Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/02/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 07:30 PM 2/21/97 -0800, David Josephson wrote: >Chinese is in fact a very easy language in which to express complex >ideas, particularly where one runs out of adjectives in the Romance >and Germanic languages. And making up new words or characters can be done >whenever needed. A proficient typist can input Chinese characters >on a keyboard in one of a dozen common systems about as fast >as with any alphabetic language. I don't read or speak Chinese fluently, >but as much as I learned while living in China was enough to make me >understand why there was serious debate long before the Greeks and >Romans about whether to use Arabic or Chinese as the standard language >of science. Latin later won out over Arabic, just because they threw >stones faster, I guess... My computer guru is Chinese born and bred. He swears that the Chinese language is the single biggest block to the 'computerization' of China. His main objection, of course, is the pictographic script and not the language itself, though he allows that English is substantially more compatible with computers in that musical pitch is not an element in comprehension, as it is with most Chinese dialects. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!