE/view

>>15935956
It also works the other way around 90% of the time, unlike English.

>>15936023
>>15936023
>BLAH BLAH BLAH
I don't care.
English is a nigger language.

>>15934256
>western writing
Alphabet isn't really a "western" thing, almost all middle eastern and Indian scripts are alphabets too

>>15936140
Then we're on the same side lmao what the hell.

>>15935801
well, japanese also have hiragana and katagana and even hentaigana, its just they don't use it much because kanji is considered more prestigious
They tried to change the scripts post ww2 I think but the people didn't feel comfortable I think

>>15936252
So is this guy basicaly right? Is Japanese a big convoluted mess?

>>15936272
Well considering they are using three writing systems at any given time (there's also fucking romaji now) instead of one script, I would at least stay it really is very convoluted

>>15936272
i haven't studied japanese so I've no idea how accurate this is but i once read the essay in pic which makes it sounds incredibly complex (i got tired of copy pasting it, the rest can be found on scihub - Dave Barry Versus the Intellectuals by J. Marshall Unger)

>>15935801
The Latin alphabet is derived from the Phoenician script in the same way that kana is derived from Chinese characters.
Europeans are literally no different.

>>15936272
>>15936389
It's "incredibly complicated" if you're not good at it, yes. This stuff generally doesn't present an issue for native speakers, just like how the pronunciation of written English doesn't present a problem for native speakers. And words like this are exceptional, even in older texts like the ones I read.

>>15935811
stop larping as a linguist, fagget.
No linguist would use term 'complex' in relation to language. What does it even mean that one language is more complex than another? How do you measure the language complexity?

>>15936481
ooga booga

>>15936389
>>15936437
By the way, a number of his translations are wrong, and his annotation of "昨日," where he says that "sakujitsu" is "possible," shows that his grasp of the language is probably very weak. "Sakujitsu" is not just possible, it's a completely normal reading that every single person knows and uses in formal contexts. "零," which he claims is only ever read as "zero," is still read today as "rei." I myself use that pronunciation, and I've heard others, mostly middle aged or above, use it.
Honestly, I think he's bitter because he never put in the effort required to learn the language well and is suffering for it. If you put in the effort and build a strong foundation, you will be able to read material that even native Japanese speakers have difficulty with.

>>15936510
interesting, thanks

>>15935210
This is incorrect. For one, they were never standardized. Every attempt had backlash and people who rejected it. Both Confucius and Laozi were reacting to this problem. Confucius's solution was the Rectification of Names, wherein everyone sits down and hashes out what means what (the actual sounds and ideograms are arbitrary, so agreement is all that matters). Laozi just said fuck language, let's all just enter a transcendental state wherein verbal communication is unnecessary.

There were many, many, many simplification attempts throughout China's history (the entire process of Rectification of Names can be viewed as an attempt at that, given that scholars were ALWAYS arguing about which characters were right). Mao's was just the farthest reaching.

You are right that the divorcing of the characters from phonetics means that Written Chinese as a Lingua Franca could be resistant to linguistic change, but the same could be done using Latin. In both cases, while there was less drift than a natural language (we can view Latin and Chinese as constructed languages in their role as a lingua franca) there was still drift.

>>15936635
>He thinks 正名 is about Chinese characters
Are you sure you know Confucianism well enough to talk about it?

>>15936786
It's an immediate application of it, and to say that Confucius didn't care about this is silly, given that this is one of the things he complains about.

>>15936481
Complexity is determined by studying morphology, which I mentioned.

>>15934256
Actually the opposite claim is more valid. The western alphabet is more compressed and efficient than pictographic orthography. Using the alphabet can reiteratively produce an indefinite numbers of words. Whereas with Chinese there are many thousands of characters. Arguably a single ideogram "says more" than a single word in an alphabet, but mathematically speaking it is no where near as efficient.

>>15937044
>word in an alphabet
spelled out in an alphabet

>>15937020
what do you mean by this retarded phrase?

>>15935161
>japanese is never written as such for any considerable length
Untrue. Classical Japanese was often written is pure kanji, translated phonetically.

>>15936481
funny looking characters are obviously more complex than the letter A. if they look more complex than it's obvious the language as a whole is more complex. voila

>>15935772
Turkish is

>>15934256
Except only five or so per cent of kanji are pictographs. So that argument doesn't work.

Why hasn't a government started the project of making a perfect, logical and scientific language?
The languages we speak are terrible and imperfect, they are old burdens we need to carry on that were made unconsciously by primitive men. And yeah, you can argue that (((they))) would try to shape it to make people think in certain ways, but as far as it isn't enforced that wouldn't work, and they can't control what you think really.

>>15939851
have a (You) bugman.

>>15939851
>