17 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Orthography Must be Balanced
The orthography of our language is extremely irregular; and many fruitless attempts have been made to reform it. The utility and expedience of such reform have been controverted, and both side of the question have been maintained with no inconsiderable zeal.
On this subject, as on most others which divide the opinions of men, parties seem to have erred by running into extremes. The friends of a reform maintain that our alphabet should be rendered perfectly regular, by rejecting superfluous c...
1 11 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Power of the Chinese Ideogram
As everyone knows, the Chinese do not have letters, as we do, but symbols for whole words. This has, of course, many inconveniences: it means that, in learning to write, there are an immense number of different signs to be learnt, not only 26 as with us; that there is no such thing as alphabetical order, so that dictionaries, files, catalogues, etc., are difficult to arrange and linotype is impossible; that foreign words, such as proper names and scientific terms, cannot be written down by so...
1 Phonetic alphabets change over time as the sounds of the language drift, by decoupling the sounds of the language from the alphabet, the Chinese have produced a written language that can survive thousands of years.
27 SEP 2013 by ideonexus
回饋
The Chinese characters here are 回饋 (made out of black and white sesame seeds). You should recognize 回 if you have been following me on Facebook.回 means return. 饋 means ‘offering food to someone’ or ‘gift’. It is made out of 食 and 貴. 食 means ‘to eat’ or ‘food’. 貴 means something precious or expensive. 回 (return) 饋 (gift)= 回饋 (to give back)回饋 is normally used to express someone returning something good to the society. In this case, I am trying to ...Returning good to society.
27 SEP 2013 by ideonexus
加油 as a Term of Encouragement
The Chinese characters say 加油 (Jia1 you2).加 is composed of 力 (power) and 口 (mouth). It means 'to add'油 is made out of 水 (氵, water) and 由(from/ due). It means oil.加（to add） 油（oil）= add oil or make an extra effort
加油 is a terribly common phrase in day to day life. If you want to encourage someone to carry on great work, or in a sports competition, you say 加油! A bit like 'go on!' in English.
Of course another literal meaning of 加油 is to refuel.ShaoLan explains how the symbols break down.
09 SEP 2013 by ideonexus
Wubizixing
At one time, Chinese had a serious "keyboard problem", but it's been largely solved by keyboards like Wubizixing ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubizixing [wikipedia.org] ) and Wubihua. At the simple end, Wubihua assigns 5 keys to the most fundamental strokes used to write Chinese: horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling/dot, and hooked/complex. You press the keys corresponding to at least the first 4 strokes, then press the key corresponding to the last, and it presents you with a ... 1 
notes
notesKeyboard method for typing Chinese characters.
31 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Pro-Arguments for Simplified Chinese Characters
Proponents feel that simplified characters having fewer strokes makes it easier to learn.[7] Literacy rates have risen steadily in rural and urban areas since the simplification of the Chinese characters, while this trend was hardly seen during 30 years of Kuomintang (KMT) rule and 250 years of Manchurian rule before them, when the traditional writing system was dominant, though this rise in literacy may not necessarily be due to simplification alone.
Although Taiwan, which uses traditio...A list of bullet points from wikipedia on how simplified chinese characters improve literacy and alleviate social oppression.
12 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Hackers Loved Chinese Food
Chinese food was a system, too, and the hacker curiosity was applied to that system as assiduously as to a new LISP compiler. Samson had been an aficionado from his first experience on a TMRC outing to Joy Fong’s on Central Square, and by the early sixties he had actually learned enough Chinese characters to read menus and order obscure dishes. Gosper took to the cuisine with even greater vigor; he would prowl Chinatown looking for restaurants open after midnight, and one night he found a t... 1 notes
notesBecause they discovered, through Chinese dictionaries, that there was another menu for Chinese patrons with better food that had fantastic names.
