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.