The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[JoJo_Jost]

"Hi everyone. As a native Chinese speaker, I want to answer the question about 'long-distance effects' in Chinese.

No, Chinese absolutely does not have this kind of long-distance dependency, neither in syntax nor in phonetics. Chinese is an isolating language. Each character stands alone. The strokes, structure, or pronunciation of one character have zero mechanical influence on the next character.

@ Stolfi Then you have a serious problem—since these effects occur not only with “sh” but also with other letter combinations. 

Unfortunately, that disproves your theory. 

Under these circumstances, the VMS CANNOT be Chinese - (this long distance effect also occurs in the “Stars” section.)


Sorry...


PS: And certainly not if `qo = "and` were the case. Because `and` has no side effects, since it’s a list, and before you start a list, no one knows that it’s about to start or how long it will last.