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Philosophy and Language

I have a question for people who have studied philosophy at any level:

A friend told me that languages such as Russian, Greek and French are more "flexible" than a language such as English when it comes to expressing ideas and therefore they are more suitable for studying philosophical works in.

Is there any truth in this or is it just a load of horseshit?

Thanks.

There are far more words in the English language than any other, so in that regard I would have thought that the English language would be the most flexible at expressing fairly specific ideas? What exactly did your friend mean when he said "flexible" though?

I wonder if he's referring to how certain words in other languages have some elaborate, almost poetic English translation. In any event, Renegade makes an interesting point.

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Originally posted by Renegade There are far more words in the English language than any other, so in that regard I would have thought that the English language would be the most flexible at expressing fairly specific ideas? What exactly did your friend mean when he said "flexible" though?

I think that the reason is the same as why French is preferred for diplomacy: There's fewer instances of sentences that can be interpreted in more than one ways, even if you know the semantics of each individual word. Don't hold me to it, though.

Heck, I'm on a break and I really should go back to work but you're talking about one of my favourite subjects here - language

Keep one thing in mind - we all say the same things, we just say them in different ways (i.e. different languages). For example, "I saw" in English. In Portuguese (which is grammatically a lot similar to French, which you mentioned), we could say "Eu vi (I went)" or "Eu via (I went)" (among other forms). We all know Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian,...) have many time tenses.

"Eu vi" means "I saw". That simple. I saw a car would be "Eu vi um carro". But let's suppose it was a repeated action and in the past, you used to see a car. You'd then say "Eu via um carro (todo dia)" (I saw a car every day). This would give the impression that the Portuguese language is more flexible, wouldn't it? But no, it's not - in both languages, I said what I wanted to say, and both were able to give enough information so nothing was lost in translation. Even the word Brazilians brag about "Saudade" as being a word that only exists in Portuguese (which is false, because it exists in Romanian) could be translated into English as "the feeling of missing someone". Long? Yes, but I did say it. Not to mention the lack of gender in nouns is often annoying in English for us, but you guys find it also strange that we use "feminine" declensions for tables and "masculine" declensions for cars so...

Then, let's move on to Russian. Russian is a fun language, you see? While we, Romance-languages-speaking people like to conjugate verbs, they have this thing with nouns and adjectives and whatnot. It's called cases. For example.

Maria sees Vania
Vania sees Maria

Simple, isn't it? In order to reverse the action, you also reversed the words. In Russian, you could just do it like this:

Maria videt Vaniu
Mariu videt Vania

You could say Russian is more flexible because the words are able of "telling you" what their role in the sentence is (subject, object,...) but it doesn't mean that English can't express a similar thought - it's just a different mechanism.

Simply put, there's no such thing as "most difficult language", "most flexible language" or "easiest language to learn" in an objective basis. I did get easy examples, which might lead you to the question: what about philosophy?

Well, according to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it. For example, I perceive "light blue" and "dark blue" as blue, whereas a Russian-speaking individual would claim they're as different as red and pink. But the essence is the same. Every philosopher will express his/her thoughts in a way more suitable to what his mother language can express, but it has nothing to do with flexibility whatsoever.

I'd go on but I really can't. Hopefully this could be of some help. Sorry if it's too confusing. Bye lads.

Re: Philosophy and Language

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Originally posted by zarathustra A friend told me that languages such as Russian, Greek and French are more "flexible" than a language such as English when it comes to expressing ideas and therefore they are more suitable for studying philosophical works in.

The languages mentioned are complex in structure (Russian and Greek both have five cases and complex morphologies, while French has unpredictable, frozen forms (as does English) but has lost a lot of the Latin grammatical structures while developing its own tenses). English in constrast has largely lost is cases, has unpredictable forms, and is highly colloquial/slang, which makes it difficult for people to learn.

What your friend means is that a lot of meaning is expressed in the grammar of other languages that do not have a direct English translation. This provides considerable nuance to the meaning of non-English sentences, when such things as puns, homophones, rhyme, metre, metaphor, syntax and even spelling all have special, conveyed meaning in the source language, but are literally lost in translation. This is why one sentence in another language can require a paragraph of explanation to convey in English, and even then the sense is gone.

I totally concur with your friend that works of philosophy should be studied in their original, source language ("they are more suitable for studying philosophical works in") but these are often very difficult to master without years of investment.

(Start early).

Cheers,
-Noble

interesting..

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The Decay of Chinese Culture: Nihilism Goes to China As any linguist will tell you, studying a language can generate significant insights into the nature of the culture and people using that language. In this case I�m referring to the Chinese written language. Whereas western culture and languages are digital and stemmed from a deconstructive worldview, the eastern languages, particularly Chinese which is the forerunner of most other east Asian languages such as Korean and Japanese, are self-contained and result from a fundamentally holistic worldview. In other words instead of breaking things down in order to understand them, they see things as static without further need for understanding. So it shouldn�t be surprising to find out that Chinese culture is extremely authoritarian � don�t question authority or the Party line � just do what you�re told. The implied duty of every child growing up in this culture is to obey authorities and conform to their expectations. In Chinese writing the meaning has to be extracted from the relationships between the component symbols, and because many Chinese characters have multiple meanings, context is imperative to communicate in any useful manner at all! This creates a language that is complex because it relies so heavily on a shared understanding of cultural history to create meaning in the sentence. Chinese also seems �poetic� and �mystical� because it is so fundamentally limited in its ability to convey a concise idea or concept unlike a letter based alphabet that can be used to create an almost infinite array of new words and concepts to communicate new ideas and thoughts.

http://www.counterorder.com/beyond.html

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Originally posted by tathi As any linguist will tell you, studying a language can generate significant insights into the nature of the culture and people using that language.

Oh my god is that an understatement.

I'll do better than that: you'll *never* understand the culture if you don't read/write/speak the language.

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Originally posted by tathi Whereas western culture and languages are digital and stemmed from a deconstructive worldview, the eastern languages, particularly Chinese which is the forerunner of most other east Asian languages such as Korean and Japanese...

Ah ah ah! The writing system is the precursor. Chinese and Japanese are as different as night and day.

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Originally posted by tathi In other words instead of breaking things down in order to understand them, they see things as static without further need for understanding. So it shouldn�t be surprising to find out that Chinese culture is extremely authoritarian � don�t question authority or the Party line � just do what you�re told. The implied duty of every child growing up in this culture is to obey authorities and conform to their expectations.

Oh, balls. Chinese language is very highly metaphorical, derived from archaic pictograms, and is full of life and with frequent reference to history. Why do you think a new translation of the classical Chinese texts come out every year? The language is so highly literary that it can be interpretted in multiple ways, resulting in the reader going away with a very private and personal interpretation based on his perspective in approaching the text (how's that for re-tell-ability?)

I love the saying that "Westerners are always looking ahead toward history; the Chinese are looking behind them for guidance forward."

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Originally posted by tathi In Chinese writing the meaning has to be extracted from the relationships between the component symbols, and because many Chinese characters have multiple meanings, context is imperative to communicate in any useful manner at all!

True, at a glance Chinese looks to be simple. In practice the grammar is complex, with a system of phonetic complement, ideographic and logographic meanings, and metaphorical structure. Characters can be used in the written language for their pictographic meaning or phonetic value, and two unrelated characters can be combined (either pictographically or phonetically) to produce a third meaning unrelated to the source two. Vocabulary in Chinese language is invented almost daily.

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Originally posted by tathi This creates a language that is complex because it relies so heavily on a shared understanding of cultural history to create meaning in the sentence.

Now you're getting it...

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Originally posted by tathi Chinese also seems �poetic� and �mystical� because it is so fundamentally limited in its ability to convey a concise idea or concept unlike a letter based alphabet...

GRrrr whoever wrote that article FAILS and gets a "F."

Talk about a Westerner forcing a piece of history into his own distorted context, so he can view it through his own irrelevant prism.

The language isn't a frozen piece of object history you can examine through a microscope -- it's a living, breathing entity, evolving daily and a reflection of the highly abstract nature of Chinese (nay, Asian) thought. It isn't "fundamentally limited in its ability to convey a concise idea" dear author of this article, it's a fundamental product of the people that invented it. News flash: only Westerners (of which I am one) want everything quantifiable and expressed in concrete, black and white terms (reduces their need to think). The author sees what he perceives as a flaw because he prefers another paradigm. Begone Western interloper! (the author of the article not Tathi).

On another note, there is considerable opposition in China to doing away with the traditional sign list (e.g., for ease of learning the language, increasing literacy, using a Western keyboard ) but they would view this as robbing them of a substantial component of their cultural heritage.

Cheers,
-Noble

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Originally posted by TheNobleEu Ah ah ah! The writing system is the precursor. Chinese and Japanese are as different as night and day.

Yes, they are different, but not in writing. Both of these languages have a pretty obsolete and archaic method of writing that is worse than the western way, whether you like it or not. I won't go into artistic view of the language because that really can't be objectively measured, but from the practical point of view, which is generally more important than the artistic one considering that language is more a method of communication than an artistic form, east asian languages are as inefficient as you can get. You can learn western alphabet in a few days, while learning chinese one takes years. Not to mention that you can't normally type it on a keyboard.

As for the chinese "don't question the authority and accept everything as it is" mentality, that is pretty much true, although less so now than many years ago. And it also explains why a country that had printing press, gunpowder, integrals, differentials, and compass while Europe's highest tech achievement were a crossbow and a lance was defeated by that same Europe only a couple of centuries later because of European tech superiority.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Yes, they are different, but not in writing.

They do differ in writing significantly. Refer to hiragana and katakana for further information (not close to what is used in China).

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Both of these languages have a pretty obsolete and archaic method of writing that is worse than the western way

I'm sorry, but if there is an "archaic" system, it would be a system of about 26 used in languages it wasn't originally designed for ("A" used to be the head of an "ox" upside down, but it doesn't matter nowadays because not all languages have this letter in the word "ox"), which claims to hold phonetic values when most times it fails to do so (e.g. "through", "though" and "tough" in English, specially because of all the different accents out there; vowel reduction in Portuguese and English; poor support for tonal languages, even if existant; and so on) and that has rather superfluous features such as capital letters. Not to mention cursive writing.

But it's not obsolete, as we're using it right now perfectly.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 east asian languages are as inefficient as you can get. You can learn western alphabet in a few days, while learning chinese one takes years.

Korean can be learned in one day, if this is what you mean by "efficient", being the most scientific alphabetical system ever designed - it does even show you how you say a word. Doubt it? See it for yourself.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 And it also explains why a country that had printing press, gunpowder, integrals, differentials, and compass while Europe's highest tech achievement were a crossbow and a lance was defeated by that same Europe only a couple of centuries later because of European tech superiority.

If only I had the time... come on, Tito, you're a smart guy, stop seeing things from an Eurocentric point of view. I know you can. (Hint: no one is "more advanced" or "technologically superior").

By the way, "they see things as static without further need for understanding"!? Did the person who wrote this even cared to do any reading or is he really just "guessing"?

Now I'm out, definately

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Yes, they are different, but not in writing.

Sorry, but they are different in writing.

Some sign forms are transferred in their basic structure but not always in their stroke count, and even then have different meaning in Japanese -- some forms are indeed frozen and present in both languages. But, and this is the important part, a reader of Mandarin could not on that understanding fluently read Japanese. The reason for this is simple: the languages belong to two completely different families.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Both of these languages have a pretty obsolete and archaic method of writing that is worse than the western way, whether you like it or not.

Whether I like it or not? Hmm. I'm not Chinese, but I am wrestling with learning the traditional characters. Would I rather not have them? No -- as these are an integral part of the culture, which was my point. So, whether you or I "like it" is irrelevant.

True, traditional sign forms make the language much more difficult to learn. I've read studies in Chinese Linguisitic and Language Pedagogy-Acquisition journals that literacy in children increases by around 30% in test groups that were taught Chinese according to Pinyin transliteration as opposed to being taught even in simplified characters.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 I won't go into artistic view of the language because that really can't be objectively measured, but from the practical point of view, which is generally more important than the artistic one considering that language is more a method of communication than an artistic form,

Perhaps to your rather militant, microscopic view, but your mere opinion is up against some 4000 years of Asian tradition, where writing is itself a treasured art form. The Chinese codified it as a gentleman's devotion, one of the skills of the so-called Man-of-Letters (i.e., a Confucian scholar, requisite for civil service) and the Japanese codified it as an aspect of Zen Buddhism.

I don't imagine they would care would some kid in the West thinks of it.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 east asian languages are as inefficient as you can get.

Careful, you're approaching bigotry. And you of course are asserting this on your advanced knowledge of Asian languages?

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 You can learn western alphabet in a few days, while learning chinese one takes years. Not to mention that you can't normally type it on a keyboard.

Ah, and these are univeral criteria for the status of 'important language' according to whom?

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 As for the chinese "don't question the authority and accept everything as it is" mentality, that is pretty much true, although less so now than many years ago.

Yawn...

Edit: Lira, don't bother, you're wasting your time.

-Noble

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Originally posted by Lira Not to mention the lack of gender in nouns is often annoying in English for us, but you guys find it also strange that we use "feminine" declensions for tables and "masculine" declensions for cars so...

hmm, i wounder how they would do this if this was the case in a langage in a country where political correctness have gone to far - such as canada and to some extent sweden. I mean really, it would be sexist to speak pretty much?

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Originally posted by Lira If only I had the time... come on, Tito, you're a smart guy, stop seeing things from an Eurocentric point of view. I know you can. (Hint: no one is "more advanced" or "technologically superior").

Yes Tito is a smart guy, and I think that he's right here. I don't know anything substantial about Asian languages and how they manage to capture pronounciation, but I work in a mathematical research environment, and the students and co-workers we get from China are *severely* handicapped when it comes to reductionist reasoning (which is what science is about) because of their habit of talking about all things at once and lack of intuition on emergence through construction from smaller pieces. And as "technology" is science among people, it does make sense to talk about technologically superior languages or frames of mind.

And now the more serious part of my post: Where the %$@* have you been Lira? We've missed you and have needed your help with a couple of things. We even had Neo come in here and scold metalgearsolid at some time!
Oh yeah, there's a thread called "oh my god..." in COR, can we have it moved here, please? Pretty please?

Could you give me the link of the thread?

As for my status, I had told the mods and some users here in another thread that I would have to take 3 months off, because of some work-related problems in real life - I'll be coming back by the end of July.

Anyway, in case you need anything, you can e-mail me (there's the link under my posts and, in case you don't see my posts, just write to [email protected] and I'll come here as soon as possible ).

Sorry for any problems.

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Originally posted by Lira They do differ in writing significantly. Refer to hiragana and katakana for further information (not close to what is used in China).

Yes, maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough. I know that they don't use the same writing scripts, but they do use a similar system of writing syllable blocks as one sign, which is pretty much an unnecessarry complication. Granted that the chinese way of writing is way more complicated than the japanese one. Btw, it's interesting to see that japanese writing use so many different scripts, I didn't know that.

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I'm sorry, but if there is an "archaic" system, it would be a system of about 26 used in languages it wasn't originally designed for ("A" used to be the head of an "ox" upside down, but it doesn't matter nowadays because not all languages have this letter in the word "ox"), which claims to hold phonetic values when most times it fails to do so (e.g. "through", "though" and "tough" in English, specially because of all the different accents out there; vowel reduction in Portuguese and English; poor support for tonal languages, even if existant; and so on) and that has rather superfluous features such as capital letters. Not to mention cursive writing.

I agree with you that english phonetic system is horrible. But many languages that use latin alphabet, especially slavic and germanic ones except for english, do have a pretty good phonetic system where each letter does relate to the sound it produces. As a matter of fact, english used to be like that too until late middle ages when for some reason people started to twist all the words...

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But it's not obsolete, as we're using it right now perfectly.

Well, yes, we are using it, but it's far from a perfect system, as far as english and other non-phonetic languages go.

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Korean can be learned in one day, if this is what you mean by "efficient", being the most scientific alphabetical system ever designed - it does even show you how you say a word. Doubt it? See it for yourself.

I have to admit that I never really looked into the korean alphabet, but the modern version of 24 letters does seem to be generally as practical as the latin alphabet (although 14 consonants is a bit small number, but I suppose it's a matter of language and not the script, so it's ok if you don't use the rest).

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If only I had the time... come on, Tito, you're a smart guy, stop seeing things from an Eurocentric point of view. I know you can.

It's not an eurocentric point of view. I know there are many other alphabets used throughout the world that are as efficient, or even more efficient than the european alphabets. However, things are not absolutely relative, and the chinese system is one of the hardest and most complicated systems to learn. Personally I wouldn't mind if we write in either the modified Korean or modified latin script (or any other equally efficient one for that matter), but I would mind using a system that takes years to learn, even in its simplified form.

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(Hint: no one is "more advanced" or "technologically superior").

Here I tend to disagree. Technological advance is a pretty measurable thing, and you can't say that France is at an equal technological stage as Afghanistan. Even with cultures, cultural relativism is a pretty shaky theory, but a technological relativism is as meaningful as saying that 4 has no more right to be a solution of x=2+2 than any other number.

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By the way, "they see things as static without further need for understanding"!? Did the person who wrote this even cared to do any reading or is he really just "guessing"?

I agree that in modern times that statement is not really describing the existing situation, but it does apply to a pretty large part of chinese history.

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Originally posted by Renegade There are far more words in the English language than any other, so in that regard I would have thought that the English language would be the most flexible at expressing fairly specific ideas? What exactly did your friend mean when he said "flexible" though?

I suppose that by flexible he meant the opposite of what you mentionned about English. So he would say that the fact that you can get very specific using English is a handicap because it constrains your thought process. It seems as though it could be plausible but still difficult to test.

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Originally posted by TheNobleEu Whether I like it or not? Hmm. I'm not Chinese, but I am wrestling with learning the traditional characters. Would I rather not have them? No -- as these are an integral part of the culture, which was my point. So, whether you or I "like it" is irrelevant.

I wasn't talking about deleting them from history, I was talking about changing or at least modifying that system to be more applicable to the needs of a modern society.

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Perhaps to your rather militant, microscopic view, but your mere opinion is up against some 4000 years of Asian tradition, where writing is itself a treasured art form.

So what, my opinion that the earth is round is against 50000 years of belief that the earth was flat. Again, I'm not saying that they should erase their alphabet from history, but the artistic value of writing has been pretty much lost with the printing press and mass literacy programs. Besides, if you're really stuck on it, artistic way of writing can be used in phonetic scripts, such as the islamic caligraphy. Regardless of that, I really don't see how their newspapers can be considered a treasured art form. Now, asian nations do have that tendency to turn everything into some sort of a mystified art, but that is not always a good thing.

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The Chinese codified it as a gentleman's devotion, one of the skills of the so-called Man-of-Letters (i.e., a Confucian scholar, requisite for civil service) and the Japanese codified it as an aspect of Zen Buddhism.

Yes, and from the medieval perspective that is fine, and not much different from the european or arabic way of percieving writing, but hey, we're not living in the middle ages.

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I don't imagine they would care would some kid in the West thinks of it.

Well, neither would any politicians in the EU care about what you think about the project, nor would any chinese philosophers think about what you have to say about their philosophy, but that does not mean that they're always right and that you're always wrong.

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Careful, you're approaching bigotry. And you of course are asserting this on your advanced knowledge of Asian languages?

Now, don't take a few words out of meaning. The comment reffered to their writing system, which is as inefficient as you can get. Feel free to find me a language that has writing more complex than the chinese.

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Ah, and these are univeral criteria for the status of 'important language' according to whom?

I never said it was not an important language, I said it was an inefficient system of writing. According to everybody who tries to learn both systems of writing and spends 100 times more on learning the chinese one while ending up being equally capable of expressing one's ideas in both of these writing forms. So stop being such a patronizing asshole and don't put things into my mouth.

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Yawn... Edit: Lira, don't bother, you're wasting your time. -Noble

Look, every person from the scientific community noticed that problem with chinese scientists, including the writer of the article, my university professors, and trancaholic. They generally do have that sort of mentality, and although some of their scientists do have the quality necessarry, and although the problem is decreasing rapidly ever since the fall of the chinese empire, it's not like it never existed. How many chinese scientists have won nobel prizes? It's as much eurocentric as when I say that medieval Europe was a horrible place where people hunted witches and were throwing their shit out the windows on the streets. It did happen.

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Originally posted by Lira Could you give me the link of the thread?

Yep, it's:
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...threadid=274085

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Originally posted by St_Andrew hmm, i wounder how they would do this if this was the case in a langage in a country where political correctness have gone to far - such as canada and to some extent sweden. I mean really, it would be sexist to speak pretty much?

English nouns do have gender, but while we largely have frozen, independent nominal forms to indicate that, the nouns of most other languages are inflected by declension (they must be declined to indicate gender). Moreover English nouns are "semantically neuter" -- one cannot determine the semantic meaning of a noun by its form, but usually only by its syntax and context.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 I wasn't talking about deleting them from history, I was talking about changing or at least modifying that system to be more applicable to the needs of a modern society.

You said nothing of the sort. You just responded bashing the system. I'm not Chinese, so I do not take personal offense or have any particular motive in writing as Devil's Advocate now: I do however take intellectual offence to your first parading your ignorances and then making sweeping generalized conclusions on something you clearly know next to nothing about.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Again, I'm not saying that they should erase their alphabet from history, but the artistic value of writing has been pretty much lost with the printing press and mass literacy programs.

Absolute nonsense. Here's a tip: if you don't know anything about the subject, don't presume to speak on it.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Feel free to find me a language that has writing more complex than the chinese.

Writing systems I can rhyme off the top of my head that are so complex that they have yet to be deciphered:
-Linear A (possibly Proto-Greek Indo-European language)
-Linear B (possibly Proto-Greek Indo-European language)
-So-called Proto-Elamite of Susa


Other complex writing systems:
-Classical Sanskrit (from which is derived the system for modern Tibetan, possesses a complex vowel system with associated sign variation to write the language's precision infections).

-Classical Akkadian (written in a wedge script (Cuneiform) on clay with reeds; system is similiar to Chinese insofar as it is initially a pictographic script evolving into a logo-ideographic syllabary. This branch of the language encompasses Assyrian and Babylonian dialects. The system was initally derived to write Sumerian, which is one of the most complex languages I've ever seen).

Writing systems derived directly from the Cuneiform of Sumerian:
-Classical Elamite
-Classical Persian
-Hurrian
-Ugartic
-Eblaite
-Luvian

-Pictographic/logographic/ideographic Classical writings systems of Mesoamerica, including Mayan, Aztec, Mixtec, Zapotec.

-Hittite Hieroglyphic

-Egyptian Hieroglyphic (alpha-pictographic; possesses no vowels, but developed "semi-vowels" seemingly used to indicate a vowel sound or a liquid without pointing to its exact morphology, which makes the words 'unpronounceable.' Possesses a complex system for spelling abbreviation, signs can appear logographically, and individuals signs, like Cuneiform or Chinese, can stand for either a semi-alphabetic, single, biliteral or triliteral phonetic, or have metaphoric or ideographic meaning. Complex technical vocabulary).

blah blah blah, you get the point.

More things in heaven and earth Horatio than are (possibly ever) dreamt of in your philosophy.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Look, every person from the scientific community noticed that problem with chinese scientists, including the writer of the article, my university professors, and trancaholic.

Racist sterotyping and anecdotal at best, derived largely from a bias. But I wouldn't expect you to understand what that means, especially since said bias was clearly detectable in the article and you are ignoring: it was slanted, misinformed, and dangerously wrong. Just like you are now.

-Noble

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Originally posted by TheNobleEu You said nothing of the sort. You just responded bashing the system. I'm not Chinese, so I do not take personal offense or have any particular motive in writing as Devil's Advocate now: I do however take intellectual offence to your first parading your ignorances and then making sweeping generalized conclusions on something you clearly know next to nothing about.

First of all, how the hell do you know how much I know about anything? Secondly, it is a complicated and inefficient system when compared to the western one, and that's not a sweeping generalization, it's a fact. And it's such a system that is very difficult to simplify to the level where it's comparable to latin alphabet, so therefore I advocated switching to the latin system. Additionally because it's generally better to have a one unified global system than many different local ones.

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Absolute nonsense. Here's a tip: if you don't know anything about the subject, don't presume to speak on it.

And here's a tip for you: stop thinking that you know everything about everything and that everybody else is an uneducated 15 year old. Especially when you make comments as idiotic as this one. Are you actually suggesting that an average chinese newspaper article should be considered a work of art? Well, gee, I'll go and ask Louvre to put my phone bill right next to Mona Lisa there.

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Writing systems I can rhyme off the top of my head that are so complex that they have yet to be deciphered: -Linear A (possibly Proto-Greek Indo-European language) -Linear B (possibly Proto-Greek Indo-European language) -So-called Proto-Elamite of Susa

Talking about speaking of subjects you don't know anything about. Linear A and linear B are not undeciphered because of their remarkable complexity but because they were not used for the last few thousand years and because there was no place where you could learn them.

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Other complex writing systems: -Classical Sanskrit (from which is derived the system for modern Tibetan, possesses a complex vowel system with associated sign variation to write the language's precision infections).

That system has the same order of magnitude of complexity as the chinese one.

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-Classical Akkadian (written in a wedge script (Cuneiform) on clay with reeds; system is similiar to Chinese insofar as it is initially a pictographic script evolving into a logo-ideographic syllabary. This branch of the language encompasses Assyrian and Babylonian dialects. The system was initally derived to write Sumerian, which is one of the most complex languages I've ever seen). Writing systems derived directly from the Cuneiform of Sumerian: -Classical Elamite -Classical Persian -Hurrian -Ugartic -Eblaite -Luvian

Cuneiform system eventually evolved into a simple phonetic system and therefore bears no more similarity to the chinese system than the latin alphabet which also evolved from a pictographic script. The earlier versions of the cuneiform system like old elamite used some 2000 characters, so even they were simpler than the chinese systems.

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-Pictographic/logographic/ideographic Classical writings systems of Mesoamerica, including Mayan, Aztec, Mixtec, Zapotec.

Mayan script had 300 commonly used glyphs composed of some 550 logograms, 150 syllabograms and 100 location/god names. Although not as simple as latin, it is not more complex than the chinese.

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-Hittite Hieroglyphic -Egyptian Hieroglyphic (alpha-pictographic; possesses no vowels, but developed "semi-vowels" seemingly used to indicate a vowel sound or a liquid without pointing to its exact morphology, which makes the words 'unpronounceable.' Possesses a complex system for spelling abbreviation, signs can appear logographically, and individuals signs, like Cuneiform or Chinese, can stand for either a semi-alphabetic, single, biliteral or triliteral phonetic, or have metaphoric or ideographic meaning. Complex technical vocabulary).

Early egyptian was on par with traditional chinese, although eventually it evolved into a much simpler form and was eventually replaced by greek. Gee, wonder why.

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blah blah blah, you get the point. More things in heaven and earth Horatio than are (possibly ever) dreamt of in your philosophy.

I am and was aware of those writing systems regardless of your egocentric opinion that nobody has nearly the same amount of knowledge that you posess. The thing is that none of those systems are more complex than the chinese. Their complexity is at best equal. And another thing about all those systems is that they've all ended up being very simplified and eventually leaning towards alphabetic scripts, or exterminated when faced with other alphabetic scripts.

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Racist sterotyping and anecdotal at best, derived largely from a bias.

I'm sure you think your head is already filled with enough information that it's about to explode, but please try to realize that racism is non-factual bias based on race and not on culture or nationality. Especially since my comment did not state that every chinese scientist is a bad scientist, but they generally are worse than western or japanese scientists for that matter.

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But I wouldn't expect you to understand what that means

Please, will you cut the crap with that patronizing tone? It doesn't make you look any smarter. Infact it makes you look more like a pompous prick.

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especially since said bias was clearly detectable in the article and you are ignoring: it was slanted, misinformed, and dangerously wrong. Just like you are now.

The major flaw of the article is that it's partially outdated as the chinese have identified the problem and are trying to solve it, while Japan and Korea mostly have solved it. But that does not mean that it does not have a point.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Talking about speaking of subjects you don't know anything about. Linear A and linear B are not undeciphered because of their remarkable complexity but because they were not used for the last few thousand years and because there was no place where you could learn them.

*sigh* How tiresome.

Your comments, such as that quoted above ("...but because they were not used for the last few thousand years and because there was no place where you could learn them.") could only come from someone who doesn't know very much at all about how languages, through the vehicle of their writing systems, get deciphered. Someone who actually did know something about it couldn't possibly state the things you are here. Simple truth.

Your comments here are just flatly and hopelessly wrong. I suppose you think that some ancient was around to teach modern scholars all the elder tongues we've deciphered?

To address your question:

"First of all, how the hell do you know how much I know about anything?"

I don't need to assume what you do and don't know -- you make plenty evidence available yourself.

Some here have called you smart; I have yet to see you make an intelligent or insightful comment. Instead of parading your racism, why don't you try? (A smarter person would have quit while they only appeared a fool):

"Better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 The thing is that none of those systems are more complex than the chinese. Their complexity is at best equal. And another thing about all those systems is that they've all ended up being very simplified and eventually leaning towards alphabetic scripts, or exterminated when faced with other alphabetic scripts.

Ahh, to your advanced linguistic knowledge they are equal. Ok, I will meet you on this point.

Suppose for the sake of argument they are equal: what point are you deriving? You responded to this thread for no reason other than to bash the Chinese writing system, making no coherent or conversation-advancing point. You seem to have responded in part primarily to differ with me, since you attacked things you assumed I held dead, in order to get a rise out of me. You failed.

Do you even have a point, or do you just regularly respond with indiscriminate and assine vitriol? (Let me know so I can *plonk* you if the latter).


No one is disputing that the Chinese writing system is inefficient and an obstacle to advanced literacy relative to other systems. But then you state moreover that its cultural context is irrelevant (moreover, according to you, it doesn't qualify as art), which just makes you look like a sheltered and disgusting little boy.

I just listed many different cultures with writings systems "equally complex" (according to you) to Chinese, all of which had high civilization with extensive literary traditions, some of them a thousand years+ before there was a Rome. I argue for the Devil to contra you on these points; if I seem condescending to you, it is because there is little more unpalatable to me than uneducated and dismissive fops who are too ignorant to look down as see the shoulders they stand on.

Your underlining, detectable belief is that these writing systems (and the people that produced them) are somehow inferior, the product of lesser people, not worthy of examination and appreciation on their own terms. I find this nauseating. Your attitude is totally ridiculous, distasteful and worthy of mockery. Don't complain when I do.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Please, will you cut the crap with that patronizing tone? It doesn't make you look any smarter. Infact it makes you look more like a pompous prick.

Your behaviour in several different threads has illustrated that you're a bigot and uninformed, and you have demonstrated such in several totally unrelated threads. What you mistake for patronization is in fact my near total contempt. By calling you out by stating you're full of it, I in no way proclaim my own superiority (wtf?). Perhaps this is your complex speaking?

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 The major flaw of the article is that it's partially outdated as the chinese have identified the problem and are trying to solve it, while Japan and Korea mostly have solved it. But that does not mean that it does not have a point.

It's point is to demonstrate a central assumption, using the language as a pseudo-proof, 'that the Chinese are subserviant Communist serfs that are willing automatons to authoritarian regimes.' Moreover they 'are inprecise thinkers, unable to articulate,' and in the words of someone else here, 'generally incapable of science according to the scientific method.'

Such a bias indicates near total ignorance of Chinese history, and a couple people here chimed in with comments amounting to essentially an identical thesis. You were one of them. I stated basically that this was idiotic, infantile and truly boring.

Yawn. How dull.

-Noble

Is that new? in some languages u can express easier than other ones. In some languages you can say things in different manners..and in some u don't have many options..

Noble, your patronizing idiotic comments don't respond to any of the points I made but are instead either a dirrect ad hominem assaults or they respond to some nonsensical points I never raised nor agree with. To answer the only sensible part of your post, I have not responded anything to the original post of the thread because I largely agree with Lira's first post and therefore I felt no need to elaborate further. And unfortunately for a person like you who is crying for attention, I responded to your post because I largely disagreed with it, and not because I have an obsession with stalking you and trying to refute every single thing you say.

Now, I have met a wide variety of idiots on this board but I never had the need to put any of them on my ignore list. On the other hand, none of them managed to possess nearly such a high degree of shallowness, rudeness, and egocentrism as you. Congratulations, you're the first one who made it. Now go brag your mom that you finally got to be first in something. Just don't overwank it.

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This person is on your Ignore List. To view this post click [here]

Wow, I feel like the level of intellect on this thread has suddenly skyrocketed!

I stated:

"I suppose you think that some ancient was around to teach modern scholars all the elder tongues we've deciphered?"

'Nuff said. Where one person is correcting and the other person is parading their misinformation, that isn't a conversation. It's a schooling.

And this kid races to 'beat me to the plonk' owning to his own blatant racism? lmao!

Why did I bother even responding to a kid that includes the word "Drug" in his nick? Seems he could use some psychological, rather than recreational ones.

-Noble

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