Re: Chinese dictation

From: Richard Herring (junk_at_[127.0.0.1)
Date: 11/22/04 

Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:35:59 +0000

In message <87y8gw1lff.fsf@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>, Lee Sau Dan
<danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> writes
>>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Herring <junk@[127.0.0.1]> writes:
>
> Richard> Since I don't speak or write Chinese or have ready access
> Richard> to anyone who does, I simply don't know whether the
> Richard> differences really do produce or necessitate to a
> Richard> different way of notating normal-speed speech.
>
>What are the difference that you think would necessitate a radically
>different way of jotting down things?
>
The differences between an alphabetic writing system and a
character-based one, of course. If I'm hurriedly jotting down an English
sentence, I cn omit sm vwls nd fill them in later. Can you do that sort
of ad-hoc shorthand in Chinese?
>
> >> When people say "trade fair", would you misspell the second
> >> word as "fare"? Maybe, you could mix up "fairy tale" with
> >> "ferry tail" out of context? But how likely is that in real
> >> life?
>
> Richard> It happens, however infrequently, and sometimes the
> Richard> consequences can be important. That's why I would be
> Richard> surprised not to find a convention for dealing with
> Richard> it.
>
>And how do the French deal with it? Do they write "parle", or
>"parlent" when they hear [parl]?

If context doesn't make it obvious, they request clarification and the
other party spells the word. That's the French convention for dealing
with homophones. Same in English, or any other language written with an
alphabet. What I'm asking, if it still isn't clear to you, is how you do
it with a character-based system. Is this really so hard?

> Richard> For alphabetic writing systems, there's spelling.
>
>But the spelling often doesn't transcribe the sounds, as in the case
>of English.

Yes, so what? The point here is how to write the word, not how it
sounds. Spelling is an unambiguous way of getting the other party to
write the correct word.

>How do you write [huz sOrd] in English?

I don't know. Please spell it for me.

>How can you use
>a 5-vowel alphabet (or 6 if you include "y") to write English, which
>has more than a dozen of distinctive vowels?

What has that to do with anything? I'm trying to _write_ these words,
not pronounce them.

> Richard> For Chinese, what's the equivalent?
>
>Chinese is a very mnemonical script, just like English. English
>spellings show _hints_ about the pronunciations; so does Chinese
>characters.

Yes, so? I'm not asking about pronunciation but about writing.
>
> Richard> Do you say the radical or phonetic element separately,
>
>No.
>
> Richard> or use the stroke count, or what?
>
>How come stroke count enters this picture?

I don't know if it does. That's why I'm asking. It's a way of
distinguishing characters, so it's one of the possible things one might
use.

>We don't count the strokes
>when we write or dictate.

So how do you resolve ambiguities?

>Do you count the length of words when you
>write English?

Only when doing crosswords. When dictating, I don't need to, because I
can refer to the individual letters of the word when necessary.

Come on, this isn't a difficult question. When people dictate Chinese,
how do they resolve homophones when the context isn't enough? 

-- 
Richard Herring

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