Stories of Chinese word and term (27)

众矢之的Target for all of the arrows. 众means plenty or all, 矢 means arrow, 之 means ‘of’. Put them together, this term means that although someone is famous or outstanding, but he (or she) may be a common target for scorn too. 

 https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx280yCt5adUtO8FqqyEO4qhRggTUB2wMrzRM1oeWjkBFIFHnQMeno5x1Nd0CJGkJxk-75WIHGMfrtVPJvrUsxh9l0l4RWTaYfNPV-43Bwczg6GSCPtBRVuWuWIGXEb9xfnrgOv57olKY/s1600/see.jpeg

Another Short History of Linguistics (79)

How the Dictionary Deal the 95% Words

Many years ago, before the internet dictionary had appeared, to deal with the unfrequently used words was biggest headache for the editor of any dictionary. No one knew that a suddenly emerged word would survival how long. Some new words, especially scientific and technical words or terms might disappeared before a dictionary going to be published; normally a process took one to two years. When a customer bought a dictionary it might contain many dead words that one could never meet in the future.

Today, we know that issue can be solved by the meaning alphabets or meaning letters. That is the pictogram, as Rene Descartes had dreamed for language.

By language law, we may easy to understand Chinese choosing the compound word system was based on the usage of tone and homophone. As they got roughly four times sounds as English and dozens time of homophones, their oral expression is shorter than English words, and shorter oral expression make the compound word easy to be pronounced. The key reason is still from the tone or quantity of sounds. English is undergoing to develop the tone this changing began from the Great Vowel Shift. The long and short vowel will finally lead English to a tone language like what happened in Chinese.

Stories of Chinese word and term (26)

鹤立鸡群, a crane standing among chickens.

A chief of a tribe offered fine furs of fox and black leopard to duke 晋文. When the duke took them he sighed, “These animals were killed because they have beautiful fur. It just like some states were invaded because their king have good reputation, or they have fertile farmland all these crime is from greedy. So, if you are a crane standing among chickens, you will be the one to be struck down first.”

It was the main reason that Chinese always keep in low-key. For their ancestors always taught them like this.

Pic from: http://www.dizigui9.com/zlk/jiaoxueyuandi/jiaoyuzatan/2287.html

Another Short History of Linguistics (78)

This topic is dealing with the most valuable 95% words of vocabulary vs. the most valuable 5% words of everyday use.

When we go to supermarket to buy something, the most cost (95%) of our money is not the real value of the goods but the price of distribution channel. Yet what we bought is the goods, and you can’t only buy the goods by its own value unless you avoid the distribution channel go to the place of production directly. Even thus they may not sell you the goods for protecting the distribution channel. Similarly, when we consult a doctor, 95% of our conversation is known by the patient, before seeing doctor. That means to say we pay doctor only for the rest 5% that we don’t know. Yet to tell you the most valuable 5% of conversation, the doctor had to spend 95% of his life time to learn it.

As for language study, these two examples tell us, it is easy to know 95% of our everyday conversation, because it just repeat less than 20,000 words (less than 5% of the vocabulary). But it is hard to know the rest 5% that occasionally and randomly encounter our life. It is represented by more than 95% of our vocabulary; as the English vocabulary is already over one million, it means around 980,000 words. A most difficult question is, no one knows when, which and where will meet one. Unfortunately, today, nearly all the linguists ignore this biggest and hardest issue, all of them focused on the easy 20,000 words, and busy on invent rules or grammars to teach people how to arrange these easy 20,000 words according linguists thought. 

Stories of Chinese word and term (25)

·         老马识途Old horse knows the way；During the time of Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC.) Duke齐桓 had a war with kingdom孤竹. It lasted from spring to winter. When they were ready to go back home. The troop trapped in the desert. No one remembered the way to home. One of the duke’s chancellor said, “The old horse may tell us the way.” So they had loosen the belt of some horses and let them free to walk. It was true. The old horses led the army back to their home. Later this term means that ‘sense comes with age’.

Pic from: http://www.douban.com/note/45179608/

Another Short History of Linguistics (77)

After the Greece was trying to use mathematics replacing the nature language, easy to understand that idea would stimulate the nature language to think the opposition forces. Their method was to declare that there were some certain logic in nature language that could not be replaced by math and it was called grammar.  But today, it is proved as superstitious. The language expressing is like the expressing of picture. How can some rules limit you to draw a picture? Besides the grammar was emerged from a time of small-quantity-information. It have no reason apply to a time of large-quantity-information.

Last time I have said the Shakespeare’s time English only had 20-30 thousand words. If we check the Bible we may found:

http://www.diffen.com/difference/New_Testament_vs_Old_Testament

The New Testament contains a vocabulary of 4,800 words. And The Old Testament contains a vocabulary of 5,800 words. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet

The Phoenician invent alphabet 1,200 years ahead Bible, how many words they could have? The invention of alphabet language was focus on a simple society for that quantity of words, the inventor have no idea about a vocabulary of few million words.

Stories of Chinese word and term (24)

掷果盈车casting fruit to fill carriage. 潘岳was another handsome person of four most handsome men in Chinese history. He was a famous poet too. Throughout his life he loved only one woman that is his wife Lady Yang. After she died he didn’t marry again. As he was the most handsome man at his time, he had been forced to serve the ugliest empress in Chinese history 贾南风. In his time whenever he driven a carriage in street, women loved to put some fruits in it. When he return home the carriage always full with fruits.

Pic from: http://lyrb.lyd.com.cn/images/2012-10/09/1349703716140lyj129188_b.jpg

Another Short History of Linguistics (76)

Perhaps we can use computer memory to evaluate single person's knowledge and wisdom for people who lives in today. That is to say, the more you use the computer’s memory, the better or harder your mind have worked; not include the graphic memory. In this way we can roughly evaluate the work of mind for a single person. Similarly, we can use all the media of each time to evaluate the work of mind for people lived in that time.

With this concern a Chinese have questioned the truth of Aristotle. It was said that he had written three million words, during life time. But the question is, did he get enough writing carrier? How many parchment or papyrus should he use? In China 道德经 had five thousand characters. Confucius and his disciple together had fifty thousand Characters. The Bible have fifty thousand words. Shakespeare had eight hundred thousand words. How could Aristotle write three million words, in his living years?

The most probably reality is that there was a person called Aristotle who lived in Athens, who had written around one to three hundred words during life time. But where came the rest ninety percent of words? The answer is that they are the work of scholars of reinvasion because the power of church was too strong, any mistake may be the result of death by fire, on the other hand the development of capitalism required new idea, and so any new idea was expressed under the name of an ancient Greece.  So by translation, the word increased sharply. The strange thing is that if Aristotle did write so many words why we can't find even one page of them. While we can find thousands writing material that written by ancient scholar in China at that time.

Stories of Chinese word and term (23)

看杀卫玠Onlookers killed 卫玠 by their gaze. 卫玠 was born in 286 A.D.. He was one of the four most handsome men in Chinese history. He had a high rank family during 晋Dynasty. He loved to drive a white sheep pulled carriage. As he was the idol of women, when he on his carriage, there were always crowd with onlookers. As they kept looked at him daily, he felt uneasy. Later he died for this uncomfortable looking.

Pic from: http://img.talkyun.com/nciyuan//2013/6/1008/1582_1372481109523_jy5kdei7yvk1.jpg

Another Short History of Linguistics (75)

Science, may be a means of simplify language in order to help people understand the same thing in shorter period. The function is similar to the math from plus shift to multiply. But grammar do the opposite thing, it put more burden on language. In the old linguistic history no one questioned about that. Even Leibniz believed grammar is the logic of language.

By math we may easy to understand that developing tones are a real step to simplify language for it increased the interface between our brain and the world (tone language vs. none-tone language similar using the ten decimal number input system vs. the 26 English letter input system). This phenomenon no one had ever thought about for the European linguists didn’t know what tone was and the Japanese didn’t know this either although they had introduced the Chinese writing system 1,200 years ago.

Until the Japanese was ready to get rid of Chinese characters they still didn’t know the knack of tone. What they could see was that the alphabetic letters could represent the pronunciation better than the Character. This was the only reason that they were going to dump it. Coincidently, the world at that time turned to be a time that linguistics was decided by military power. Not only the French and British beat China badly, even the Japanese invaded large area of China. They believed that one of the reason for their victory was that they had shift from character language to the alphabetic letter. This idea echoed by their European counterparts.  

耍猴者说

昨天到超市上买东西。听到两个香港人对话，女的说，“以后没有港人治港了。”男的说，“北京治港啊。”

从语气上听出来，两位海外港人的无奈。但俩人的对话也反映出香港人对待政治的态度。香港占中行动已经基本上破产。但是，我就没见到任何一位香港人愿意反思失败的原因。为什么失败？从什么时候开始失败的？我认为，占中行动从2012年七月就已经注定失败的命运。因为，香港人反对中国历史教育。但是，事情恰恰就是这么巧，这个缺失造成了今天民主的大倒退。反过来，港人要求中共的理解，这很容易，中共的确把香港摸得一清二楚。否则也不会将港人玩弄于股掌之间。

孙子兵法上有这样一句话：‘知彼知己，百战不殆’。而香港的学生非要把这句话改成‘知己不必知彼，老子照样赢你’。结果就是被人当猴耍了。大家可以回忆一下，孙中山推翻清政府的时候，不知道中国历史成吗？甘地反抗英政府的时候，不知道英国历史成吗？美国总统华盛顿脱离英联邦的时候，不知道英国历史成吗？日本人侵华以前不进行几十年的特工，把中国摸得底儿掉成吗？怎么香港人就那么聪明，不必知道中国历史，就能唯我独尊？

因此，我认为，香港人真想有民主精神就要痛定思痛，老老实实学好中国历史。古今中外无人不知‘读史则明’的道理，怎么到香港就会特殊呢？不认清这一点的话还是贻笑大方，让人当猴耍。

Stories of Chinese word and term (22)

屠龙术, the skill of slaughter dragon. In ancient time a person called朱泙漫, was looking for some high technique to learn. Later he found that killing dragon needed the highest skill. So he paid a big money for the teacher and study it for three years. After three years he turned to be a really good dragon slaughter. But soon he found that there has no dragon for him to skill. It means to say even if you have a high skill in some area, but if you could not found a certain work, it would be useless.

Pic from: http://a2.att.hudong.com/07/61/14300000944234128176613920047.jpg

Another Short History of Linguistics (74)

This time, the Japanese are too hurry to get rid of the Chinese character without second thinking but a politic emotion.

During last few decades, some scholar were discussing on a book ‘Black Athena’

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/arts/martin-bernal-black-athena-scholar-dies-at-76.html?_r=0

Martin Bernal, whose three-volume work “Black Athena” ignited an academic debate by arguing that the African and Semitic lineage of Western civilization had been scrubbed from the record of ancient Greece by 18th- and 19th-century historians steeped in the racism of their times.

As: http://www.theafrican.com/Magazine/Athena/intro.htm

Said: “At the core of the debate were two questions: were the ancient Egyptians a Black African people, and to what extent was the civilization of ancient Greece indebted to learning borrowed or stolen from ancient Egypt.”

I believe that at least the idea of semantics of Aristotle was borrow from Egyptian.

Stories of Chinese word and term (21)

为虎作伥,play the jackal to the tiger. 为 means ‘for’. 虎 means tiger. 作 means create or make.  The character伥 means a ghost that was bitten to death by a tiger. This term means a tiger bitten to death ghost helping the tiger to kill more people. The metaphor means someone help bad person to do evil deed. 

 Pic from: http://www.cherriyuen.com/idiom/weihuzuochang.jpg

Another Short History of Linguistics (73)

When English scholar intend play down the influence of Leibniz, some new linguistic idea appeared the world from Asia, an idea not for scientific study but rather a sort of revenge. It appeared from Japan. After the successful Meiji restoration in 1866, they thought they were no more the backward Asia, they were a higher level nation, so they had a policy called Departing from Asia for Europe.

From history, we know that the Japanese had no writing system themselves until 645 A.D. they introduced the Chinese writing system that was the characters into their country. From then until 18 century, their national power and economy were still no match for China also they work harder than Chinese. Of course they wanted a stronger country than China but after 1,000 years learning from China, their situation didn’t changed anymore. The arrival of European people gave them a new hope of beating China, if there was no way to learn from China, the only hope could be the new culture from western world. Japanese is a native learner. Without any great thinker, they had to learn from any country of the world. The new culture gave them the inspiration and chance of surpass the traditional Chinese culture which had over their head for more than one thousand years already.

Stories of Chinese word and term (20)

金石为开, Sincerity can make metal and stone crack. In ancient time people believe that one’s sincerity could fulfil any goal. 李广Was a famous general at the time of 汉Dynasty. He was good at horse riding and archery, so he got a nickname as Flying General.

One day he went to a mountain and found a tiger was couching in the grass. He pick up an arrow and shot on it. But when he getting closer he found it was not tiger but a tiger like rock. The strange thing was that the arrow buried the rock deeply. He couldn't believe himself had such a powerful shot. He tried to do it another time and another time but he could not do the same thing. All the rest arrows could not harm the rock again.

Later people said that he did it sincerely so he could break the rock.

Pic from: http://www.wawayaya.net/kidland/images/jingchengsuozhi05121308.jpg

Another Short History of Linguistics (72)

One thing that Leibniz knowing but never said, that is with more basic symbols an input system could be more effective. This was the reason of even he invented the binary system yet his mechanic computer using decimal system. Because binary system could be very slow and decimal system faster. For with one operation, a binary system could only extend from 2 to 4, while with decimal system, one operation could extend from 10 to 100. That is my basic idea of why a language has more species of sound would faster than a language with less species of sound. And in fact the electronic computer using their symbols as ASCII or UNICODE instead of the simple Morse code is based on the same thinking.

We have said that the alphabetic language was looking for a method to shorten their oral expression during a long developing period, the first step was adopting voiceless consonant. Another method was adopting an expressing structure called grammar. But both of them didn’t fulfil the target successfully.

Stories of Chinese word and term (19)

愚公移山, the Foolish Old Man, who removed the mountains. In ancient time, behind two mountains, there lived an old man. It was quite a nuisance.  One day he decided to remove these mountain with his family.  A smart old man laugh at him but he said that the mountain won’t growing up anymore yet every day I could move a little bit of it. If I died, I had son to continue my job, my son died, I had grandson it would be endless descendants. His behaviour moved God and who help him removed these two mountains.

Pic from http://album.udn.com/community/img/PSN_PHOTO/abi803/f_5582699_1.JPG

Another Short History of Linguistics (71)

Yet for a long period, the world’s discourse power was holding in the hand of English speakers and they didn’t like Leibniz perhaps because he was a German. I know a story about the inventor of calculus, the English scholar insisted that it was Newton but German scholar insisted it was Leibniz.

Until today, we may find this prejudices, at: http://ial.wikia.com/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes

 “Many great philosophers have taken stances on the topic of universal languages. Derrida, Descartes, Leibniz, Rousseau, Saussure have all commented upon it. Descartes did so in a letter to a friend about his concerns of the Leibnizian project. Leibniz, fascinated with the Chinese script, proposed to create a universal language with the Asian characteristics as a model. From the letter Descartes writes it does not sound like he was aware of the full scope of the project. He mentions learning primitive words of all languages and having a large dictionary of all words of all languages to decipher the text. Leibniz, however, did not want to create a language of text, but rather a language of graphics that could be learned in a matter of a few weeks instead of a lifetime like the Chinese script. Descartes passes the project off as a cumbersome burden suitable only for revelations and mysteries that “no-one who had anything better to do would take the trouble.” He concludes the matter before adding the disclaimer that he might be wrong with, “I do not see that all this has much use.” It might be important to note that Descartes and Leibniz were rivals.”

Leibniz (1646-1716), Descartes (1596-1650) that means to say when Descartes was staying on his dead bed, he made some important criticise of a four year old boy.

It show some clue of the English bias that until 1997, Margaret Thatcher have the famous speech: “In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world.”

Stories of Chinese word and term (18)

滴水穿石, A constant dropping will wear a hole in the stone.  It means even weak force, once you focus on a single goal, in a persistent way you will be the final winner. (In my opinion it won’t be true in invention)

A similar term is:

精卫填海, 精卫fill the ocean. 精卫was the youngest daughter of the emperor炎帝神农氏, once she played around seaside, she dropped and drowned. Her body turned to be a bird. Then she picked up rocks trying to fill the ocean. It is an impossible job but people worship the spirit.

Another Short History of Linguistics (70)

1753 Swedish natural scientist Carl Linnaeus effectively worked out his Species Plantarum. It was the beginning of binary nomenclature

According: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001127

There are around 8.7 million biologic specie could exist on the earth, if we name them one by one, then no one can remember even 1% of them. Yet after Linnaeus invent the binary nomenclature, all words turned to be like compound words, or like the structure of Chinese word. The so called binary nomenclature is in fact most the genus names combined with species names, supposing once you remembered 3,000 basic genus, with the help of some species name you may easily master all the 8.7 million name of species. (Only 1.3 million of them has been discovered and named) not only reduced the work of remembrance but classified all biological species according semantics. Since 3,000x3, 000=9,000,000.

Above, we have talking about how to build a vocabulary system in semantic way, now let’s check how we withdrew a certain word from our storage in mind. But first of all, we have to repeat again that any knowledge, without input into your mind before, it would be a knowledge irrelevant with you. Only inputted in your mind already, then we can use them to analysis the world. That is why to keep a huge vocabulary in your mind is important. The following picture shows how the address is located in your mind.

 Many scholars believe, without the binary nomenclature, there would no Darwinist, for no one can master such quantity biologic names, without mastering their name, no one can comparing them properly. And the later chemistry introduced the same nomenclature.

For this reason, I believe that when the world take a similar vocabulary system for the international language, more and more hidden Darwin would appeared. And I believe if using the character to name the biologic species, all the name would shorter than current names.

Obviously the Binomial nomenclature of Carl Linnaeus (1707 –1778) get inspiration from characteristica universalis of Leibniz Of course, the vocabulary of a natural language won’t be clearly arranged like this. But they are the same trick.

If the European scholar kept study the idea of Leibniz, then perhaps some of the European language have turned semantic idea from a metaphysic language into a real physic language already. But at that point, the politic situation changed. For the English didn’t like Leibniz.

Stories of Chinese word and term (17)

鸟尽弓藏when there is no bird the bow would be hidden, in the Chinese history we see many times that a contributing minister of a monarchy was killed after the new government was in power, the historian called this as 功高震主, the feats is too great that threatened his master. And they gave this phenomenon a special term as 鸟尽弓藏，兔死狗烹, when there is no bird the bow would be hidden, when there is no hare, the dog is going to be cooked.

Pic from: http://a0.att.hudong.com/00/98/01300000248080122327983238741.jpg

Another Short History of Linguistics (69)

When Leibniz met Chinese language, he found that the structure of Chinese word compromised with the idea of Aristotle’s ontology and he hoped to do something more as finding out the so called semantic primitives. As Leibniz believed that there were only 100 universal semantic primitives that in all languages; others claimed different number but still the same order of magnitude. Yet the practice of Chinese language proved the number could be around 3,000. And by my language law, the number may be changeable, if the number of sounds going up, the number of semantic primitive may going down, vice versa. 

Again, this issue is emerged in alphabetic language, but no problem with a pictogram language like Chinese, so the Chinese scholar lost the another chance to ask a question in linguistics.（the first chance was ancient Greece’s two controversies ） In Chinese term it is called 无的放矢to shoot in the air.

That why the first time when the scholars of East Asia went to Europe, they found the rich linguistic idea that they had not even think about. Immediately they fell in love with such new idea. They loved them for they got a chance to show off a new branch of study to their fellow Chinese, no matter what is the real content.

Before Leibniz died, he believed that the best language was a chemical compound of western grammar and Chinese characters. 

香港蔫屁

香港的占中行动已经有好多天了。现在各报刊都已经懒得炒作了。这就是它的命运—蔫屁。好多香港人想要把占中行动和‘六四’事件相提并论。这大概也就是香港人的一厢情愿。‘六四’之前的中国，几乎所有的人都对共产党体制深恶痛绝，都有过切肤之痛。所以，六四的学生能够一呼百应。可是，反过来看看香港。哪个市民关心什么人当特首？他爱是谁都成，只要别影响我的收入就完事大吉。

据说这次行动的发起人是几个学生。没有政治经验是可以理解的。但支持者中却有李柱铭这样多年关心政治的老手，这就说不过去了。难道这些人不知道，这次行动的失败意味着民主的大倒退？话说得粗一点就是，当这个蔫屁放完了以后，搞学运就成了港人的笑柄。以后，中共派驻香港的高官真的授受贿赂，大耍流氓。你要想再组织学运就不那么容易了。搞学运是一种政治手段，可是不能乱用，用多了就不值钱了。

从双方领导者的背景也能看出一些端倪。一群二十几岁的的学生，面对的是中共高官。大家可以分析一下这些高官的背景，他们二十岁的时候在干什么呢？他们混到今天所有的经历难道都白费了？

西方国家民主体制的建立是从经济入手的，换句话说，反对党是从为老百姓争得一分钱，一分钱的硬币入手的；而执政党也是一分钱，一分钱的交出或扣下硬币做起的。结果造成了整个西方的民主体制。所以，不管是民主还是法治，要是跟‘钱’没什么关系的话，那和老百姓也没什么关系。和老百姓没关系的事情，最好别麻烦老百姓去支持你。从这个角度来看，香港的政治储备力量们应该做的事情是到最底层也就是那些打扫厕所，运送蔬菜的工作干几年，然后提出诉求。而眼下，香港最大的政治诉求应该是研究为什么几尼系数或者说贫富差距越来越大？如果你真的热爱香港就要提出这方面的要求。因为它不但能够改善穷人的生活水平，而且能够迫使大财团进行新技术改造。至于这种‘未赋新词强说愁’的占中行动，尽量少做。