Re: intrinsic advantage of Latin alphabet over bopomofo (for Chinese)??

LEE Sau Dan wrote:

"Joachim" == Joachim Pense <snob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>> The numeral "1" also represents spoken words in various
>> languages. So, you cannot claim it's an ideograph, can you?

Joachim> It is one. Digits are productively combined (following a
Joachim> specific number syntax, called the Decimal System,

So, there is a system of rules.

Some would call it a grammar.


Joachim> independent from the language in which the numbers occur)
Joachim> to produce number representations, which are only then
Joachim> mapped to spoken words. You can represent infinitely many
Joachim> different numbers like that.

The Kanji's for the number can also be combined to produce _infinitely
many_ different numbers.

The question is "are the number Kanji digits or just any old characters that
happen to denote number words"?

I don't know much Japanese, and no Chinese, so I am not really in a position
to tell; What I have been believing is that the number Kanji are composed
to numbers the way they are because the words they denote are. So if German
was written in Kanji, the Kanji representation of
"123" (hunderddreiundzwanzig) would be a kanji for "hundert", followed by a
Kanji for "drei", followed by a Kanji for "und", follow by a Kanji for
"zwanzig" (which doesn't even exist). The representation in Arabic digits
would still be "123".



They are also combined according to a system
of rules. And this system of rules can also be claimed to be
language-independent -- it's the shared among Japanese, Korean,
Chinese, Vietnamese (with minor local variations), just like you share
the rules of the decimal system with other peoples.

I do not know about Vietnamese, but in Japanese and (I think) Korean, the
words for the numbers (with some minor exceptions) are loanwords from
Chinese and came with the characters, so I don't accept this as a proof for
language-independency.



Joachim> In the Japanese cases, you have a finite number of Kanji
Joachim> combinations that map to words as a whole. This is not
Joachim> productive.

They are. They are productive. As productive as morpheme in any
languages.

I don't really believe that. Oliver mentions such cases (like The "Girl"
character pronounced "Ko" 'child'), and with furigana this might even be
possible, but he writes this has limitations, and to me it looks more like
a clever artistic game than a productive feature of the writing system.

Some of them are indeed very productive. e.g. the Kanji
for "sun/day" and that for "one" can be combined with many many other
words to form compounds. And they'll be used in future to make new
words, too. The combinations are infinite, too.

New words, duh. If I form a new compound, of course I compound the
characters as well.




Joachim> Would this be a good definition of ideographic writing
Joachim> systems: A purely ideographic writing system ("idea
Joachim> writing") combines its terminal symbols in a language of
Joachim> its own,

Kanji's in Japanese do qualify.


Joachim> while a purely logographic writing system stands in
Joachim> one-one relation with the words (or morphemes) of the
Joachim> spoken language of which it is supposed to be a writing
Joachim> system of.

This one-one relation does not hold in Japanese. It doesn't hold for
Chinese, either,

Sure. I wrote "purely".

as many character represent multiple concepts, and
can vary in pronunciation depending on the idea conveyed.
They vary depending on the context they appear in. Like the pronounciation
of the English letter "y" (or most other English letters)

Joachim
.

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