Zompist Bboard Again

Was the "China" meaning more common before the Xinhai Revolution? I feel that it's always been "The world as far as the speaker/writer is concerned" or just "The (known) world". As the ancient Chinese rarely concern themselves with matters beyond the border, it can be ...

Whoops sorry, my Mandarin teacher used to say it's pronounced as the second tone. It's actually another simplification, like b and p is pronounced as each other. (In Javanese p has no aspiration, but b does) Actually, I believe that a substantial number of Mandarin speakers pronounce the third tone...

Generally, Jian = a weapon with blades on both sides, Dao = a weapon or tool with blade on only one side. Tianxia as "world" is more common than "China" in modern speech, and it's still productive: 天下沒有白吃的午餐 = "there's no such thing as a free lunch (in the world)" https...

It's pronounced as rising in that environment. I'm not sure I agree it's high rising (although there probably are sources that say it is). Whoops sorry, my Mandarin teacher used to say it's prononounced as the second tone. It's actually another simplification, like b and p is pronounced as each oth...

I wonder why does my previous mandarin speaker says "b dibaca p dan p dibaca b" (b is pronounced as p and p is pronounced as b). Even though they're actually /p/ and /pʰ/, respectively. Is it possible that /pʰ/ is registered as lenis one instead of /p/. Or is it just a byproduct that java...

I also have a problem with B style. It's actually handwrititg-hostile. There's simply too many strokes to make a glyph. You should try to slur it into fewer strokes as possible. And I shall introduce you to the Tangut script: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangut_script https://upload.wikimedia.org/...

Now that you mention it, I realized that in Cantonese, the "passive" doesn't and can't reduce valency, while the structure that put receivers of an action in the subject position and eliminates the agent from the sentence is "topicalization and omitting subject".

The reason why this is an issue in the first place is that my main conculture has a strong taboo, both cultural and legal, against given a young person any serious amount of power. If it's not about egalitarianism then it's easier. You can make junior officers ineligible to be a commanding officer,...

Me neither. I think it should be "in-house"?

Terry Guo, founder and CEO of Foxconn, announced his bid for the 2020 presidential election. He is going to participate in the KMT primary. For a sense of scale, in 2018, the annual government budget of Taiwan was 2.2 trillion NTD. The annual revenue of Foxconn itself was 5.3 trillion NTD and 6.1 tr...

As a native Mandarin speaker, I see it as a rather straightforward derivation from the original sense "family". It went from "a household practicing a certain trade" to "a person practicing a certain trade". Depending on the nature of the trade, some retain the former m...

Explain why the word iron in Proto Sino-Tibetian and in Proto-Balto-Slavic are related. They're 5000+ km away. Wait, whaaaat? I thought this was a joke. :o There were quite a few inventions that spread like wildfire, like bee keeping: English "mead" is cognate to Japanese mitsu "hone...

The avalanche was halted for now: DPP kept Tainan #2 with 46.85% against KMT's 44.31%, down from 76.47% v.s. 18.67% in 2016. While turnout was low, as expected for a by-election, more people came out to vote for KMT on Saturday than in 2016. I'm grateful then that Taiwan's third-parties could get st...

None of that seems to find its way into Western news. All I hear about her from the news is little more than what the English Wikipedia article on her covers. Energy Policy: DPP holds its anti-nuclear power policy as gospel. Before they won the election in 2016, they claimed that the energy supply ...

What happened that made her so unpopular? Cutting civil servant pensions while approving a huge spending plan. The government would have a solid argument if it enters full austerity mode, but the selective treatment pissed a lot of current and retired government employees off. Although they are mos...

A legislative (parliament) by-election will take place in Taiwan this weekend to fill 4 vacant seats: 3 of which were due to the incumbent being elected to their respective local office last November, and the last one was due to a corruption conviction. The ruling DPP did a pretty poor job over the ...

Explain why the word iron in Proto Sino-Tibetian and in Proto-Balto-Slavic are related. They're 5000+ km away. Well there were those chariot people who introduced them to iron metallurgy... Did I forget to mention that most the Eurasian languages derived their "wheel" or "chariot&quo...

Mandarin abbreviates phrases by using just key syllables— e.g. Beijing University 北京大学 Běijīng Dàxué is called Běidà . But I think this may be modern, as are Soviet coinages like Gosplan. On the other hand, some province names are formed this way, and go back at leat 500 years, I think— e.g. Fújiàn...