Thesto Neroses

Should is probably too strong a word - no imperative was intended, bar that which utility for native users might suggest.

I was surprised to see how fast people can type in Chinese. On Saturday I had to set up my WinXP PC to use the New ChangJie input method for a female friend of mine to use MSN Messenger. She was able to type at lightning speed.
There are a few advantages I can think of:
i) brevity on the page - the information appears in a much more condensed way.
ii) In a language such as Chinese which has such a limited set of phonemes, the characters give a greater variety than a merely phonetic writing system would.
iii) In chinese poetry the shape and structure of the characters is just as meaningful as the literal meaning of the words or the rhythm. For example, a sequence of characters each containing the radical derived from the character for wood would give a much stronger feeling of woodiness because of the repetition of the graphic representation.

I am not a speaker (or reader) of Chinese, these ideas are only what I have gleaned from coworkers.

.You assume correctly - "weiguoren" could be literally translated as "outlander".

Thesto Neroses

Not a speaker - definitely not a user of hanyu pinyin (yuck) - but I think you are correct.

Here in Taiwan the romanisation is hellish, I have seen one street called variously: Hepin, Hopin, Herping, Heping, Hoping, and several others which I can't remember. I think it is supposed to be "He Ping" - but I could be mistaken!

Monkeybot

Haha. Hanyu pinyin is what we learn in class. I've only had 2 semesters though (and a whole summer to forget everything I've learned!).

Ever notice how non-native speakers tend to be really picky about language? I freely include myself in that category, of course

Vorkosigan

Yes, sort of. Needham has a discussion of this in the first volume of Science and Civ. Among the advantages are that ideographs can be read faster and that they pack more information into a smaller space. The major disadvantage is the learning difficulty, and the problem of classifying with them; in English, with 26 letters, alphabetizing is easy. In China, with more than 200 radicals and several different ways of organizing characters (sound, radical, stroke count) it is more difficult. Most references here (the phone book, for example) use the stroke count. But the major drawback is the difficulty of classification.

I am one of those who would like to see the characters disappear too. But the Chinese are aghast at that -- they are an important part of the culture, divination systems, etc.

Typing speed does not seem to differ much; in fact, if one made a comparison, I suspect Chinese might come out ahead in terms of info inputted in a specific period of time by highly skilled typists, given the greater concision of Chinese. A good speed with the system here is 40-60 characters per minute, but I do not know if the pinyin input systems result in faster character input.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

IIRC, it's waiguoren, but I'll let one of the actual Chinese speakers confirm or deny that.

Correct. Although around here they say "A-do-gah" or they say "Meiguoren" -- American -- which tends to stand for all foreigners the way "xerox" is a verb for all forms of copying.

Vorkosigan

conkermaniac

Good point! Some of the Harry Potter books I saw kids holding in their hands are more than 50% thinner than the original English version! And no, it's not an abridged version.

I say "waiguoren" to mean foreigners, but if I want to be specific, I use "meiguoren" for Americans and "ouzhouren" for Europeans, etc.

rfwu

when it's REALLY literal, it mean "outside country person".
wei=outside
guo=country
ren=person/people

rfwu

When you think about it, Meiguoren is actually very flattering, even though it's really meant to be phonetically similar to American. Literally, it means "beautiful country person".
Mei=beautiful
Guo=country
ren=person/people

But the written character for "Mei" is a combination of meanings that come together to form "big fat sheep", because a big fat sheep was considered beautiful back then!

So when it's REALLY literal, American in Chinese means "big fat sheep country person"!

Thesto Neroses

Agreed

Nevertheless I think that outlander(s) is equally literal, and also preserves the essential exclusionary quality of the word waiguoren.

Dunno what to make of laowai, though - many of the other non-Taiwanese seem to consider this a mild insult, although no-one has been forthcoming with me as to why it is insulting.

Thesto Neroses

I wonder if the prose is as leaden in Chinese as it is in English?

Some of these translations can cause confusion, for example Inguo meaning UK and Ingelan meaning England. My students always seem surprised that the UK is actually four countries. They are even more surprised when I suggest that a Scot would be unlikely to respond well to being called English.

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