Re: Optimum number of symbols

>Another factoid for the mix: subtitles for movies in Chinese and
>Japanese are much more complete than those in alphabetic writing
>systems, because reading speed for logographic scripts is higher in
>terms of words-per-time-unit. The inarguable difficulty of learning
>such a system does have some payoff. Further, even more than in the
>case of English, the Chinese writing system unifies a set of _very_
>divergent dialects, that would are mutually unintelligible at the
>phonemic level.
Are you sure that this is the reason for fuller subtitles in Japanese and
Chinese than in Western languages?

The main reason I find this slightly difficult to believe is that my own
main trouble with subtitles (in English and Swedish) is that the damn things
come too slow - I either waste mental effort at not reading them several
times, or do and have trouble fitting sentenses together. I would usually
find it a substantial improvement if the subtitles went blank for half of
the normal showing time. Now I'm a fast reader, but not a spectacularly fast
one. So I'm thinking the difference may be that Westerners make the things
slow so that even bad readers can follow, while the Japanese and Chinese
concentrate at maximize enjoyability for average readers. A cultural
difference unrelated to script, that'd be.

                                                      Andreas

_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com