[Sw-l] SW-L Digest - 27 Jul 2015 to 28 Jul 2015 (#2015-145)

Thu Jul 30 18:36:55 UTC 2015

Hi Dali and everyone,

Dali: Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us and describing
it so well.

You enlightened me about how to type in Chinese by using Pinyin on a
computer.  Then, I read more about it on Wikipedia.  According to Wikipedia,
all children in mainland China
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_China>  are required to learn Pinyin
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin> in school.  Pinyin is in fact very
popular over there.  If people do not speak Chinese, they are not able to
use Pinyin. They will need to learn the standard Chinese pronunciation of
characters before they are able to use this input method.  I wonder if
Deafian Chinese children have particular difficulties in using Pinyin
because they are not skilled in learning the standard Chinese pronunciation
of characters.

The stroke method does not require the user to know how to speak Mandarin
nor to be able to recognize the characters.  I think that Chinese Deafian
users who use a stroke-based input method are able to construct the
character from scratch as one would do in writing Chinese.  However,
according to Wikipedia, it is a disadvantage in that it may cause language
attrition <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_attrition> and skills loss
in adults, and it may be a learning barrier for children as concerns written
Chinese.‪

Best regards,

André

De :  Dali balti <livingtabernacle at YAHOO.FR>
Répondre à :  "SignWriting List: Read and Write Sign Languages"
<SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU>
Date :  Wed, 29 Jul 2015 16:25:10 +0100
À :  <SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU>
Objet :  Re : SW-L Digest - 27 Jul 2015 to 28 Jul 2015 (#2015-145)

Hello dear André!Before starting to use computers to type Chinese, it was
thought that it would not work because Chinese is not letters but symbols!
But they found out two basic ways to type Chinese on computer.
The first one is by using Chinese pronunciation transcription which is
called "pinyin". 
Chinese is based on syllables, there are no single letters, which means that
you cannot make up new pronunciations out of the existing ones, I will give
you some examples; with the phoneme "b" you can have the following
combinations: ba/bi/bu/ban/bang/beng/etc... But with the phoneme "j" you
CANNOT make any of the previous pronunciations, except "ji". In all there
are about 400 syllables in Chinese and it is lesser than English which is a
free language in which you can have any combination of letters (some
linguistics say that in English there are about more than 65000
syllables)... You can imagine that now!
Back to the writing system, and using "pinyin", in Chinese we type the
pronunciation transcription and not characters themselves. The pronunciation
system is a worldwide system for Chinese learning! For example, to type
"bicycle" in Chinese, I need to type the pronunciation pinyin into the
computer and it will show up the Chinese characters---- zì xíng chē =
bicycle.
That's easy, isn't it?
BUT! BUT! BUT!
The problem is bigger when the word to type is bisyllabic. Because the
computer will show you a list of many words having the same pronunciation
but with different writing forms. For example: the pronunciation "yan yuan"
would have the following different characters!
演员 / 眼缘/ 盐源/ 颜渊
So in this case you will have to click on the word you need each time you're
typing! It's not boring because the computer can detect the logical words
combinations in a single sentence, sometimes it might miss the point!
Some other Chinese people use strike by stroke system, which looks like SW!
Every Chinese character has a logical way to be written in order stroke by
stroke. On computers you can find this system but it is boring, you type on
the basic strokes and the computer detects the order and try to guess the
character, it shows you a list of possibilities and you click on the
character you want!
Chinese is now written from left to write!

Envoyé depuis Yahoo Mail pour iPhone <https://yho.com/footer0>

> Le 29 juil. 2015 05:06:26, SW-L automatic digest system a écrit :There are 3
> messages totalling 2543 lines in this issue.
> 
> Topics of the day:
> 
>   1. Writing Chinese using a computer
>   2. Certificate of Participation for SignWriting Symposium 2015 (2)
> 
> ________________________________________________
> 
> 
> SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION
> 
> Valerie Sutton
> SignWriting List moderator
> sutton at signwriting.org <javascript:return>
> 
> Post Messages to the SignWriting List:
> sw-l at listserv.valenciacollege.edu <javascript:return>
> 
> SignWriting List Archives & Home Page
> http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist
> 
> Join, Leave or Change How You Receive SW List Messages
> http://listserv.valenciacollege.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=SW-L&A=1
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Date:    Tue, 28 Jul 2015 08:53:17 -0400
> From:    =?ISO-8859-1?B?QW5kcuk=?= Thibeault <atg at VIDEOTRON.CA
> <javascript:return> >
> Subject: Writing Chinese using a computer
> 
>> > Ce message est au format MIME. Comme votre programme de lecture de
>> courriers ne comprend pas
> ce format, il se peut que tout ou une partie de ce message soit illisible.
> 
> --Boundary_(ID_Uv5N/Vkzu2zFlnVb3vZ80Q)
> Content-Type: text/plain;
>  charset=iso-8859-1
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> 
> Hi Dali, Yu and everyone,
> 
> =20
> 
> 
> 
> I noticed that some people posted their message on the SW list.  Some of
> them talk about the Chinese writing characteristic (vertical writing vs
> horizontal writing) and a Chinese computer.  Why do I ask Dali and Yu?
> Because both of you are skilled in writing Chinese and in using a computer.
> Then, I would like you to share your experiences with us regarding writing
> Chinese using your computer.
> 
> =20
> 
> 
> 
> Yu: You are an international student. I cannot remember the name of the
> College you attend. You live in Toronto. You mention that you lived in Chin=
> a
> before.  I have a question: Can you write Chinese faster by using a
> computer?  Does writing with a computer in English vs writing with a
> computer in Chinese take about the same time?
> 
> =20
> 
> 
> 
> Dali:  I cannot believe that you can use up to 15 languages!  I understand
> that you are a Chinese teacher. As you can write both the SW Tunisian Sign
> Language and the SW Chinese Sign Language, I have two questions: 1) What ar=
> e
> the similarities and the differences between writing a SignWriting and usua=
> l
> Chinese as concerns using a computer? Which one is slower or faster when
> using the keyword or the mouse? When the writing is done horizontally or
> vertically? What action is the easiest, the most difficult, and so forth?
> 
> =20
> 
> 
> 
> It is common for people to use a translate feature and translate from
> glossed texts to sign texts in order to save time. 2) Is it common for a
> Chinese user to write Chinese using a translation feature (I do not know th=
> e
> exact word (translation) for the Chinese computer system) like SignPuddle
> (translate feature) since they need to save time?
> 
> =20
> 
> 
> 
> Yu and Dali: Is it true that modern Chinese is written horizontally when
> using a computer?
> 
> =20
> 
> 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> =20
> 
> Andr=E9
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________________________
> 
> 
> SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION
> 
> Valerie Sutton
> SignWriting List moderator
> sutton at signwriting.org <javascript:return>
> 
> Post Messages to the SignWriting List:
> sw-l at listserv.valenciacollege.edu <javascript:return>
> 
> SignWriting List Archives & Home Page
> http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist
> 
> Join, Leave or Change How You Receive SW List Messages
> http://listserv.valenciacollege.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=3DSW-L&A=3D1
> 
> --Boundary_(ID_Uv5N/Vkzu2zFlnVb3vZ80Q)
> Content-Type: text/html;
>  charset=iso-8859-1
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> aches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml">
> 
> aches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_themedata.xml">
> 
> 

________________________________________________

SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION

Valerie Sutton
SignWriting List moderator
sutton at signwriting.org

Post Messages to the SignWriting List:
sw-l at listserv.valenciacollege.edu

SignWriting List Archives & Home Page
http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist

Join, Leave or Change How You Receive SW List Messages
http://listserv.valenciacollege.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=SW-L&A=1
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20150730/04c0e973/attachment.htm>