User loginNavigation |
the Chinese natual languageYears ago, I once felt that there are some commonness between Chinese and Lisp. They both lack syntax, but expressing the same idea will need less words/time/space than other languages. What's more, they are both old languages but still used today. Today, I just read an article (in Chinese) saying that "Thinking in Chinese is faster than that in English". The main argument is that Chinese has more voices than English. Chinese has 21 consonants, 35 vowels and 4 scales/tunes (音调, 四声 in Chinese but no counterpoint in English), so there can be totally 2900 voices, although only 1200 in use. English only has 20 consonants and 20 vowels, so there are only 400 voices at most (not to mention some unused voices). The time needed to think/pronounce one voice is relatively constant, which means that thinking in Chinese other than in English is somewhat like using a 64bit CPU other than a 32bit one. The author also mentions the example of 'pork,mutton,beef, and donkey meat' and the corresponding words in Chinese. Since I have read several posters here about natual language, I post it here for more discussion. By Zhu Chongkai at 2004-12-22 06:45 | Site Discussion | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 43061 reads
|
Browse archives
Active forum topics |
Recent comments
25 weeks 4 days ago
25 weeks 4 days ago
25 weeks 4 days ago
47 weeks 5 days ago
52 weeks 19 hours ago
1 year 1 week ago
1 year 1 week ago
1 year 4 weeks ago
1 year 8 weeks ago
1 year 8 weeks ago