Re: CHAT: aged foods (wasRe: phonology of borrowed words)

John Cowan wrote:
>Andreas Johansson scripsit:
>
> > Speaking of Chinese food, Roger Penrose kills spends a clause in "The
> > Emperor's New Mind" on idly wondering whether there's a hanzi for
> > "hamburger". Is there? If not, what sign-combination do they use?
>
>Since Chinese writing is morpho-syllabic, the question is what the Chinese
>for "hamburger" is.  I have only found one (on-line) source, which writes
>it with five hanzi; my guess is that it is a transliteration.  Not being
>able to read ideographs, I don't know exactly how the transliteration
>works.  Thus there is no hanzi for "hamburger", any more than there is
>one for "laser" (the Chinese for which is ji1 guang1, "stimulated light",
>written with two hanzi).
>
>Penrose's puzzlement suggests to me that he is not free of the "hanzi =
>concept" notion of how Chinese writing works.
In context, he's probably rather thinking of the _word_ "hamburger" than of
the _concept_ (the context being manipulating signs without understanding
the language the signs encode). Then, hanzi=word isn't entirely true either.

                                              Andreas

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