Re: USAGE: Language revival

On Tue, 23 Nov 1999 12:58:59 -0500, "David G. Durand"
<david@...> wrote:

>There are reasons to preserve writing systems that are hard to learn, =
but
>that doesn't make them easy. There are also hints that the iconicity of
>non-phonetic writing systems like Han characters actually affect reading
>speed positively. The only measure of this that I've seen is in film
>subtitles: I have read (and casual inspection confirms) that they are
>longer (in words) and displayed for a shorter time than English =
subtitles.
>Assuming that filmmakers tune the quantity and timing of subtitles for
>comfortable comprehension by their audience, this confirms the notion =
that
>people can read Chinese faster.
I can definitely read Japanese kanji faster than kana. Well, those few
kanji that I actually recognize. But it takes probably about as much =
effort
to recognize the character for "murasaki" as it does to recognize the
syllable "mu". Actually, some of the less frequently used kana take =
longer
for me to recognize than kanji. On the other hand, this is offset by the
fact that each character has two or more context-dependent =
pronunciations.
If I knew more than a couple hundred kanji, it might also take longer to
distinguish between similar-looking ones. And I'm not sure how it would
work with a language like Chinese with one syllable per character.

--=20
languages of Kolagia---> =
+---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
      Thryomanes        /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print =
any
   (Herman Miller)     / thing till they were sure it would offend no =
body,
   moc.oi @ rellimh <-/  there would be very little printed." -Ben =
Franklin