yuan

Coincidentally, native speakers of tonal languages (Chinese being one of them) also seem to have a higher chance of being pitch-perfect [2].

[1] Man-Ying Wang, Bo-Cheng Kuo, Shih-Kuen Cheng (2011). "Chinese characters elicit face-like N170 inversion effects". Brain and Cognition 77 (2011) 419–431.

[2] Deutsch, D., Henthorn, T., Marvin, E., & Xu H-S (2006). "Absolute pitch among American and Chinese conservatory students: Prevalence differences, and evidence for a speech-related critical period". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 119 (2): 719–722.

    M-: (loop for i from ?a 
              for j below 12 
              do (insert (format "#define %c %d\n" i j)))

There was (or still is, politically motivated, I think) opposition to the simplification in Taiwan, but fortunately pragmaticism prevails and nowadays, even the current President Ma Ying-jeou advocates "识繁写简" (recognize complex, write simplified), because the practicality of the simplified version is undeniable.

Learn to read first before worrying about tact and perspective. Boyter said, "The Chinese realize their language is a pain in the butt to learn and that the writing system is terrible in comparison to any alphabet system." As a Chinese speaker living among many Chinese speakers and having some proficiency in certain alphabet system, I think I have a say on such thing. Perhaps my sampling size is insignificant, it's still better than a complete baseless lie.

> [Personal anecdotal narrative elided.]

Talking about the lack of perspective, why don't you tell us what is your native language? It won't be news to us if a speaker of a Indo-European language finds another Indo-European language easier to learn than a Sino-Tibetan language.

There has been too much hot air, lets introduce some substance and data: how hard is it to attain literacy in a language?

Take a look at India, a country of similar size, population and economic status to China. According to UN Developement Programme Report 2009(pg. 172-173)[1], India's literacy rate is estimated to be at 66%, while China is at 93.3%.

If GDP percapita is any indication to access to education, Brazil and Mexico have significantly higher GDP/capita than China, but China's literacy is actually slightly better.

You may attribute it to cultural difference or whatever, still, it'd be less of a complete lie to say Chinese is not harder to learn than these other languages than otherwise.

[1] http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2009_EN_Complete.pdf

To the rest: sorry for the language and this offtopic debate, but I would not stand by idly seeing people slandering the language I love. I said what I have to say and I will stop now.

What is the point? I use my own language as a reference point because it's the language I know best. And I hope others would do the same: comment on things you know best and stop spreading lies, myths, pointless memes about things you know little.

When we say "天书", we usually refer to "无字天书" (the divine book without letter); i.e., a blank book for those of us without magical power. Again, I don't see relevancy here. We don't need magical power to learn Chinese.

As a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese, I think you are full of shit. No native Chinese speaker I know thinks English is easier to learn than Chinese. And I prefer the Chinese writing system myself if I have a choice.

It's true that many people are learning English, because today Chinese are producing and selling. When the day comes when Chinese become buyers and the rest of the world are trying to get sales from Chinese, they will start learning Chinese.

[1] http://ccl.clozure.com

[2] http://trac.clozure.com/ccl/wiki/Cocoa

-- Auto suggestion machine at your service

Nonsense. There are about 200 or so[1] chinese radicals, and all chinese characters are either radicals themselves, or composed of two or more radicals. For example, the chinese character for ticks, 蜱, is composed of 虫(bug, the meaning part) and 卑(lowly, the sound part), both very common characters that any chinese literate should know; the character can be described simply as 虫左卑右 (bug on the left, humble on the right).

> Chinese dictionaries don't generally (in my experience) provide pronunciation.

Your experience is not typical. Any decent Chinese dictionary should provide pronunciation, either in pinyin or zhuyin. Or you can simply look it up online[2].

> Chinese is really several completely different spoken languages (Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese, etc.), all mutually unintelligible but sharing the same writing.

Another complete nonsense. I only speak Mandarin, and can communicate with people who only speak Cantonese if we both speak (really) slowly. Normally I would not know how to say something in Cantonese, but when I hear it, I can recognize it. I have never tried this with "Shanghainese", but the same goes for Minnan (spoken in some southern provinces and Taiwan).

It seems some people are keen to diminish the role of Mandarin in China and exaggerate the differences among Chinese dialects, perhaps wishing a fragmented linguistic landscape would lead to a fragmented and weaken Chinese nation. But Mandarin is what is taught in schools, used on tv, movies, etc, and all younger generations speak it. I don't think that's going to change soon.

[1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Index:Chinese_radical

[2] http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|zh-CN&...

It is easier to prevent signal leakage with light.

[1]: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/m_case...

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/linda-tischler/design-times/... (Mark Anderson's 10 Predictions For 2009)

To the extent that a single case can prove anything, what is being done here in fact strengthens the case for dynamic typing, for it shows that a dynamic language can reap the benefits of static analysis too, WHEN it is beneficial.

Too much hot air. How about some real numbers from historical data?

From "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" by David McKay, p.121. http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/Books.html

Energy consumption

(kWh per 100 p-km)

------------------

Car 68

Bus 19

Rail 6

Air 51

Sea 57

------------------

Table 20.8. Overall transport efficiencies of transport modes in Japan (1999).