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

On Mar 23, 8:26 pm, hru...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Herman Rubin) wrote:
In article <87vegtxwi3....@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
LEE Sau Dan <dan...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Peter" =3D=3D Peter T Daniels <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Peter> On Mar 22, 5:42 am, LEE Sau Dan
Peter> <dan...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Peter> wrote:
>> What makes you think a writing system _must_ closely indicate
>> exactly what words are meant, instead of what meanings are
>> intended
Peter> Because that's the meaning of "writing."

It is? Could it not be that characters represent ideas
instead of words?

No. If that were so, then anyone who knew the "ideas" represented by
the characters (or by any other arbitrary symbols) could use them as a
"visible language." Great minds at least since Leibniz have wasted
years trying to *Search for the Perfect Language*, as Umberto Eco put
it in a book that is well worth reading (even though it's rather
diffuse and detail-less).

Mathematical writing is of that type;

Why must we continually remind you that mathematics is not a human
language, and writing is not a human language? Writing _represents_ a
language, so mathematical notation is not writing, either.
Mathematical notation is a semiotic system.

the "spoken words" depend on the language of the speaker,
and when actual words are used, it is very often the
idea which is represented by the word. Understanding
mathematics involves being able to think in terms of
the ideas, as in fact does understanding anything else.

An excellent explanation of why it isn't language.

We have international highway signs; do those represent
words, or ideas? Does the sign warning about radioactivity
represent words?

They are ideograms. If the international highway signs are uniform all
across Eurasia, then they can be "read" by every driver in their own
language; hence, not writing.

Written language does not merely summarize
spoken language.

No one has ever suggested that it does.

In many circumstances, though, it records it. In many other
circumstances, it does things that spoken language doesn't.

.

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