Not only am I Canadian, but my ancestors have been there since before there was a country called Canada, including those who took part in the founding of Upper Canada, and I gotta say---what in the flying fuck are you talking about?!?!?!?
What invading foreign nation are you proposing came along and forced democracy on an unsuspecting Canadian populous?!?!?!?
The American colonies started the Revolution. The French helped them achieve their aims. How on Earth does that equate to forcing a country to accept democracy?!?
Actually, it's a member of the Japonic language family, which includes Ryukyuan, the native language of the Ryukyu islands (like Okinawa). There are also those who are still trying to prove its relation to Korean.
There's 600,000 to 1,000,000 million words depending on who you ask.
Most of those words are archaic, technical or obscure dialect that almost no native speaker knows. It's said that Shakespeare wrote with a vocab of 30,000 words. There's not an English speaker alive who has a vocab of 600,000 words--not even scholars or nerds.
All interesting wikitrivia to someone, but doesn't make the languages actually "related" in any sense a linguist would accept, let alone "heavily related". Unless you want to now claim that Japanese is related to English because of the thousands of English words that have been borrowed into Japanese.
China and Japan have had relations (sometimes closer, sometimes more distant) in the past, and have exchanged culture and vocab. That is not anything like the same as saying the languages are related.
"To some extent" and not much further. Keep in mind that a verb is made negative through a conjugation which would not be expressed in a Chinese character. Without knowledge of Hiragana and at least basic Japanese grammar, the Chinese reader could easily interpret a Japanese sentence as the opposite of what it really means---which could very well be far worse than not understanding at all.
The Japanese writing is a distinct system from the Chinese one. Hiragana cannot be removed from the system. It is emphatically not a dialect of the Chinese system by any stretch of the imagination, any more than English writing is a dialect of Latin because we happen to "retain" a large number of Latin words.
It's related to Japanese, Korean and a few other east-asian languages...
Japanese and Korean are not related to Chinese (they are drastically different from Chinese on pretty much every level you can think of!), although Japanese makes use of Chinese characters in its written language (albeit in a highly idiosyncratic way). North Korea has apparently done away with Chinese characters, and in South Korea their use is limited.
Chinese characters are more suited to writing English than to writing Japanese
I don't know about this. The morphology of Japanese verbs falls into predictable patterns, which means you can have the stem of the verb written in a Chinese character and the rest written in Hiragana. Try doing that with write-->wrote-->written.
...a task that failed because of the crushing weight of tradition.
Strange how that "crushing weight of tradition" didn't stop the Chinese from transitioning to Maoism in 1949---especially strange given that the literacy rate in 1949 was no more than 20%.
There is not ONE "Chinese language" but many separate *languages*
...it was also used in Korea until a few hundred years ago and a dialect is still used in Japan.
"Dialect"? The Japanese use Chinese characters in writing, but it is used in an incompatible way (especially when it comes to the verbs). Japanese use of Kanji is more like Hungarian use of the Roman alphabet---a totally unrelated language using another language's writing system adapted to their own needs.
The Japanese copied Hangul to apply to equivalent words in the unrelated Japanese language.
The Japanese imported Chinese writing about 1500 years ago, then developed Hiragana and Katakana somewhere around 800AD. Hangul was created in 1443-44. The Japanese neither copied nor have ever even used Hangul in their entire history.
I think there's a big difference between a "slow" typist and a "hunt-and-peck" one. Someone who can touchtype, but only types 35WPM still has a huge advantage over someone who hunts and pecks. After that you get diminishing returns---if you type faster than you can think, then typing that fast isn't helping you.
It is confusing when you refer to yourself as "he".
Okay, I haven't seen Episode Three, so I don't know how long he retained his rhotic accent. I had gotten the impression he became Vader at the end, and the next time we see him he was voiced by James Earl Jones.
It is conspicuous in American good guy/bad guy shows, though, that the villains often speak with a non-rhotic accent, something I've noticed since I was a kid.
I just realized the "He" I was talking about is actually you (I should chest who's posting before replying). Who's the "he" you're talking about?
Now I'm confused. First you're claiming Annakin/Darth Vader switched accents, now you're claiming he didn't? It seems like you're arguing against yourself.
No, I meant that sexual acts are depicted explicitly in the books being removed (it's what makes them erotica), while in the Bible the sex is often talked about but never depicted. A crowd of people threatening to gang rape a bunch of angels is not the same as explicitly depicting the rape of those angels.
I'm not defending the Bible (I'm agnostic), but comparing the Bible with the erotica genre is just silly.
Which were in the Mishnah, the Talmud and the book of Jasher, but not the Old Testament, according to Wikipedia. The GP is talking about how hypocritical it is not to remove the Bible when the Bible has so much in common with the erotica being removed.
Funny how quickly this is turning from a discussion about censorship to one about whether or not Sodom and Gomorrah should have been burned. Maybe we can bring it all back by saying that God burned their books in the process?
Slashdot Mirror
Not only am I Canadian, but my ancestors have been there since before there was a country called Canada, including those who took part in the founding of Upper Canada, and I gotta say---what in the flying fuck are you talking about?!?!?!?
What invading foreign nation are you proposing came along and forced democracy on an unsuspecting Canadian populous?!?!?!?
The American colonies started the Revolution. The French helped them achieve their aims. How on Earth does that equate to forcing a country to accept democracy?!?
Just say it: Wikileaks fucked up.
Okay: "Wikileaks fucked up".
So the conclusion is...Wikileaks should be shut down?
What you missed was that "by force" meant force by another country. As in, one nation cannot force democracy on another (except nominally).
Japanese is a language isolate...
Actually, it's a member of the Japonic language family, which includes Ryukyuan, the native language of the Ryukyu islands (like Okinawa). There are also those who are still trying to prove its relation to Korean.
There's 600,000 to 1,000,000 million words depending on who you ask.
Most of those words are archaic, technical or obscure dialect that almost no native speaker knows. It's said that Shakespeare wrote with a vocab of 30,000 words. There's not an English speaker alive who has a vocab of 600,000 words--not even scholars or nerds.
All interesting wikitrivia to someone, but doesn't make the languages actually "related" in any sense a linguist would accept, let alone "heavily related". Unless you want to now claim that Japanese is related to English because of the thousands of English words that have been borrowed into Japanese.
China and Japan have had relations (sometimes closer, sometimes more distant) in the past, and have exchanged culture and vocab. That is not anything like the same as saying the languages are related.
"To some extent" and not much further. Keep in mind that a verb is made negative through a conjugation which would not be expressed in a Chinese character. Without knowledge of Hiragana and at least basic Japanese grammar, the Chinese reader could easily interpret a Japanese sentence as the opposite of what it really means---which could very well be far worse than not understanding at all.
The Japanese writing is a distinct system from the Chinese one. Hiragana cannot be removed from the system. It is emphatically not a dialect of the Chinese system by any stretch of the imagination, any more than English writing is a dialect of Latin because we happen to "retain" a large number of Latin words.
It's related to Japanese, Korean and a few other east-asian languages...
Japanese and Korean are not related to Chinese (they are drastically different from Chinese on pretty much every level you can think of!), although Japanese makes use of Chinese characters in its written language (albeit in a highly idiosyncratic way). North Korea has apparently done away with Chinese characters, and in South Korea their use is limited.
Chinese characters are more suited to writing English than to writing Japanese
I don't know about this. The morphology of Japanese verbs falls into predictable patterns, which means you can have the stem of the verb written in a Chinese character and the rest written in Hiragana. Try doing that with write-->wrote-->written.
If you write in english almost everyone will understand you, regardless if they are in northern Canada or the southern tip of South America.
Spanning the Americas....they call that "Manifest Destiny", don't they?
...a task that failed because of the crushing weight of tradition.
Strange how that "crushing weight of tradition" didn't stop the Chinese from transitioning to Maoism in 1949---especially strange given that the literacy rate in 1949 was no more than 20%.
There is not ONE "Chinese language" but many separate *languages*
...it was also used in Korea until a few hundred years ago and a dialect is still used in Japan.
"Dialect"? The Japanese use Chinese characters in writing, but it is used in an incompatible way (especially when it comes to the verbs). Japanese use of Kanji is more like Hungarian use of the Roman alphabet---a totally unrelated language using another language's writing system adapted to their own needs.
The Japanese copied Hangul to apply to equivalent words in the unrelated Japanese language.
The Japanese imported Chinese writing about 1500 years ago, then developed Hiragana and Katakana somewhere around 800AD. Hangul was created in 1443-44. The Japanese neither copied nor have ever even used Hangul in their entire history.
Here I was thinking you'd just coined a fantastic new word---but it's already in Wikipedia...
I think there's a big difference between a "slow" typist and a "hunt-and-peck" one. Someone who can touchtype, but only types 35WPM still has a huge advantage over someone who hunts and pecks. After that you get diminishing returns---if you type faster than you can think, then typing that fast isn't helping you.
Sorry, don't have a Windows or Mac box.
So, if I don't need to use Spell Check, and refuse to use it, but still get the spelling right, would I get bonus marks?
I mean, I obviously would have demonstrated that I'd learned more.
It is confusing when you refer to yourself as "he".
Okay, I haven't seen Episode Three, so I don't know how long he retained his rhotic accent. I had gotten the impression he became Vader at the end, and the next time we see him he was voiced by James Earl Jones.
It is conspicuous in American good guy/bad guy shows, though, that the villains often speak with a non-rhotic accent, something I've noticed since I was a kid.
In some ways Debian is much stricter than the FSF.
I just ran vrms on my system and turned up 38 "non-free" packages---all of which were documentation.
Sumone their must a done sumthin dum, cuz it dropt to 96% sinse you postid.
I just realized the "He" I was talking about is actually you (I should chest who's posting before replying). Who's the "he" you're talking about?
Now I'm confused. First you're claiming Annakin/Darth Vader switched accents, now you're claiming he didn't? It seems like you're arguing against yourself.
No, I meant that sexual acts are depicted explicitly in the books being removed (it's what makes them erotica), while in the Bible the sex is often talked about but never depicted. A crowd of people threatening to gang rape a bunch of angels is not the same as explicitly depicting the rape of those angels.
I'm not defending the Bible (I'm agnostic), but comparing the Bible with the erotica genre is just silly.
Which were in the Mishnah, the Talmud and the book of Jasher, but not the Old Testament, according to Wikipedia. The GP is talking about how hypocritical it is not to remove the Bible when the Bible has so much in common with the erotica being removed.
Funny how quickly this is turning from a discussion about censorship to one about whether or not Sodom and Gomorrah should have been burned. Maybe we can bring it all back by saying that God burned their books in the process?
I do believe he's talking about the Darth Vader in the original films (at least I was).