Comments on: How many words (or characters) are enough? http://highearthorbit.com/how-many-words-or-characters-are-enough/ Transmitting ideas, observations, and images from 42,000 km. Sat, 22 Nov 2008 06:02:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Bob http://highearthorbit.com/how-many-words-or-characters-are-enough/#comment-13784 Bob Wed, 24 May 2006 13:20:29 +0000 http://highearthorbit.com/how-many-words-or-characters-are-enough/#comment-13784 Is it the case that each character is spoken as one syllable? I've noticed when reading credits on Chinese movies that when an English translation is provided that there's a charactersyllable mapping. In fact, you can often find the same syllable in a few names and deduce which character matches it. And since I understand characters to be words, that means that one word maps to one syllable as well, presumably with the tonal aspect. If that's the case, would it then follow that there are about 900 syllables used to cover 90% of an evening newscast? Or is spoken Chinese richer than written Chinese? And to go off on a tangent, is there some aspect of a written character that immediately tells you which category of word it is -- noun, verb, adjective, etc? Are the characters for verbs somehow "conjugated" to indicate whether it is I, you, we, he, etc. who is the actor? Or is it done with a separate character? Is it the case that each character is spoken as one syllable? I’ve noticed when reading credits on Chinese movies that when an English translation is provided that there’s a charactersyllable mapping. In fact, you can often find the same syllable in a few names and deduce which character matches it.

And since I understand characters to be words, that means that one word maps to one syllable as well, presumably with the tonal aspect.

If that’s the case, would it then follow that there are about 900 syllables used to cover 90% of an evening newscast? Or is spoken Chinese richer than written Chinese?

And to go off on a tangent, is there some aspect of a written character that immediately tells you which category of word it is — noun, verb, adjective, etc?

Are the characters for verbs somehow “conjugated” to indicate whether it is I, you, we, he, etc. who is the actor? Or is it done with a separate character?

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