The Meaning of Plants (28)

胸有成竹，one have the image of bamboo in his bosom already.  It was from a famous litterateur 苏轼，who said “故画竹，必先得成竹于胸中。” that is why you wanted to paint a bamboo, you have to have the image of bamboo in your bosom first.  Later it means someone have a certain plan in heart already.

 Pic from: http://blog.luohuedu.net/images/new/file/33791/2010-10/2010101002351283103504.jpg

墙头草，grass in the wall. It means a grass on the top of a wall would be no individual character for himself. As the wind blow it to west, it would be west, and if the wind blow it to the east, it would be east.

Pic from: http://xtt751.blogspot.com.au/2009/11/blog-post.html

草上飞，flying on top of grass. It normally it means a very fast horse. But later it means some good motorcycle. Today it means anything that can move above grass very fast.

Pic from: http://www.hc263.net/uploads/allimg/111129/1-111129141K4.jpg

Another Short History of Linguistics (50)

The reality is that any code or clue is totally irrelevant with the nature world or human’s sense. Only the necessary of human communication connected them together. In this way all language or symbol is conventional. To believe words come from nature or from human’s sense is a superstitious. The ancient people wanted built a connection between words and nature as well as human’s sense that was in fact looking a way for easy to remember. Yet they hadn’t investigate the ability of human’s memory. As the modern people know it better, what we can do will be how to format these memory, in other word is that to encode and decode them by what sort of symbols. The pictogram put a little bit more message than the alphabetic language in both vision and audition. Because the alphabetic language ignored the existing of vision and audition, when undergoing a simplification process few thousand years ago.

Since, any symbols are just lifeless codes, none of them have the nature relationship with meaning unless human connect a meaning to a code artificially. The really tough issue is how to find out adequate symbols for a certain language. Especially find out enough phonetic symbols for oral speaking. For with more specie of sound our speaking will cost shorter time and in this way time is life, saving time is saving life. Think about the Morse code, it is the simplest code in the world, but when we using it as computer language, we have to shift it to ASCII or the Unicode for the benefit of speed or fast. On the other hand, to describe a certain event of nature, we need more parallel (dimension) symbols to do it. For the nature have so many facets to be settled, once you making code for only one facet (for instance sound-letter one to one), it would be simpler but you lost information of other facets (such as radical and new sound). So we may say the simplest symbol (as Morse code has only two parallel symbols (or dimension) 0 and 1) required the longest time to sending and receiving information. Leibniz was the inventor of binary system yet when he invent the mechanical computer, he use the decimal system, the only reason is speed.

There is a not very important issue I’d like to say is confounding of two different sound. In English, it maybe the s, z, θ and ð  they are not important issue but if more and more sounds enrolled in one language, it will be a serious issue.

The Meaning of Plants (27)

风吹草低见牛羊, when breeze bend the grass, we can see the herd of cattle and sheep there. This is a folk song of ancient China. It express the herdsman lived in the grassland of north-west China

 敕勒川， in the 敕勒 valley,

 阴山下， under the 阴 mountain.

天似穹庐， the sky looked like a big Mongolian felt tents with rounded tops.

笼盖四野。 It covered the surrounding country.

天苍苍，     the sky is vast and hazy.

野茫茫，    the field is boundless and indistinct

风吹草低见牛羊。when breeze bend the grass, we can see the herd of cattle and sheep there.

Pic from: http://cppcc.people.com.cn/mediafile/201001/05/F201001051539341773215471.jpg

Another Short History of Linguistics (49)

From above, a language shift from pictogram to alphabetic letter will lose at least two benefit, one is radical the silent part of a word (or character), and the other is the ability of introducing new sounds. When pictogram meet new sound, the language adopted it as a part of this language and give it a new symbol. While an alphabetic language meet a new sound in most case, the language has to announce that it is not a pure correct sound for human or just announce that it is noise. Until too much such ‘noise’ appeared then they have to use the closest alphabetic letter or letter groups to imitate these new sounds. This kind of remedy will still left a gap with the original sound. It doesn’t mean that original sound disappearing, it is still there, as a useful element for other language but denied by this language. Or we may say that the already existed letters of a certain alphabetic language handicapped the process of intake new sounds to this language greatly. Think about if we took English as the international language, as an alphabetic language, it has to depress sounds that not appeared in English. What if one day the United State lost ground? It will repeat what happened in the Latin of Rome again. And if we take a pictogram as international language, the things will be different, any new sound will have a totally different symbol (or character) for it. By the help of this language as a whole, peoples from the end of other side of world will know it easily. With more and more of such sounds, our international language will be the shortest one for oral expressing, audio receiving and memory in mind.  

The Meaning of Plants (26)

When a Chinese poet admiring a plant, he (or she) loved to drink wine. Especially a poet named 黄庭坚 of Song Dynasty. Here are two of his verses:

酒浇胸中之磊隗，the wine irrigated the untold imagination in my blossom,

菊制短世之颓龄。The chrysanthemum eased my sigh for the short life.

 Pic from: http://blogcache2.artron.net/201310/30/29417_13831707071F8e.jpg

In mind of Chinese intellectual, chrysanthemum represent recluse. The typical versed 瓦斯written by a famous recluse 陶渊明:

采菊东篱下，collect chrysanthemum under the east hedge,

悠然见南山。see the south mountain leisurely.

Pic from: http://2.jxjjx.com/Article/uploadfiles/200903/2009030213555422.jpg   

Another poem is describing a picture:

酒浇胸次不能平,  the wine irrigated the untold  story yet it could not  be eased,

吐出苍竹岁峥嵘。So it seeking vent as a green bamboo that can be lofty and steep forever.

Pic from: http://eblog.cersp.com/userlog/11802/archives/2008/954447.shtml

Another Short History of Linguistics (48)

The alphabetic language is hard to be lingua franca or international language. Theoretically, since the alphabetic language connected sound with writing system, then any changed of sound must reflected in writing system. From the following web page: 

http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320hist&civ/pp/slides/17alphabet.pdf

Gives an example about the pronouncing of ‘girl’

gal (American dialect)

goil (New York)

gull (Irish)

gel (London)

gill (South African)

gairull(Scottish)

This example tells us that once a group of people adopt alphabet system, they are doomed to suffer endless splitting. For the writing system has to follow the change of dialect pronunciation. But the dialect can be changed in any minutes, after few hundred years, they may be changed totally, so the change of writing style will be inevitable. That is the key reason that the Rome Empire trying to unify the language during the 1,500 years of their ruling but after its fall, the European language split. On the other hand, in China, the unification of language was carried by 秦始皇Qin Shi Huang, who had decreed his order of language unification at 212BC, three years later, he died and 5 years later, his Dynasty was ended. That is to say his order was only carried out for eight years, yet the language started unified since then. Because the character didn’t follow sound to change, they never changed, any local dialect may change but no dialect could go too far, for the necessary of communication will pull you back. The best example was the 西夏language, it was invented in 1036 by the king named 李元昊. He wanted to split a new country from the central government. He thought that only with a new language, his region could be independent forever. So he invented language like this:

The character written in black is Chinese while in purple is 西夏language. But without any particular advantage it was disappearing after survived 191 years, when the Genghis Khan invasion occurred this country. This language had invented totally 6,000 characters. Most of them were similar the Chinese characters. Today it could be found only in some museum. People know them only by dictionary. 

The Meaning of Plants (25)

Sometimes a Chinese author loved to express a dead of tree. For instance a famous poet黄庭坚 had written a verses for his teacher and friend 苏轼’s painting of a dead tree.

胸中元自有丘壑， in your bosom you have so many thing as large as mountain and gully,

故作老木蟠风霜。So you make an old tree freely to stand wind and frost.

Pic from: http://www.pep.com.cn/oldimages/pic_300862.jpg

Another poet马致远 wrote a poem about an old tree in the autumn as:

枯藤、老树、昏鸦， Withered vine，old tree,  confused crow.

小桥、流水、人家， Small bridge,  flowing water, resident house.

古道、西风、瘦马。 Ancient road, west wind, thin horse.

夕阳、西下，            Setting sun, down west.

断肠人、在天涯。    Lonely person, in the End of the World.

You may find that in this poem, there has no predicate verb.

Pic from: http://www.12371.gov.cn/uploadfiles/2011/2/201102121210514848.jpg