Re:Finnish breaks natural language processors
by apendleton on Friday March 01, 2019 @11:13AM
(#19282026)
These aren't really homophones though, right? Because they differ in tone?
Re:Finnish breaks natural language processors
by yorwba on Friday March 01, 2019 @11:30AM
(#19282274)
There are only 4 different tones, so by the pigeonhole principle there must be lots of homophones.
On the other hand, most of the characters used to be pronounced differently when they were still commonly used as individual words, so the poem only works because it mixes modern pronunciation with classical grammar.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_...
Interestingly when I showed the actual text to my wife, who is Chinese, she didn't understand what was funny about it until I asked her to read it to me, when she burst out laughing. That's when I found out she doesn't sub-vocalise, where I do all the time.