English class?

[Altheya]

Then there is Chinese (probably mandarin, its talking about main land china)... one study suggests that nearly 10% of their words are homonyms.

Oh yeah. In Mandarin, you could totally make up a proper sentence with just one 'sound'.

māmā mà mǎ( Might have gotten the tones wrong) = Mother scolds horse (lit).

 

[Artem]

Oh yeah. In Mandarin, you could totally make up a proper sentence with just one 'sound'.

māmā mà mǎ( Might have gotten the tones wrong) = Mother scolds horse (lit).

generally the second ma wouldn't have a tone (or 5th tone if you will)
That's not the same thing as homonym, because the sounds are different. It's for words like thousand, lead, modest and sign where they are all qian in first tone.

 

[Altheya]

generally the second ma wouldn't have a tone (or 5th tone if you will)
That's not the same thing as homonym, because the sounds are different. It's for words like thousand, lead, modest and sign where they are all qian in first tone.

I couldn't remember if the second ma that would be in the neutral tone so I just hodgepodged it lol.

I get what you mean about it not being a homonym. I guess I was too loose with the usage lol and wasn't looking at the words being in the same tone even.

 

[Romper]

Are we discussing homophones or homonyms now? I'm confused. I know that the read and read thing was a homonyms, but now we're getting into Chinese. Im so confused.

 

[Artem]

Are we discussing homophones or homonyms now? I'm confused. I know that the read and read thing was a homonyms, but now we're getting into Chinese. Im so confused.

Homonyms are a more specific homophone. Homophone sounds the same but different meaning, unrelated to spelling. Homonyms just require the spelling to be the same too. It started with homophones but someone mentioned the homonyms in Chinese, so it got to that.

On the other note if you don't count tones as different sounds (though they are) like upwards of 70% of Chinese would be homophones/homonyms.

 

[Elemmire]

You know Chinese, Artem?

 

[Artem]

You know Chinese, Artem?

ni hao

Yeah, I know enough to get by

 

[Direwolf]

There is a built in spell check to the forum... That or my version of Firefox kicks ass, either or, there is no real excuse for horrid spelling to the point of what you are typing is intelligible.

 

[Altheya]

ni hao

Yeah, I know enough to get by

Wo Hen Hao. /wave

On the topic of the spell check in firefox, it bugs me out when I see all the red dotted lines on a lot of my words. Then I just ignore them cos the spellcheck is for american english

Can you believe that firefox just underlined the following words in the paragraph above? Comments in brackets are my assumptions of the problems.
1) firefox (capitalisation I think, It's gotta be THE Firefox!)
2) spellcheck (Needs a space in between the two words, I didn't change it though)
3) american (capitalisation)
4) english (capitalisation)

 

[Romper]

There is a built in spell check to the forum... That or my version of Firefox kicks ass, either or, there is no real excuse for horrid spelling to the point of what you are typing is intelligible.

Firefox 2.2 comes with spell check don't feel so special there Dire.