Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!uwvax!uwslh!lishka
From: lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Brain-fried after too much hacking)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re^2: What to know & universal icons
Message-ID: <446@uwslh.UUCP>
Date: 23 Sep 89 15:36:10 GMT
References: <768@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <3490@rtech.rtech.com> <1316@blackbird.afit.af.mil> <56868@aerospace.AERO.ORG>  <1989Sep3.055622.28387@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <2087@softway.oz> <10742@dasys1.UUCP>
Distribution: comp.cog-eng
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison, State Hygiene Lab
Lines: 87

rpb@dasys1.UUCP (Robert Brady) writes:


>	Isn't Chinese made up of 100 and some odd building blocks? The interactions between these would be in some sort of system.  

     No.  *Written* Chinese is composed of tens of thousands of
"characters" (i.e. symbols).  Most of the time, these characters have
meanings in the same way that English words have meanings.  Many times
one single character can have several different meanings.  *Spoken*
Chinese is made up of a small number of short "syllable-like" words.
These short words differ mostly in "inflection"; e.g. whether the your
tone rises or falls while you are saying the words.  One of these
words can have a multitude of different meanings, of which the correct
one depends entirely on context.  In addition, a single *written*
character can represent many different spoken words.

     Japanese is a bit different.  Many, many centuries ago Japan had
a *spoken* language but no written language.  Since the Japanese were
very friendly with the Chinese at the time, they adapted the Chinese
characters as the *written* Japanese language (which they call
"kanji").  Therefore, Japanese and Chinese characters are very
similar, although not really identical.  In addition to the Chinese
characters which the Japanese used, they also developed a written
"alphabet" of single-syllable sounds (which are very regular and
phonetic) based on their spoken language.  The alphabet is made up of
about 50 "letters".  There are two written forms of the Japanese
alphabet: "hiragana" are used for all native Japanese words, and
"katakana" are used for foreign words.  The Japanese *spoken* language
is basically "words" made up of letters/sounds from their alphabet.
Characters are used as written representations of words.  Again, there
are many cases where a single character can have many meanings, and
there are tens of thousands of characters. 

     Japanese and Chinese characters are very similar, to the extent
that if you know one of the languages you can make a decent attempt at
determining the meaning of characters in the other language.  However,
spoken Japanese and Chinese are very different.  Also, Japanese has an
alphabet based on their spoken language, from which words are
constructed; Chinese does not have a written alphabet, and I am not
sure if their spoken language is similar to an alphabet.  In my mind,
Japanese is sort of a collision of an "alphabetic" spoken language
(such as English) with a "character-based" written language (i.e.
Chinese); others may not agree with this. 

     Some of the above might be wrong (could someone who knows more
please correct the errors above?).  My credentials: I spoke Japanese
fluently as a child (I went to Japanese public schools, even though I
am an American).  I have since forgotten most of it, although I had a
couple refresher courses in college.  I do not know Chinese at all.
However, many of my friends are either Chinese (mainland or Hong
Kong), fluent in Chinese (including Hong Kong, Mandarin, and Taiwanese
dialects), or have majored in it in college.  My knowledge of Chinese
comes froms discussions with them. 

>   In other words you would only need memorize 100+ symbols and learn how 
>they interact. Of course I've yet to see incomprehensible icons...

     Nope; this won't work.  I believe that one could map *most* of
the Chinese/Japanese characters with a 16-bit character set (i.e.
65535 distinct characters), and certainly all of the common ones (most
Japanese do not know all of the characters, just like most native
English speakers do not know all of the English words).  However, much
more than 100 characters/symbols would be needed. 

     Furthermore, whereas current icons graphically represent ideas
with fairly "understanable" pictures, Japanese/Chinese characters do
not pictorally represent their respective ideas anymore.  Even though
the Chinese characters started out as fairly identifiable pictures,
through hundreds (thousands?) of years they have been transformed into
icons that do not resemble their meanings much.  And finally, which
meanings would you choose for the characters/icons: Japanese or
Chinese?  Either way you would end up offending someone. 

     I prefer icons that are not tied to *any language*.  Certainly
all icons are somehow tied to some culture(s).  I do not think using
Japanese/Chinese characters as "standard" icons would work, although
it is an interesting idea. 


-- 
Christopher Lishka                 ...!{rutgers|ucbvax|...}!uwvax!uwslh!lishka
Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene                   lishka%uwslh.uucp@cs.wisc.edu
Data Processing Section  (608)262-4485                       lishka@uwslh.uucp

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind -- or not to have a mind at all.
How true that is." -- V.P. Dan Quayle, garbling the United Negro College
Fund slogan in an address to the group (from Newsweek, May 22nd, 1989)