Re: Metric system (was: Re: SPF)

[Thomas Goirand <thomas@goirand.fr>]

Craig Sanders wrote:
>> That's laziness.  Chinese have an advantage over us English speakers
>> because their writing systems with its *thousands* of stupid and
>> arbitrary symbols requires them to exercise their brains to an extent
>> that we do not.
> 
> amazing. do you actually believe that shit or are you just unwilling to
> admit that you're wrong?
> 
> the chinese have a massive disadvantage because their written language
> is so complex that it is a specialised discipline mastered by only a
> few, whereas english (and other alphabetic languages) is simple enough
> for the bulk of the population to learn, WITHOUT any loss of ability to
> communicate or express concepts (in fact, it's easier to express complex
> concepts because you can write it directly rather than by analogy to
> some ancient pictograph which kind of evokes an image vaguely related to
> the concept you're trying to express).
> 
> go study basic linguistics before attempting to come up with garbage like
> that.

If I may add as well: Chinese signs are made out of 214 (more or less)
basic symbols combined together (I may add some examples, but there was
too many post already for that topic). This is a very common mistake
from the people that don't know it: there is no such things as thousands
of characters the way you might think.

I 100% agree with you Craig: had to trust that somebody is really
believing that shit, and it's just garbage...

Thomas