Re: shampoo [was: English compared to other European languages]

Lee Sau Dan wrote:
>
> >>>>> "Seán" == Seán O'Leathlóbhair <jwlawler@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> Seán> I have nothing to prove because I am claiming nothing. I am
> Seán> not even claiming that words are sometimes adopted through
> Seán> writing. I am merely not disallowing it. To use your
> Seán> Martian example, my position would be: 'There may or may not
> Seán> be underground cities on Mars'. It is not me that is
> Seán> claiming non-existence of something, it is PTD. He is the
> Seán> one with something to prove.
>
> PTD also "disproved" the possibility of "ideographic" writing, by

Uh, no, the most recent scholar to have done so is John DeFrancis, but
the "disproof" goes back at least to Peter Steven DuPonceau in 1838, and
such philosophers as Leibniz and Kircher should have recognized the
problem centuries before when they were unable to adapt Chinese and
Egyptian writing respectively to be an "alphabet of ideas."

> adopting a very narrow definition of "ideographic". Most people who
> use the word "ideographic" actually use it with a wider sense, but PTD
> always argue that his definition is "the" definition of "ideographic",
> which indeed renders the word "ideographic" pretty meaningless.
>
> Actually, the more I try to learn Japanese, the more "ideographic" I
> have found in the use of Kanji's in Japanese. The Japanese not only
> write the same Kanji for equivalent Sino-Japanese and Japanese words
> (hence very different pronunciations), but also for different words
> with the same meaning. It's so amazing and annoying that they can
> write so many different words with the same Kanji, when these mean the
> same or similar things.

If you don't understand the difference between words and ideas, there's
little hope for you.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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