Comments on: college, characters

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:00:53 +0000

I read this and thought of your post:

bokane.org
/2008/02/29/white-guy-speaks-chinese-film-at-eleven
/#comment-104260

I have to post it all weird or it won’t go through the comments.

By: GG

GG — Sat, 31 May 2008 20:15:47 +0000

100 characters merit a gold, red, blue, AND silver star! And if you can write that in Proto-Canaanite, I’ll give you a bronze star too.

By: beth

beth — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:44:12 +0000

Yes! That’s the part that fascinates me, too — that once they invented The Alphabet, they didn’t think they needed to make up a new one for each language. Which when you think about it makes a lot of sense.

By: chris

chris — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:16:11 +0000

I’ll be damned! That alphabet was called the Proto-Canaanite alphabet and later turned into most western alphabets! Here’s the wikipedia article with a chart of the different pictures->meanings->letters.

AWESOME!

By: chris

chris — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:08:18 +0000

@beth

really? that’s insanely awesome!

By: beth

beth — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:04:32 +0000

I read your blog on my google reader, and i gave you a gold star by clicking on the star button next to the post.

Alphabet: omg i know. i read a whole book about the alphabet. basically, it came from an abbreviated version of egyptian hieroglyphics. every new language would adapt the letters from this original alphabet to the sounds in they needed, changing/swapping/adding as necessary. The original letters were like A is for apple, b is for bear in that they were a simplified picture of words that started with that letter. Example: Б, which used to be flipped 90 degrees, was the first letter in the word for house. When it’s flipped on its side, you see a simple house with a door (door’s on the right)!! My favorite was the letter Y (i think), which stood for a word that was basically “hey!” and it was supposed to be a picture of a dude jumping up off the ground yelling “hey!”

By: admin

admin — Sun, 25 May 2008 14:56:52 +0000

Chris - thank you. I’ll offer the modest criticism that as a friend, you’re a little too generous with the gold stars sometimes, but it’s always appreciated.

Whitney - yeah, that’s a really good point. I think most people suggest learning survival Chinese by focusing on speaking just because it takes such a ridiculous amount of time to learn the characters, but the few words that I’ve learned how to write I remember a hell of a lot better than the words I’ve overheard in bars.

I’m kind of in love with the alphabet as a linguistic system right now. It’s just so damn smart, flexible, and digestible. Well done, whoever had that idea.

By: Tevebaugh

Tevebaugh — Sun, 25 May 2008 06:02:25 +0000

I hear that it’s better to learn a language in text than just by speaking it, because when you learn to read something, by default you’ll be able to render it verbally. Whereas learning something by ear has no accompanying guarantee that you’ll be able to understand it in print…

I laud your 100 characters. I’m scared silly of languages that don’t use an alphabet that’s somewhat familiar (cyrillic only makes me worry a little bit).

By: chris

chris — Sun, 25 May 2008 03:41:56 +0000

your Chinese is REALLY impressive! I can’t believe you learned that many characters so quickly.

You can definitely read/write way more than I can now!

GOLD STAR FOR YOU!