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。