Language and technological development

Miscellaneous History
1

In another thread there has been discussion as to why some populations of people have managed to advance technologicly while others much more slowly or not at all. Related to this discussion is the question as to why China, after a thousand years of being the technological equal or even superior of the west, slowly lost ground and was eventually left far behind. Certainly the isolationist policies pursued by its rulers beginning around the 15th century was a major hinderance, but it seems that Europe had already begun to outpace china by this time.

Another thread was talking about language and learning. I have very limited knowledge about Chineses and Japanese, but from what I understand they are not strictly phonetic written languages. While phonetic symbols have been incorporated over the centuries there are still literaly 1000s of unique symbols that must be recognized just to read a daily newspaper. While in most western languages only 20-30 unique symbols must be recognized.

I was hoping some of the people who stated they were familiar with or had learned Chinese could shed some light. How different are the two systems of writing? Could the western system be more efficient at communicating ideas and affected the rate of technological advancement? Or are these questions based on false assumptions and lack of information?

2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions

3

can’t remember where I heard it, but I remember hearing/reading something about how the Chinese language somehow prepares brains better to deal with numbers and mathematics.

4

But how effective is it to communicating ideas when compared to its western counterpart?

5

Japanese has 2 ~50 letter “alphabets”. One, katakana, is used more for foreign words. Another, hiragana, is used to form whole words or as part of a word with Chinese characters. The Chinese characters, kanji, have both a Chinese or Japanese pronunciation, depending on the context. I think that there is about 800 (IIRC) Chinese symbols to be learned by a certain point in middle school, then about 2,000 that the average person is “expected to know”. The last number is about 8,000 “in use commonly” throughout the whole language. Once you start to learn kanji, you sort of get a feel for how basic symbols are incorporated as part of more complex ones. There is no strict logic to this, just memorization with use.

I don’t know much about Chinese variants, besides that they only use pictograms instead of the syllabaries (alphabets) added in Japanese. China and Japan weren’t ever really “technologically poor” IMO, so I don’t see the correlation.

6

A good list but a bunch of the information has no source and when the article for the technology is read in many cases it conflicts with the date and source of the technology.

7

Is this why the computer technical manuals from Taiwan are always full of nonsensical English?

8

Agreed. But they did fall behind by most accounts.

Do you know if these symbols are composites of more simple symbols? It seems that a system where if you learn 20 -30 uniques symbols you can theoreticly say any word in the language would allow easier communication of ideas than a language where there are thousands of unique symbols. Of course what seems so simple rarely is.

9

They are, yes. But it is not systematic or anything.

10

Never seen one. But I have read some crazy translations of assembly instructions.

How do keyboards and such work in chinese? I had a few college courses with a fella from Tiawan who had a laptop with both an english and chinese keyboard in one. He tried to briefly show me how it worked but that was a long time ago.

11

So some of these simple symbols represent sounds and some do not. Others represent ideas? And there is no system where by you combine two simple symbols that have certain meanings or sounds into some associated derivative of the two.

12

I still don’t see what is wrong with the countries or how their language held them back. I think it might be more often the isolationism and desire for cultural homogeneity.

Many symbols are composites.ex:

人 ＝ man

言 ＝ word

信 ＝ trust (a man standing by his word)

13

My friends in Taiwan say there is no original Chinese symbol/word for ‘logic’. Do you know anything about that?

14

I meant that some kanji are composed of others, like that “明” is composed of “日” and “月”; but as I said, it is not systematic.

15

I didnt make any value judgements. Nothing is wrong with these countries.

That is very logical and good example of how the language may be more simple than I understand. But if someone is unfamiliar with the symbol for man how would they know what it even sounds like. So you may have heard the word in conversation before but because of a disconnect between written and spoken may never have made the connection with its written symbol. While with a phonetic alphabet as long as you know what sounds “m”, “a” & “n” make you know what the word sounds like. Which is more information about the word than you would have otherwise had and should allow you more options for learning its meaning.

So i guess what I am getting at is that with a phonetic alaphabet there is a direct connection betwenn written and spoken language while non phonetic languages there is not. Which could possibly be a hinderance to communication. Again I have limited knowledge in language and just wanted to get the input of those with more knowledge.

16

No clue. I will try to ask my Taiwanese friends when I see them, but it could be weeks.

Southern, I think they will use phonetic components at times too, but as I said, there is no strict logic to it. AJ is way better at Japanese and he can probably explain better when he is on.

Keep this in mind too: ま (ma) is always pronounced “mah”, whereas in English we have alternate pronunciations for letters or silent letters, etc.

17

was wondering the other day, what would happen with language in a free world. Would it stay relatively the same? Would there be a very slow shift to a few common languages, a rapid shift (3 generations) to one? would more or less people be bilingual? What would happen to languages like Catalan and Basque? Governments wouldn’t be around to make it part of the curriculum in the public schools, but there might be people with private interests in seeing the preservation of a spoken language.

18

I am pretty sure that each chinese character has a few or maybe just one fixed pronunciation. I think that each kanji has a few fixed pronunciations, too; but it is probably less systematic than in chinese.

19

but Southern was talking about phonetic languages in general, and a lot of them don’t have as much different pronunciation rules for the same letters as English.

20

Hans Hoppe explained, at a point in his series of lectures, that Latin, as the international language, was killed off by nationalism. Because it was not associated to a nation, in the age of the long reach of nation-states, those that were so superceded it. He also explained that, like Latin, gold, as the international money, was also killed off by nationalism. (Both Latin, as the international language, and gold, as the international money, began to wane around the same time, the time when nationalism and compulsory democracy began to “triumph”.)

Languages, like monies, are mediums of exchange. Monies are mediums of exchange of goods and languages are mediums of exchange of ideas, concepts, or whatever. So to decrease the costs of transactions, to avoid constantly having to “translate” between monies and between languages, which takes time away from other things, it makes sense to use whatever money and whatever language that is the most popular. So with that, both monies and languages are bound to tend to integrate and to centralize.

So I predict that, in a free world, because languages so quickly spring to life and develop, “local” languages will always exist. But because no nation-states would exist to associate themselves with a particular language and take steps to identify itself with that language, international languages will develop and be very important. I see no reason why, in a free world, every person in the developed world would not speak a single language or at most one of two, just like how we see no reason why, in a free world, every person in the developed world would not use the same money, historically, gold, or at most one of two, historically, either gold or silver.