4/23/2006: Carved gourd

[Uryoces]

Oriental languages are idogrammatic. Each character means something, as opposed to the characters simply referring to a sound.

[sordid]

Originally Posted by Uryoces

Oriental languages are idogrammatic. Each character means something, as opposed to the characters simply referring to a sound.

That's true for Chinese and a certain Japanese writing, Kanji.
It's wrong for Thai, Korean, Hiragana Japanese, Katakana Japanese... - actually it's wrong for ANY language but Kanji and Chinese.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Welcome to the Cellar, sordid.
So those oriental characters are sounds or syllables?

[sordid]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Welcome to the Cellar, sordid.
So those oriental characters are sounds or syllables?

Yeah Bruce, always waiting for fresh meat, aren't you?

Well, Hiragana and Katakana are syllables. There's the exception of the "n" which is a single consonant, but usually you'll either have a single vocal or exactly one consonant followed by a vocal. That's why oral Japanese is so extremely easy to understand for computers. Consonant, vocal, consonant, vocal - so much easier for tincans than my mothertongue German.

Hiragana and Katakana are even easy to learn - unluckily nobody uses them in Japan except to mark endings of words written in Kanji. And Kanji is a pain in the ass, since it's derived from Chinese.

In Korean you'll find two writings as well. The older one, Wenyan, is also derived from Chinese and works the same, yet the other one, Hangeul, is pretty similar to our system.

Thai on the other hand is completely like our system - except for the fact that these wavy letters they use are supposed to be pronounced completely different depending on how they're written.
That means that a vowel like "ma" could be pronounced in like five different ways, depending on how you'd rape the vocal.

Sorry I have such a hard time explaining it, that's actually since English is not my native language.

Khmer, the language spoken in Cambodia, is the complete opposite, although Cambodia is so heavily influenced culturally by Thailand.
Khmer consists of syllables and most words are hardly longer than two syllables.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Fresh meat? Hmmm
Actually fresh ideas, information, people that can explain things so I can get them through my thick head. Thanks for the 'splaining. There was a previous IOtD about Korean wood block printing, where we could have used you.

[sordid]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Fresh meat? Hmmm
Actually fresh ideas, information, people that can explain things so I can get them through my thick head. Thanks for the 'splaining. There was a previous IOtD about Korean wood block printing, where we could have used you.

Bruce,
there's so many different reasons why the whole world actually has a use for me...

[milkfish]

Originally Posted by sordid

In Korean you'll find two writings as well. The older one, Wenyan, is also derived from Chinese and works the same, yet the other one, Hangeul, is pretty similar to our system.

<a href="http://langintro.com/kintro/first.htm">Korean alphabet tutorial</a>. Hangeul isn't that hard to learn, so you can amaze your friends.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Blog view of this thread has a Goggle ad that links to a gourd art show in CA. Incredible!

[Uryoces]

Yup. That was a pretty broad brush.