Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

Cheng Zhong Su wrote:
>
>  --- Patrick Dunn wrote:
> > Take Chinese, for example.  One of the most annoying
> > things about Chinese
> > is the writing system (at least, for those of us
> > learning the langauge as
> > a second or third language).  Yet it's this very
> > frustrating, illogical,
> > seemingly random writing system that gives rise to
> > much of the power of
> > Chinese poetry, which is what -- for me -- makes the
> > language worth
> > learning.
> >
> > Ambiguity in language is not a flaw, and all
> > languages with ambiguities
> > can avoid them if necessary.  If you manage to
> > remove ambiguity, you
> > create a language incapable of playful poetry, and
> > therefore -- to my
> > mind, at least -- devoid of fun.
> >
> > --Patrick
>Answer:Yes, it's a trouble for the Chinese writing
>system. It was improved by simplified characters, in
>mainland China. Yet I don't agree that leave the
>ambiguities alone. The fun of mind is to compose some
>thing not to remember words. For poetries may be not
>important but for a scientific student, things will be
>different. For instance, the chemical element table,
>must be learn by heart in chinese school, for it's not
>to hard to do it, and if you learn it by heart, you
>know the most property of all those elements. While in
>English school, students don't need to learn it by
>heart, whenever you need it just find a book and look
>what is the position of that element. I think in most
>case students just guess the property of that element
>by an ambiguous image.
>Su Cheng Zhong
Get it into your head that languages aren't constructed for the benefit of
chemistry students!

Given a sufficient technical vocabulary, it IS possible to write scientific
texts with practically no ambiguity. English does have a sufficient
technical vocabulary for almost all subjects (I dare say that it is best
language in this ragard), and I strongly suspect that Chinese isn't to far
behind. BUT, this is a very marginal use of language - the VAST majority of
language use is in non-scientific everyday situations where complete clarity
SIMPLY ISN'T AN OBJECTIVE.

                                                   Andreas

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