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+--- Thread: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against (/thread-4746.html)
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Jorge_Stolfi - 05-07-2026
(04-07-2026, 06:06 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
And again. And again.
Just answer my questions. Yes or no.
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - rikforto - 05-07-2026
I did answer that question---I told you that we disagree about what it means and that we should explore that.
After all, you are contending there are no words to read. That needs examined before we can discuss what it means to read them:
(26-06-2026, 08:13 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But it is quite misleading to say that the hanzi "represent words, not ideas". The hanzi 人 does not represent any specific string of sounds. Presumably it did when people started writing the symbol that evolved into this glyph; but that word and its language have died long ago and do not matter any more. And probably that language had tens of thousands of words that never received a written symbol.I cannot stress enough: It is your position that Chinese people do not have a way to represent their words. I am not misrepresenting you and I do not misunderstand you. You may prefer a verbiage to describe this supposed Chinese illiteracy that flatters your position more, but people who cannot write are not literate; as you say, they are like a drunk European king drawing pictures.
I actually responded to that quote, and showed that it is trivial to find the string of sounds the word represents and at least some of the lexical meanings between languages, though that point has been left unanswered. You can find that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Jorge_Stolfi - 05-07-2026
(05-07-2026, 07:13 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not misrepresenting you and I do not misunderstand you.Yes you are. Grossly and offensively. And it is getting worse each time. Stop saying what you think my "position" is.
Quote:I did answer that question---I told you that we disagree about what it means and that we should explore that.I asked three questions. You did not answer any of them. Their meaning is quite clear; there is nothing to "explore". The answers can only be "yes" or "no".
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - tavie - 05-07-2026
Again, let's try to keep things civil and not make assumptions about people's motivations.
There may indeed, as eggyk said, be a certain amount of "talking past" each other. There are clearly different and probably incompatible positions here, but the exact nature of the disagreements may be getting blurred by different interpretations of terms and other things.
I think this thread would benefit from everyone being clearer - even laboriously so - about what you mean and how it relates to this specific element of the Chinese theory. As well as making sure you both know where each other stands, this would be helpful for those of us who have limited background on this and have neither followed all the intricacies of the debate nor want to wade through 68 pages to unravel it.
For instance, let's be clear exactly how it is envisioned the Caesar example relates to Chinese, given that it hinges on illiteracy and Jorge is adamant he doesn't mean this in the context of Chinese. If this is an analogy about not needing grammar if you can recognize individual words, let's be clearer about that, and why it holds (or doesn't hold) for the dictation theory.
Let's also be clearer what we mean by when using words like "read" and "words" in phrases like "By then no one knew how those authors would have read those characters" and "they have been using very different words". Do we mean different meanings or simply different pronunciations, i.e. we still can't reconstruct reliably how Sun Tzu would have pronounced the words including even whether he would have used tones, but the meaning is still the same?
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - rikforto - 05-07-2026
I'm genuinely unsure what the three questions are. I'm only tracking the one about Mandarin pronunciation in the Spring and Autumn Period, which I have given you my position on.
As for this:
(05-07-2026, 08:22 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes you are. Grossly and offensively. And it is getting worse each time. Stop saying what you think my "position" is.I am quoting you saying that Chinese people do not have the written word. You've clarified this repeatedly, and have not rejected the substance of that claim. Here you are clarifying that there is no way to write down the word for "water" in China, only to draw a picture:
(03-07-2026, 07:35 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And yet 水 continued to have meaningS to this day, not only to speakers of all Sinitic languages but also to speakers of Japanese, and to scholars reading old Korean and Vietnamese books. Maybe to some of those people the meaning of 水 is a word -- but it will be a different word to different people, and none of those words is "THE" meaning of 水. But to other people the meaning of 水 is not a word but the concept of water; and it so happens that, for most people who know that character, it indeed means the concept of water -- either directly, or indirectly through a word that means water to them.Lest I be accused of misrepresenting you, here you generously allow some people are literate, and immediately undercut it by saying it would be a personal language. This is not how reading and writing work. In writing, a person puts down the words and in reading a person recovers them, allowing for the kinds of relatively small qualifications that always accompany this kind of linguistic description. The fact that logographs admit a more flexible relationship to pronunciation standards and have a greater translingual presence than Indo-European orthographic morphemes is interesting and ultimately relevant to this thread, but I've pointed out several times this is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
On the merits, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is not the example I would choose because, without triggering a debate about the rigor of glottochronology, the broad observation that common words tend to be more stable holds for Sinitic languages and 水 is very common. Nonetheless, it illustrates my point well enough. In Cantonese it has gained a sense of "money" that is not available in other languages. In Japanese and Korean it retains its old, alchemical sense in the compound meaning "Tuesday" and in that use was one of the few hanja I encountered in daily life when I lived in Korea; from what I can tell, it is no longer current in any Chinese language. But most to the point, in a few Wu languages the word for water has been supplanted by 沝. This is not simply an orthographic convention. In both Mandarin and the Wu languages in question the words have different meanings and readings. Mostly 沝 is obsolete in Mandarin, but it meant "river confluence" or the like and is still collated in Mandarin dictionaries, but in the relevant Wu languages it has simply taken on the meaning "water" and supplanted 水. To be absolutely clear: 水 and 沝 are not homophonous or synonymous in Mandarin; in the same way 水 and 沝 are not homophonous or synonymous in these Wu languages. However, Mandarin 水 is synonymous with Suichang Wu 沝; Mandarin 沝 is not synonymous with Suichang Wu 沝. Mandarin 沝 and Suichnag Wu 沝 will admittedly be homophonous if one does not use different pronunciation standards for both languages, but this is a tautology that tells us nothing about usage and meaning. That Chinese more readily admits that sort of homophonous reading schemes does not grant Chinese speakers an exception from language change, as the lexical and synonym entries for 水 readily show.
Ultimately, I will not manage your emotions for you. If you are offended by the straightforward meaning of saying that Chinese people cannot write down words then stop saying it. Given that it's wrong on its merits, there are no downsides to doing so. What is not acceptable is to lash out at me for not being deferential to your preferred way of saying that Chinese people cannot write words. I did not edit your position to compare Chinese writing to the drunken art of a European monarch, nor did I choose to describe those readings as "broken", nor did I draw a diagram excluding words from the defintion of characters, nor did I call that misleading, nor did I dismiss out of hand the proper understanding of readings. The person who said those things was you and if they become objectionable when it is pointed out they mean there is no way to read and write in Chinese, you will need to take that matter up with yourself
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - ololololo - 05-07-2026
People are willing to do anything to feel right
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Jorge_Stolfi - 06-07-2026
(05-07-2026, 04:00 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think this thread would benefit from everyone being clearer - even laboriously so - about what you mean and how it relates to this specific element of the Chinese theory. ... For instance, let's be clear exactly how it is envisioned the Caesar example relates to Chinese, given that it hinges on illiteracy and Jorge is adamant he doesn't mean this in the context of Chinese.
Thanks, I will try. The Caesar and Martians story meant to illustrate how Chinese writing works, and what its syntax means. But I will not try to explain it, because I am afraid I would be mis-"quoted" again as claiming that Caesar went to China or that the Chinese had no houses.
But none of our discussion, including that story, has any relevance to my SPS=SBJ claim, to the Chinese Origin Theory, or to my proposed Dictation Scenario for the latter.
Quote:Let's also be clearer what we mean by when using words like "read" and "words" in phrases like "By then no one knew how those authors would have read those characters" and "they have been using very different words". Do we mean different meanings or simply different pronunciations, i.e. we still can't reconstruct reliably how Sun Tzu would have pronounced the words including even whether he would have used tones, but the meaning is still the same?
Yes, that is pretty much it.
If Sun Tzu had been asked by the Emperor to read his book aloud, he would not have said "Sūnzǐ yuē: bīng zhě, guó zhī dà shì...". Not even remotely close to that. That is a reading using basically Mandarin syllables, which is how a well-educated Chinese may read his words today; but some may read it very differently. Like, it seems that some well-educated Cantonese speakers would rather use Cantonese syllables instead of Mandarin ones. (And I have seen claims that a Cantonese reading would probably be a tad closer to what he would have said than a Mandarin one.)
But both readings would be equally "right" -- because they would be equally wrong. Because, well before 1400 CE no one knew any more what Sun Tzu would have uttered. And today we still don't know; linguists have only vague guesses. No one would understand what he said if he said it today. Or in 1400 CE. His words were as lost as those of Proto-Indo-European are today.
His writings only let us recover the concepts that his words represented. We trust that, where he wrote 水, he meant some word that, in his language, meant water. But we don't know what that word was.
The characters of The Art of War are arranged in a specific sequence that reflect the syntax of whatever language Sun Tzu used in his writings. (But with no punctuation, compounding hyphens, blank spaces, etc.) Strictly speaking, we do not know how Sun Tzu would have parsed that text, and what was his intended meaning. But there is a "generally accepted" specification of that syntax, the "Classical Chinese" syntax. It must be mostly correct, because many works from that time have been read according to that syntax, and massively commented, nonstop since then. Likewise there is a "generally accepted" parsing and interpretation of the Chinese characters that comprise The Art of War, which is supported mainly by tradition and many old commentaries.
(However, the syntax of Classical Chinese is inherently ambiguous, because it has no case or tense inflections, no articles, very few function words (prepositions copulas, etc.), and often a character may be used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, etc. Thus it is still possible that, here and there, the modern "generally accepted" parsing of the Art of War is wrong. Like may be the the case for Genesis I.1)
But none of that matters for the Dictation Scenario. The language that the "Divine Farmer" used when writing the Shennong Bencao, like that of Sun Tzu, died more than 1000 years ago. By 1400 CE, no one knew how he would have read his own book aloud. The Dictator must have read it aloud to the Author, apparently character by character, using the syllables of whatever local language the Author spoke. Even if the Dictator knew other languages, and could have read using the words of some other language, it would not make any sense -- because that is not what the Author wanted and asked him to do.
And while the syntax of Classical Chinese surely was very different from that of the local spoken language (just as it is from the syntax of modern Mandarin and Cantonese), that was not a big problem, because the SBJ (differently from the Art of War) has an extremely simple structure: each recipe is basically a list of diseases and benefits, mostly 2-4 characters each, mostly just adjective-noun or verb-object pairs. No subordinate clauses, conditionals, temporal aspects, complicated logical connections, etc.
The real big problem for the Author was that he must have recognized maybe only 5% of the plant names and 10% of the diseases, even if he could understand many of the words. He may have understood the words for "rush" and "piglet", but he probably had no idea of what sort of medical condition a "rushing piglet" was. But that did not matter either; his goal, according to the proposed scenario, was to just obtain a full copy of the SBJ that he could at least read, if not completely understand, when he got back home.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Jorge_Stolfi - 06-07-2026
(05-07-2026, 04:18 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm genuinely unsure what the three questions are. I'm only tracking the one about Mandarin pronunciation in the Spring and Autumn Period, which I have given you my position on.Maybe but you did not anwer it.
I just answered myself the question about what Sun Tzu would have said when asked to read his own book aloud, so forget that one. The other two wre in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
Quote:if a Dictator today read aloud the Rooster recipe
丹雄鸡味甘微温主女人崩中漏下赤白沃补虚温中～
to a Cantonese speaker who does not know Mandarin or Classical Chinese, by reading each hanzi as a Cantonese syllable,
daan1 hung4 gai1 mei6 gam1 mei4 wan1 zyu2 neoi5 jan4 bang1 zung1, lau6 haa6
cik1 baak6 juk1 bou2 heoi1 wan1 zung1 ...
what would the guy miss because of the wrong syntax? And if the Dictator instead read
daan1 hung4 gai1 mei6 gam1 mei4 wan1 zyu2 jiu3 hai6 ji1 neoi5 jan4 ge3 bang1 zung1 lau6 haa6
cik1 baak6 juk1 zung6 ho2 ji5 bou2 heoi1 wan1 zung1 ...
which is supposed to be valid Cantonese syntax -- would the guy understand it any better?
Quote:I am quoting you saying that Chinese people do not have the written word.No, I never said that. You are not quoting me. (Check the dictionary for the meaning of "to quote".) You made up that red sentence and falsely attributed it to me.
Quote:you [wrote] that there is no way to write down the word for "water" in China, only to draw a pictureNo I did not write that. Same as above.
Quote:you generously allow some people are literateNo, I did not write that. Same as above.
Quote:and immediately undercut it by saying it would be a personal language.No, I did not write that. Same as above.
Quote:[you are] saying that Chinese people cannot write down wordsI can't even understand what that means. But no, I did not write that. Same as above
Quote:I did not edit your position to compare Chinese writing to the drunken art of a European monarchNow, that is true. You did not edit that statement. You made it up from head to tail.
Quote:nor did I draw a diagram excluding words from the definition of charactersI don't recall excluding that. But indeed characters are not words. Latin characters are not words, nor phonemes; they usually represent single phonemes, but somewhat different ones for different people or different contexts. Chinese characters are not words; they represent words -- but different words to different people or in different contexts.
Quote:The person who said those things was you and if they become objectionable when it is pointed out they mean there is no way to read and write in ChineseThis one takes the gold...
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - rikforto - 06-07-2026
So, I want to focus on one thing for this post. This is what I wrote about the character 水:
(05-07-2026, 04:18 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On the merits, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is not the example I would choose because, without triggering a debate about the rigor of glottochronology, the broad observation that common words tend to be more stable holds for Sinitic languages and 水 is very common. Nonetheless, it illustrates my point well enough. In Cantonese it has gained a sense of "money" that is not available in other languages. In Japanese and Korean it retains its old, alchemical sense in the compound meaning "[edit:Wednesday]" and in that use was one of the few hanja I encountered in daily life when I lived in Korea; from what I can tell, it is no longer current in any Chinese language. But most to the point, in a few Wu languages the word for water has been supplanted by 沝. This is not simply an orthographic convention. In both Mandarin and the Wu languages in question the words have different meanings and readings. Mostly 沝 is obsolete in Mandarin, but it meant "river confluence" or the like and is still collated in Mandarin dictionaries, but in the relevant Wu languages it has simply taken on the meaning "water" and supplanted 水. To be absolutely clear: 水 and 沝 are not homophonous or synonymous in Mandarin; in the same way 水 and 沝 are not homophonous or synonymous in these Wu languages. However, Mandarin 水 is synonymous with Suichang Wu 沝; Mandarin 沝 is not synonymous with Suichang Wu 沝. Mandarin 沝 and Suichnag Wu 沝 will admittedly be homophonous if one does not use different pronunciation standards for both languages, but this is a tautology that tells us nothing about usage and meaning. That Chinese more readily admits that sort of homophonous reading schemes does not grant Chinese speakers an exception from language change, as the lexical and synonym entries for 水 readily show.And this is the most recent statement about that character:
(06-07-2026, 12:55 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.His writings only let us recover the concepts that his words represented. We trust that, where he wrote 水, he meant some word that, in his language, meant water. But we don't know what that word was.
Just, absolutely no recognition I showed that we can recover the actual word, nor that it 水 does not always mean water, nor that not all languages use the word 水 for water. He's not saying I'm wrong, he's not saying that I misunderstand my source, he's not saying it's irrelevant. Just repeating this point with no recognition that I already addressed it. And does kind of seem to me like I if I go and look up if this word is actually attested the way Jorge describes, and it is not attested that way, that the conversation should reflect that.
Now, maybe the problem is actually me. After all, trying to explain all that in a paragraph---and a paragraph where I brain-farted on first-month of Korean class vocabulary no less!---might simply be confusing. So I am going to go and take the time to write something about how to actually read characters, why they work the way they do, how we know that, and the two ways it bears on the dictation scenario and the putative identification of the VMS text. But that will take me a more than a minute to put up there
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - rikforto - 06-07-2026
Oh, and about this:
(06-07-2026, 02:36 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I just answered myself the question about what Sun Tzu would have said when asked to read his own book aloud, so forget that one. The other two wre in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:This is several sentences after you quoted me saying I cannot account for this because I don't know how an LLM produced it and you don't either. I answered it, you did not like the answer so you repeated the question, and then you characterized me as non-responsive. It wasn't, you have your answer. It's rather like the question about the Sun Tzu's pronunciation standard I'm still ignoring; I said we don't agree about how to read Chinese, it's premature to discuss the output of that reading. You have your answers.
Quote:if a Dictator today read aloud the Rooster recipe
丹雄鸡味甘微温主女人崩中漏下赤白沃补虚温中～
to a Cantonese speaker who does not know Mandarin or Classical Chinese, by reading each hanzi as a Cantonese syllable,
daan1 hung4 gai1 mei6 gam1 mei4 wan1 zyu2 neoi5 jan4 bang1 zung1, lau6 haa6
cik1 baak6 juk1 bou2 heoi1 wan1 zung1 ...
what would the guy miss because of the wrong syntax? And if the Dictator instead read
daan1 hung4 gai1 mei6 gam1 mei4 wan1 zyu2 jiu3 hai6 ji1 neoi5 jan4 ge3 bang1 zung1 lau6 haa6
cik1 baak6 juk1 zung6 ho2 ji5 bou2 heoi1 wan1 zung1 ...
which is supposed to be valid Cantonese syntax -- would the guy understand it any better?