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gábor ugray

@nina_kali_nina Tiniest of tiny nits to pick (and sorry!). It's not the language that's logographic, "just" the writing system. Eg Chinese can be written in Pinyin and it stays the same language. But it's true that the writing system adds a whole layer of parallel semantics for the speakers of C&J who are literate, and this is deeply culturally embedded!

16 January at 23:59 | Wall-to-wall | Open on genart.social
3 comments
gábor ugray

@nina_kali_nina The evolution of these characters is also often insanely whacko, like when an entirely unrelated character gets borrowed to write a homophone, infusing it with a wholly different meaning. Like 來 lái being an image of wheat, repurposed to write the word for "come" that sounded the same.

Character history truly is a deep, endless ocean...

17 January at 0:08 | Open on genart.social
Nina Kalinina

@twilliability that reminds me of others adventures of words, much more recent one - 米国 - beikoku, "rice country" - as a colloquial name for America. Apparently 'Muricans were not very clear in pronouncing the name of their country, so the Japanese version of 1854 US-Japan peace treaty records the name of US as "米利堅" (me-ri-ken, phonetically). It seems that people were too lazy to write all the kanji, so it became 米国 which is read as if it's a "real" word. I have no idea why 米 was chosen for "me" instead of hundreds of other options, though.

@twilliability that reminds me of others adventures of words, much more recent one - 米国 - beikoku, "rice country" - as a colloquial name for America. Apparently 'Muricans were not very clear in pronouncing the name of their country, so the Japanese version of 1854 US-Japan peace treaty records the name of US as "米利堅" (me-ri-ken, phonetically). It seems that people were too lazy to write all the kanji, so it became 米国 which is read as if it's a "real" word. I have no idea why 米 was chosen for "me"...

17 January at 1:02 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina

@twilliability
I wanted to convey the meaning of "languages that commonly use pictograms for writing" and thought it is clear what I mean.

But on top of that, there's a thing.

I have no idea whether it is linguistically correct to say so or not, but my personal impression is that written language and spoken language are two different languages. I know that what makes the difference between local dialects and languages is often disputed, but I have a feeling that there are "officially separate languages" that are closer to each other than different written languages or written and spoken versions of the same language. Sign languages, like BSL or JSL, are obviously considered their own languages, related to British and Japanese, due to massive difference in the way certain things can be expressed in them, right? Spoken language, with nuances of speech patterns, and somewhat different grammar and vocab, is also not the same as written language :florshed:​

@twilliability
I wanted to convey the meaning of "languages that commonly use pictograms for writing" and thought it is clear what I mean.

But on top of that, there's a thing.

I have no idea whether it is linguistically correct to say so or not, but my personal impression is that written language and spoken language are two different languages. I know that what makes the difference between local dialects and languages is often disputed, but I have a feeling that there are "officially separate languages"...

17 January at 0:42 | Open on tech.lgbt
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