Odd weather...
Mar. 12th, 2012 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserLast thing I do before bed is check the weather. So tonight I went to weather.com, clicked the 10 day forecast for my area, then blinked.
Showers with a 100% chance of Vietnamese?
I feel bad not knowing what language that is! Based on Googling, it doesn't look to be Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. It doesn't look Vietnamese to my eye, but I'm far from an expert on languages. The whole page was an odd mix of languages:
[My town], [state] (ZIP) Weather
Updated: 三月 12, 2012, 9:45下午
Showers with a 100% chance of Vietnamese?
I feel bad not knowing what language that is! Based on Googling, it doesn't look to be Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. It doesn't look Vietnamese to my eye, but I'm far from an expert on languages. The whole page was an odd mix of languages:
[My town], [state] (ZIP) Weather
Updated: 三月 12, 2012, 9:45下午
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2012-03-13 05:17 am (UTC)Looks like your weather will be about equivalent to mine for the next week. Although it's way hotter here then it's supposed to be.
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Date: 2012-03-13 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 02:51 pm (UTC)(And I have no idea how to tell the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese, etc etc... I'm actually pretty sure that there is little or no difference in the written language, though immense differences in the spoken, and here I go again SORRY ARGH *hugs and flees*)
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Date: 2012-03-13 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 03:16 pm (UTC)One of my Linguistics professors used to say that the difference between a dialect and a language was that the language was backed up by a government, borders, and an army. Thus you get, for example, several Scandinavian languages that are mutually comprehensible - say you have countries lined up like A-B-C-D-E. People in one country can easily understand people from a country that's right next to them, and kind of understand people from the next country along, which means that linguistically speaking, they are not separate languages; they are dialects of one language, or on a gradient from language A to language E. However, the people speaking those languages have national pride (and borders, and armies) and insist that no, they have their OWN language thank you, so culturally they are considered separate.
Chinese is the opposite situation. :) Speakers of Mandarin and Cantonese can't understand each other; they share a lot of vocabulary, but then so do an ancient form of Chinese and Japanese and nobody tries to call those dialects of the same language. ;) They have different pronunciation, different grammatical structure, verbs go in a different place in the sentence and so on. To a linguist, therefore, they are completely separate languages, and each has numerous regional dialects just to complicate matters. Written down, however, they're essentially identical, and they share the government/border/army, so are often - culturally speaking - regarded as two dialects of the same language, which makes linguists wince and mutter things like "Well, not really..."
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Date: 2012-03-13 03:22 pm (UTC)Thanks for the info! :D
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Date: 2012-03-13 03:40 pm (UTC)Linguistics is fascinating. Phonetics is like doing logic puzzles with sounds, morphology is the same with bigger clumps of sounds, and don't get me started on how much fun Japanese can be what with three different writing systems and infinite capacity for puns and double- or triple-meanings. (No, seriously, don't get me started or we'll be here all night... 8D)
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Date: 2012-03-13 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 07:26 am (UTC)So the bigger question is, how come your weather forecast is all in Chinese?
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Date: 2012-03-13 02:41 pm (UTC)And that is a darned good question. Maybe I'll get a random language every night, that sure would be entertaining.
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Date: 2012-03-13 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 02:44 pm (UTC)三月 means March, for example, pronounced "sam wol" in Korean.
It is pouring rain over here...
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Date: 2012-03-13 02:51 pm (UTC)Is it normal for you guys to be getting rain now? Instead of snow?
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Date: 2012-03-13 03:34 pm (UTC)Using the same Chinese characters makes it handy to travel in other Asian countries that do the same. Even if I can't pronounce it in the local language, I can usually find the harmless chicken dish in the menu. XD
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Date: 2012-03-13 03:36 pm (UTC)Using the same Chinese characters makes it handy to travel in other Asian countries that do the same. Even if I can't pronounce it in the local language, I can usually find the harmless chicken dish in the menu and point to it. XD
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Date: 2012-03-13 04:10 pm (UTC)And that's an important skill, when traveling in other countries. :D
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Date: 2012-03-13 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 10:10 pm (UTC)You can go tanning on some of those days. :P
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Date: 2012-03-13 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-03-14 04:13 am (UTC)