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

LEE Sau Dan:

"Jens" == Jens S Larsen <jens_s_larsen@xxxxxxxx> writes:
Jens> Over here we put an "s" and an "n" after the number.
>> So, "S" is a pictograph, because it's used on road signs? "N"
>> is an ideograph? How "international" is that?
Jens> It's a convention -- a national one in this case, as "o" is
Jens> for East and "v" for West.

A _national_ one. So, it's not an International Highway Sign, is it?

I don't know if any international conventions define how to indicate
principal directions. I don't even know if other countries besides
Denmark use that option.

Jens> No, all proper names are in orthography, of course.
>> In which orthography?

Jens> That varies a lot by country. In Israel they often use
Jens> Hebrew, Arabic and English on the same signs.

Not very international.

On the contrary.

Jens> Generally, if the country's written language does not use
Jens> Latin letters, a transliteration is provided, at least on
Jens> the major roads.

I don't remember seeing Romaji on highway signs in Japan.

The Japanese are rather peculiar. They also drive on the left side.

And in
China, they're only beginning to add Romanization and English to the
signs in Beijing in order to prepare for the Olympics.

I wonder what the signs look like at the entrance of Urumchi and
Lhasa.

(But they've been generating jokes such as using "EXPORT" instead of
"EXIT", because they're translated the same in Chinese. Those doing
the "translation" must be just English-savvy enough to use an
Anglo-Chinese dictionary! The Beijingers are working hard to patch
these mistakes.)

Another good reason to use pictograms wherever you can get away with
it.

>> There are no universal set of road signs. What is universal is
>> just a set of basic principles (e.g. trianglar signs indicate
>> warnings). The octagon sign means stop, but is localized with
>> a word for "stop" on it,

Jens> Not in Russia; they use the English word.

Really?

I was rather surprised myself when I saw it (in a TV clip, AFAIR).

Jens> In some countries a raised hand is shown.

So, there are no real "Internal Highway Signs". Just a set of
conventions that many countries follow. But these conventions leave a
lot of room for localization.

It's difficult to know whether the countries are localizing or just
ignoring some details of the convention.

Jens> in Germany you even can see words mixed with pictograms. If
Jens> we take the use of a letter to indicate a highway's
Jens> direction, knowing the local language is neither necessary
Jens> nor sufficient; you have to know what the four letters
Jens> conventionally stand for, not the language that the
Jens> convention is based on.

So, why don't they invent pictograms for the 4 principle directions?

There's no obvious shape.

Jens S. Larsen

.

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