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Chinese love to gamble, but not on 3 legged horses!
I acknowledge what you are saying about tonality in other languages, but between English and Chinese, I think there is a huge difference. In English tonality can be used to produce an interrogative, or shown sarcasm or to negate the meaning. My understanding though is that in Chinese it used to differentiate between many words that would otherwise be the same. We have puns in English and this is the basis for much humour. However, we can easily function without this tonality. My understanding is that with tonality Chinese would be chaos. In other words it is an integral dimension of the language. Without tonality, it would be very hard for the Chinese to communicate effectively.
If chinese like pinyin why don't I see any websites in pinyin? All the chinese sites I've visited use Chinese Simplified. ;-)
Most of the chinese webaddress are in pinying.
I'll try to get some Chinese IDNs .... Hope i get lucky enough to grap the good one
Most of the chinese webaddress are in pinying.
I'll try to get some Chinese IDNs .... Hope i get lucky enough to grap the good one
If chinese like pinyin why don't I see any websites in pinyin? All the chinese sites I've visited use Chinese Simplified. ;-)
It all depends who you talk to what information you get.
Sohu are claiming to have indexed 10 Billion Chinese character pages I believe.
Ask an expert from TRAFFICS and they will tell you it is all in English.
When I first started out much of the Chinese content was in bit map characters that could not be indexed. At that time, there was also a lot of Pinyin. I must admit I haven't come across either lately. I imagine there is still some Pinyin content if you know where to look for it.
Interestingly, Sedo was writing an up date on Spanish the other day and quoting percentages of Web Content by Language. The stats they were using were over 2 years out of date. OK, you might just put that down to Sedo BS, but it would seem nobody really has any good info on this. Personally, I would not be at all surprised if Japanese and Chinese together do not exceed English. Indeed, it won't be long before Chinese exceeds English on its own. What I do know is that it won't all be Pinyin!
You really hate Rick dontcha.
I still believe that Pinyin has more advantages in terms of, internationalize (globalize) , write, index and brandable than the Characters. ALL of the chinese Giants (sohu, sina, tudou, baidu..etc), and most of the websites are in Pinyin(webaddress) that make it(pinyin) become more popular and more wanted than the Characters.
It's all about my opinion.
I still believe that Pinyin has more advantages in terms of, internationalize (globalize) , write, index and brandable than the Characters. ALL of the chinese Giants (sohu, sina, tudou, baidu..etc), and most of the websites are in Pinyin(webaddress) that make it(pinyin) become more popular and more wanted than the Characters.
It's all about my opinion.
I still believe that Pinyin has more advantages in terms of, internationalize (globalize) , write, index and brandable than the Characters. ALL of the chinese Giants (sohu, sina, tudou, baidu..etc), and most of the websites are in Pinyin(webaddress) that make it(pinyin) become more popular and more wanted than the Characters.
It's all about my opinion.
I still believe that Pinyin has more advantages in terms of, internationalize (globalize) , write, index and brandable than the Characters. ALL of the chinese Giants (sohu, sina, tudou, baidu..etc), and most of the websites are in Pinyin(webaddress) that make it(pinyin) become more popular and more wanted than the Characters.
It's all about my opinion.
If you are going to hold to your position in light of the posts here, you might want to at
least "diversify" yourself a bit into IDNs "just in case".
Pinyin is not a proper alternative as written Chinese characters, like Bramiozo and Rubber Duck pointed out, it is ambiguous and has the one to many conversion difficulties. (Both of whom I admired with so much knowledge being non-Chinese natives).
To demonstrate their points, take the example of the name Mao Xiaofei, who wrote earlier.
MAO can be any of the following in writing (just to name a few):
æ¯-hair, 帽-hat, ç«-cat, è-flourish, è´¸-trade, è -spear, æ-copy
XIAO can be the following:
å°-little, ç¬-laugh, æ¶-cancel, 宵-night, æ-morning, 箫-flute, �*�-college
FEI can be the following:
é-not, é£-fly, è¥-fat, åª-bandit, èº-lung, åº-discard, å¦-Concubine
Like 宵 and æ, are completely opposite, but both pronounced xiao, straightly speaking, xiao1 and xiao2.
To guess what his name is, the surname is æ¯, because it is the most common one, but I may be wrong, as è and æ are both rare but existing surnames in minority tribes.
His name should be å°é£, means little flyer, a popular name to imply who will go far. If you say he is ç¬åª, a laughing bandit, both his parents must be mad. (just joking)
But mind you this could be meaningful if not used in a name, like æ¶è¥, reduce fat, slimming, also pronounced xiao fei.
One can only make intelligent guess according to the context and in no way I know æ¯å°é£ is correct, because ææé£ could be very possible, for morning or early take off.
There are so many combinations in the 7x7x7 example above, but picking one on each word, the pinyin is only one: Mao Xiao Fei. You see the problem? Almost irreversible.
No Chinese reads writings in pinyin, they read IDN characters. To give a page typed in pinyin to the translator, he won't do it unless you pay him 7 times more.
Since so many are interested in Chinese IDNs, the following are 2 more useful translation site links.
http://www.lexiconer.com/ecresult.php
http://www.lexiconer.com/ceresult.php
Please note in the above thread, 檡-college is wrong, it is �*�-college.
While æ¶è¥ can mean reduce fat, don't try to register this as IDN, the proper phrase is æ¶è-burn out the grease, or åè¥-slimming, both of them registered already.
(�*�-college)
Still wrong! A bug in DNForum character set!
*the exceptional businesses of our esteemed moderators