This is a cross-posting from the Dozens Online forum: http://z13.invisionfree.com/DozensOnline/index.php?showtopic=512
Did you know that in some Asian countries, they count your age as an ordinal number of years you've been outside your mother? In other words, a newborn baby is said to be 1 year old, or in his first year. Consequently, if you ask a person their age (it's not really important which country I'm talking about, but I think it may have been China), you'll get an answer that's inflated by 1.
In Japan, there exists some of the world's longest-lived people. Some say it's a matter of genetics. Some say it's their diet of fish and rice. And others cite the respect and esteem in which they hold their old people.
Since it's trendy to generalize and denigrate North Americo-European culture, I'll do so here: we just don't afford our elders the respect they deserve. Further, too many of us balk at the idea of being considered older. In this post, I'm suggesting everyone add half a year to the age they tell everyone they are. When asked "how old are you?" Calculate your answer by your half-birthday from now on.
I realize this won't be popular. People around North America and Europe seem to think it a great compliment to be told "you look ten years younger than your actual age". Feh!
Of course, before age 21, everyone looks forward to birthdays, because they represent getting to be able to do new things. Drive. Drink. Vote. Etc. After 21, the only thing to look forward to is the retirement age, at which you can start collecting a pension. And before you get to be part of that sweet deal, your other milestones include things like prostate exams.
Anyways, the meat of my proposal is that we should answer the question "how old are you?" by rounding to the nearest year. That way we're not privileging cardinals over ordinals. Every year on your half-birthday, your age advances by 1. Your age does not advance on your birthday. You can still celebrate your birthday, if you want, but you are no longer permitted to say "well I sure feel different now that I'm 29 instead of 28. That sentence is reserved for your half-birthday.
Incidentally, you are no longer permitted to ask anyone on their actual birthday "do you feel older?" Now you must ask this question on their half-birthday. In fact, any day will do, but half-birthday is the new comedically appropriate time to ask this timelessly droll question.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
Speculative
By the end of this century, and before I am dead, we will learn that there are other civilizations in our galaxy. They will be busy being industrious, sending communications back and forth to one another, and they won't have noticed us yet. The Milky Way Galaxy will turn out to be a bustling place, full of life. It is vast, and mostly empty, but then so is the Pacific Ocean, and yet we consider the Pacific the highway of the world.
We should cherish these times while we still have them. We should cherish the ability to look up at the sky and wonder and simply not know what sorts of things are out there. Because soon we will know, and it will be exciting, but it will also be scary, because the things out there are extremely powerful.
We will discover amazingly advanced civilizations that will boggle our imaginations. However, we will be impotent to communicate with them, and we will only be able to glean what information we can from their transmissions. They may have perfected encription and compression to the point where we cannot distinguish their communications from meaningless noise, and the only evidence of extreme intelligence will be the artificiality of the signal.
We will discover that our world is much larger than it ever has been. As big as our planet is, our galaxy is so much bigger, and so much more inaccessible. We will be able to witness industry on a galactic scale, but we will be unable to participate. We will be like the Pacific Islanders building airstrips and artificial airplanes out of bamboo in the hopes of attracting the far-off flying planes. We will have our own mathematical cargo cults, the smartest among us will only build crude decoys that we will broadcast as the weakest of signals, in the hopes that a passing extraterrestrial freighter might stop and leave us some precious cargo.
What manner of cargo? My point is of course that we cannot know what the universe has in store, and we might never know. We will know by the end of this century that there are others out there, but it will be another millenium before we can send and receive signals. It's the beauty of this century that we are allowed to dream of what may come, with no actual knowledge, and never again will we be in this position.
So what manner of cargo? Well, first of all, we'll be looking for encription codes to unlock the secrets of the communications, not meant for us. After encription codes, we'll be looking for secrets of physics and the universe. Perhaps we will learn that there is nothing more to learn, that indeed the speed of light is a fundamental limit, that no new subatomic particles are available to discovery. Perhaps we will learn that the galactic overlords themselves are conducting a SETI project over millions of years to search for, and communicate with intelligences in other galaxies.
The kind of cargo I will be looking for will be the physical specifications for building things like quantum computers, and engineering designs for building spaceports, space elevators, and spaceborn shipyards. Perhaps instructions sent to automated facilities, which we can intercept, interpret, and reproduce. Perhaps there will be instructions for fusing hydrogen into any element desirable, simply, easily, and cheaply. Of course, all of these technologies, even with knowing how they can be done, will cost so much money to implement, requiring interplanetary infrastructure, that we will take centuries to reproduce them, if we can at all. Atomic fusion reactors built in the spaces between planets and asteroids, require thousands, perhaps millions of miles of space.
Or maybe there will be some kind of physical cargo. Interstellar freight lines, broken into asteroids, summing to masses greater than Jupiter, space trains millions of miles in length, travelling in convoys across the galaxy. Iron, gold, silver, titanium, platinum. Shooting in streams of matter from one end of the galaxy to the other. Just one of these asteroids worth more than the combined wealth of our entire planet.
Or perhaps supercomputer components, built at the quantum level, and integrated with software the likes which we cannot even imagine.
Or perhaps interstellar cargo will simply be streams of hydrogen atoms, or photons themselves. If technology is physically possible to transform matter and energy, perhaps the cargo lines of the galaxy are intense beams of light. If matter can be transformed into light and back again, then it should be most efficient to transport all cargo as photons. In that case, we're fortunate that we haven't been struck by such beams already. Unless they're part of what we have been seeing as the spectrum of cosmic rays, they've been passing through us this whole time, and we don't know how to receive them.
So we should count ourselves lucky to live in an innocent age. We don't have to be jaded about the industry of the galaxy. We don't have to worry about the stability of the galaxy because of interstellar pollution.
We should cherish these times while we still have them. We should cherish the ability to look up at the sky and wonder and simply not know what sorts of things are out there. Because soon we will know, and it will be exciting, but it will also be scary, because the things out there are extremely powerful.
We will discover amazingly advanced civilizations that will boggle our imaginations. However, we will be impotent to communicate with them, and we will only be able to glean what information we can from their transmissions. They may have perfected encription and compression to the point where we cannot distinguish their communications from meaningless noise, and the only evidence of extreme intelligence will be the artificiality of the signal.
We will discover that our world is much larger than it ever has been. As big as our planet is, our galaxy is so much bigger, and so much more inaccessible. We will be able to witness industry on a galactic scale, but we will be unable to participate. We will be like the Pacific Islanders building airstrips and artificial airplanes out of bamboo in the hopes of attracting the far-off flying planes. We will have our own mathematical cargo cults, the smartest among us will only build crude decoys that we will broadcast as the weakest of signals, in the hopes that a passing extraterrestrial freighter might stop and leave us some precious cargo.
What manner of cargo? My point is of course that we cannot know what the universe has in store, and we might never know. We will know by the end of this century that there are others out there, but it will be another millenium before we can send and receive signals. It's the beauty of this century that we are allowed to dream of what may come, with no actual knowledge, and never again will we be in this position.
So what manner of cargo? Well, first of all, we'll be looking for encription codes to unlock the secrets of the communications, not meant for us. After encription codes, we'll be looking for secrets of physics and the universe. Perhaps we will learn that there is nothing more to learn, that indeed the speed of light is a fundamental limit, that no new subatomic particles are available to discovery. Perhaps we will learn that the galactic overlords themselves are conducting a SETI project over millions of years to search for, and communicate with intelligences in other galaxies.
The kind of cargo I will be looking for will be the physical specifications for building things like quantum computers, and engineering designs for building spaceports, space elevators, and spaceborn shipyards. Perhaps instructions sent to automated facilities, which we can intercept, interpret, and reproduce. Perhaps there will be instructions for fusing hydrogen into any element desirable, simply, easily, and cheaply. Of course, all of these technologies, even with knowing how they can be done, will cost so much money to implement, requiring interplanetary infrastructure, that we will take centuries to reproduce them, if we can at all. Atomic fusion reactors built in the spaces between planets and asteroids, require thousands, perhaps millions of miles of space.
Or maybe there will be some kind of physical cargo. Interstellar freight lines, broken into asteroids, summing to masses greater than Jupiter, space trains millions of miles in length, travelling in convoys across the galaxy. Iron, gold, silver, titanium, platinum. Shooting in streams of matter from one end of the galaxy to the other. Just one of these asteroids worth more than the combined wealth of our entire planet.
Or perhaps supercomputer components, built at the quantum level, and integrated with software the likes which we cannot even imagine.
Or perhaps interstellar cargo will simply be streams of hydrogen atoms, or photons themselves. If technology is physically possible to transform matter and energy, perhaps the cargo lines of the galaxy are intense beams of light. If matter can be transformed into light and back again, then it should be most efficient to transport all cargo as photons. In that case, we're fortunate that we haven't been struck by such beams already. Unless they're part of what we have been seeing as the spectrum of cosmic rays, they've been passing through us this whole time, and we don't know how to receive them.
So we should count ourselves lucky to live in an innocent age. We don't have to be jaded about the industry of the galaxy. We don't have to worry about the stability of the galaxy because of interstellar pollution.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Better Mandarin Chinese Romanization
A simple proposal for improved Chinese romanization.
For many years now, longer than I've been alive, China has been becoming increasingly important to Western and English-speaking people. Along with the importance of the country comes the importance of Chinese-language terms, names, and concepts that cannot be expressed with existing English words, or possibly even spelling.
I am thinking specifically now of Mandarin Chinese, Beijing dialect, which is represented by Hanyu pinyin. Hanyu pinyin is currently the best development for translating the sounds of Mandarin in the Roman alphabet for pronunciation by English speakers. Hanyu pinyin translates the aural language quite well. One challenge though, with translating Mandarin is that it is a tonal language. Hanyu pinyin approaches the challenge with diacritics placed above the latin vowels. A rising tone looks like an acute accent: á. There are three other tones also: ā ǎ à.
Unfortunately, what often happens in newspapers and other articles is that the tone marks are removed. Some people have argued that this is because of the technical limitations of print, but I don't think this is the case.
I think it's done because tone markings are pretty much nonsensical to a typical English-speaking reader. They can work out a basic pronunciation for a Chinese borrowing by applying the English rules to the letters that appear, but the accents are meaningless at best, and misleading at worst, since these symbols are used with totally other meaning in languages that might be more familiar to English-speakers, notably French with its acute and grave accents. This leaves most typical Mandarin borrowings only partially complete with regard to sound.
Again unfortunately, for the slightly more educated English reader, one who does have a passing familiarity with the Mandarin language, a Hanyu pinyin term stripped of its tonal marks is rather meaningless also. If the term is a proper name or a brand name, there is little chance of the average English speaker being able to guess or even begin to look up the Mandarin meaning or proper pronunciation of the name. It stands alone as a neologism in the English language, and it is not likely to be able to ever be connected back to the original Mandarin.
What I propose then, instead of tonal marks, which Academics add and newspaper editors strip away, is that Hanyu pinyin should be adapted to use silent final consonants to indicate tone. Newspapers are less likely to strip away a silent final consonant, since the average English reader is used to words with unpronounced finals. These would allow the middling-educated reader, like me, to glean more information about pronounciation from a popular article, and therefore be better able to look up the word in a Chinese-English dictionary, or even recall it from memory. And less-familar readers would be no worse off.
Here are my simple rules:
1. High steady tone. No extra consonant. This would look the same as the stripped newspaper version of Hanyu pinyin that appears everywhere already. Yāng => Yang
2. Rising tone. Follow with u, w, or y. Put a "w" after the vowel if the vowel is a, u, or ü (expect this to be replaced by "u" or "yu" in some publications). If the vowel is i, put a "y" after it. If the vowel is e, put a "u" after it. In the case of a vowel pair, go by the second vowel. If the vowel is followed by n or ng, the silent y or w goes before it. Example: Yáng => Yawng
a -> w
e -> u
i -> y
everything else -> w
3. Falling-rising tone. Double the vowel*. If it's a vowel pair, double the last vowel. Example: Yǎng => Yaang.
Special: In words where "oo" and "ee" appear, I suggest diareses, when possible. Example: Hě => Heë (acceptable variants: Heè, Heé, Hee). Bǒ = Boö (or Boò or Boó or Boo)
4. Falling tone. Put an h after the vowel. Yàng => Yahng
5. Neutral tone. Put an apostrophe after the vowel. (Optionally, this can be left off, making it visually identical to the first tone, but this is not too much of a problem since the neutral tone can be determined by context.) Ma => Ma'
*[Note that doubling the vowel is already used in a select few cases, for example, the Chinese province of Shaanxi would be distinguished from Shanxi only by the tone mark, but the official Chinese romanization doubles the vowel to represent the falling-rising tone.]
To an average English speaker with no Mandarin, "yawng" or "yahng" reads exactly the same as "yang". They're equally foreign, and yet the letters are familiar enough so that they can make a guess at pronunciation.
They might be fooled into thinking that the spelling affects the quality of the vowel, but I'm not worried about this for two reasons. First, English readers usually get the vowel wrong already. "Yang" should almost rhyme with English "long", but English speakers usually rhyme it with "hang".
Second, I feel that the benefit of distinguishing the tones is worth the drawback of losing some clarity of vowels. I have been led to believe that the quality of the tone is as important to Mandarin speakers as the quality of the vowel. Perhaps in some cases it is even more important to get the tone right than the vowel. I think it's better to get both components of the word partially right, than to get only one partially right (the vowel) and completely ignore the other (the tone).
Some examples:
Máo Zédōng (Mao Tse-tung) => Maow Zeudong
Hú Jǐntāo => Huw Jiintao
Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng (Chiang Kai-shek) => Jiaang Zhongzhehng
Mǎ Yīngjiǔ (Ma Ying-jeou) => Maa Yingjiuu
Zhōngguó => Zhongguow
Běijīng => Beiijing
Táiběi (Taipei) => Taiybeii
For many years now, longer than I've been alive, China has been becoming increasingly important to Western and English-speaking people. Along with the importance of the country comes the importance of Chinese-language terms, names, and concepts that cannot be expressed with existing English words, or possibly even spelling.
I am thinking specifically now of Mandarin Chinese, Beijing dialect, which is represented by Hanyu pinyin. Hanyu pinyin is currently the best development for translating the sounds of Mandarin in the Roman alphabet for pronunciation by English speakers. Hanyu pinyin translates the aural language quite well. One challenge though, with translating Mandarin is that it is a tonal language. Hanyu pinyin approaches the challenge with diacritics placed above the latin vowels. A rising tone looks like an acute accent: á. There are three other tones also: ā ǎ à.
Unfortunately, what often happens in newspapers and other articles is that the tone marks are removed. Some people have argued that this is because of the technical limitations of print, but I don't think this is the case.
I think it's done because tone markings are pretty much nonsensical to a typical English-speaking reader. They can work out a basic pronunciation for a Chinese borrowing by applying the English rules to the letters that appear, but the accents are meaningless at best, and misleading at worst, since these symbols are used with totally other meaning in languages that might be more familiar to English-speakers, notably French with its acute and grave accents. This leaves most typical Mandarin borrowings only partially complete with regard to sound.
Again unfortunately, for the slightly more educated English reader, one who does have a passing familiarity with the Mandarin language, a Hanyu pinyin term stripped of its tonal marks is rather meaningless also. If the term is a proper name or a brand name, there is little chance of the average English speaker being able to guess or even begin to look up the Mandarin meaning or proper pronunciation of the name. It stands alone as a neologism in the English language, and it is not likely to be able to ever be connected back to the original Mandarin.
What I propose then, instead of tonal marks, which Academics add and newspaper editors strip away, is that Hanyu pinyin should be adapted to use silent final consonants to indicate tone. Newspapers are less likely to strip away a silent final consonant, since the average English reader is used to words with unpronounced finals. These would allow the middling-educated reader, like me, to glean more information about pronounciation from a popular article, and therefore be better able to look up the word in a Chinese-English dictionary, or even recall it from memory. And less-familar readers would be no worse off.
Here are my simple rules:
1. High steady tone. No extra consonant. This would look the same as the stripped newspaper version of Hanyu pinyin that appears everywhere already. Yāng => Yang
2. Rising tone. Follow with u, w, or y. Put a "w" after the vowel if the vowel is a, u, or ü (expect this to be replaced by "u" or "yu" in some publications). If the vowel is i, put a "y" after it. If the vowel is e, put a "u" after it. In the case of a vowel pair, go by the second vowel. If the vowel is followed by n or ng, the silent y or w goes before it. Example: Yáng => Yawng
a -> w
e -> u
i -> y
everything else -> w
3. Falling-rising tone. Double the vowel*. If it's a vowel pair, double the last vowel. Example: Yǎng => Yaang.
Special: In words where "oo" and "ee" appear, I suggest diareses, when possible. Example: Hě => Heë (acceptable variants: Heè, Heé, Hee). Bǒ = Boö (or Boò or Boó or Boo)
4. Falling tone. Put an h after the vowel. Yàng => Yahng
5. Neutral tone. Put an apostrophe after the vowel. (Optionally, this can be left off, making it visually identical to the first tone, but this is not too much of a problem since the neutral tone can be determined by context.) Ma => Ma'
*[Note that doubling the vowel is already used in a select few cases, for example, the Chinese province of Shaanxi would be distinguished from Shanxi only by the tone mark, but the official Chinese romanization doubles the vowel to represent the falling-rising tone.]
To an average English speaker with no Mandarin, "yawng" or "yahng" reads exactly the same as "yang". They're equally foreign, and yet the letters are familiar enough so that they can make a guess at pronunciation.
They might be fooled into thinking that the spelling affects the quality of the vowel, but I'm not worried about this for two reasons. First, English readers usually get the vowel wrong already. "Yang" should almost rhyme with English "long", but English speakers usually rhyme it with "hang".
Second, I feel that the benefit of distinguishing the tones is worth the drawback of losing some clarity of vowels. I have been led to believe that the quality of the tone is as important to Mandarin speakers as the quality of the vowel. Perhaps in some cases it is even more important to get the tone right than the vowel. I think it's better to get both components of the word partially right, than to get only one partially right (the vowel) and completely ignore the other (the tone).
Some examples:
Máo Zédōng (Mao Tse-tung) => Maow Zeudong
Hú Jǐntāo => Huw Jiintao
Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng (Chiang Kai-shek) => Jiaang Zhongzhehng
Mǎ Yīngjiǔ (Ma Ying-jeou) => Maa Yingjiuu
Zhōngguó => Zhongguow
Běijīng => Beiijing
Táiběi (Taipei) => Taiybeii
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