Chinglish and childishness

[LanDi Liu]

On Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 3:25 AM,  <RonButters at aol.com> wrote:
> I used caps to emphasize THREE words. E-mail does not allow for italics or=20
> boldface, so upper-casing them is an acceptable method of highlighting them.=
> =20
> Only someone who was bent on misinterpreting the intent of the writer would=20=
> have=20
> characterized that usage as "screaming."

I'm surprised by this.  It's pretty well attested all over the
internet (and has been since before the web got big in the early 90s)
that all caps = screaming.  Try this google search:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22all+caps%22+screaming&btnG=Search

All of the initial ten top results indicate this idea*.  There are
_many_ o t h e r *ways* you can emphasize text, but all caps is
recognized by the majority of internet users as screaming.  I didn't
make that up.

*At least they do according to the results given inside China.

> Could we please keep the level of=20
> discourse here to that of adults? Ditto for the puerile comment about the=20
> imagined sex lives of list-serv participants.

Yes, please.  That would be so much more useful, and so much more
suited to a list such as this.  My comment was (quite intentionally)
not personal by not directing it toward anyone specific, and could
even be interpreted as directed toward a group that includes me.  I
don't think it was all that puerile.  It was intended in humor.

I don't see anything wrong with *not* responding to the posts of
people who you disagree with.  But I also think it's fair to respond
in a polite way, expressing your perspective on the matter without
including personal jabs, whether directed at the poster's manner or
education or intelligence.

> Oh, and how can someone living in China really believe that it is=20
> "impossible" for younmg people to memorize huge numbers of nonalphabetic sym=
> bols in order=20
> to make use of a writing system.

You took my bait.  Chinese people can memorize 3000 characters and can
get the gist of a newspaper article.  With 5000 (and that's only
reading, not writing) they can read almost anything -- and they don't
really have to memorize them perfectly.  They can recognize a
character in a word or phrase that they might not recognize alone.  If
English speakers could only read 3000-5000 words they wouldn't be able
to do much with that.  That's why English has an (albeit extremely
complex) alphabetic sound-letter correspondence (and I didn't say 1:1,
and I didn't say there aren't any exceptions in the sound-letter
correspondences).

So maybe someone on the list (and maybe more than person) has been
throwing around the phrase "alphabetic principle" without
understanding exactly what it is, but that's where other list members
can chime in and clarify things.  Not so long ago I myself wrote
something about "minimal pairs" that turned out to be misinformed.  I
still find it strange that "pat" and "sat" can be minimal pairs.
What's the use?  It makes much more sense to me to limit them to pairs
like "see" and "she" where there is only a minimal phonetic difference
between the differing phonemes.  But I was enlightened by several
other list members and now I know to be more careful with the terms.
Some other people may require a more patient approach, or it may be
best to ignore things.

I hope what I've said here will have a positive effect on the quality
of discourse on this list.

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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