What I said was: > FYI, the differently spaced versions of the Chinese sentence do not quite have the same meaning. Certainly not the same effect.
Put in enough whitespace, esp. different amounts of whitespace, and one effect is that it makes it look like you were drunk when you wrote the text. Put in enough whitespace, and it has the meaning and effect of punctuation (such as comma or parens). I know of at least one example learned in grade school where punctuation changed the meaning of a sentence to its exact opposite. I haven't thought much about it, but I believe the same thing works in English, where you put the whitespace between words rather than letters. On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:05 AM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > I do not know chinese, but I'll take Roger's word that the whitespace > still has some significance there. > > [Replying in chat, also] > > Thanks, > > -- > Raul > > On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 10:17 PM, Skip Cave <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Raul, > > > > Who said that ASCII English was ideal? > > > > Here's the sentence "I do not see why this should be an ideal" in > Mandarin. > > > > 我不明白為什麼這應該是一個理想的 > > > > And here's the same sentence again in Mandarin, with different spacing, > but > > with the same meaning. . > > > > 我不明 白為 什 麼這 應該 是 一 個理想的 > > > > And here's the same sentence again in Mandarin, with even different > > spacing, yet with the same meaning. > > > > 我 不明白 為什 麼這 應該 是 一個 理 想 的 > > > > So true single-glyph symbolic languages are space-independent, and > that's a > > GOOD thing for writing. Your example shows why languages that use > > multi-glyph words or symbols like English and J and thus are NOT space > > independent, are a BAD thing for handwriting. > > > > When you write your sentence on the board in English, you have to be > > careful to clearly indicate where the spaces are, or you get what you > > showed in your first example. With a single-glyph languager like Chinese, > > the spaces don't matter much. > > > > Skip > > > > On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 7:12 AM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > >> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 6:02 AM, Skip Cave <[email protected]> > >> wrote: > >> > Ideally a written version of the language should be space-independent. > >> > >> Id ono ts eew hyt hi ssh oul db ea nid e al. > >> > >> I do not see why this should be an ideal. > >> > >> -- > >> Raul > >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > >> > > > > > > > > -- > > Skip Cave > > Cave Consulting LLC > > Phone: 214-460-4861 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
