Well, I am more of a linguistics expert than you. I took a course.

No need to be arrogant, oh man of overly large signature file.

Sorry if it sounded arrogant, but I tend to take things like this
personally. :P I know I shouldn't and I try to cut down, but sometimes I do
make mistakes.

If I may restate it more tactfully...

What you said about Japanese and Chinese (the languages) being related is a
common misconception, due to the fact that the two languages share a common
writing system.

I am in agreement with you that spoken Japanese and Chinese have about as
much
in common as vicchysoise and chow mein, but in terms of meanings of the
kanji,
I must disagree.

<snip>

Ah, but that's what I had said in a previous post. I restate:

"The meaning of a zimu (Chinese character) does not necessarily correspond
exactly with that of its kanji counterpart. This is due to the fact that
Japanese and Chinese are as unrelated to each other as English and Navaho.
They're unlikely to have any concepts that exactly match in common."

When I say "Chinese" and "Japanese", I mean the langauges and not the
writing system. I was saying that even though the writing systems are
derived from each other (kanji counterpart), the languages themselves
aren't. Languages exist independantly of their writing systems; they are
two separate things.

A language is a system of communicating ideas using symbols with semantic
meanings taken from a lexicon and organized by syntax, and the symbols of
most languages are groups of phonetics (sign languages being the exception;
sign languages ARE languages, BTW). When you say that two languages are
related, you mean that one language is the direct ancestor of the other, or
that they share a common ancestor. This means that a _language's_ relation
is determined by its syntax and core lexicon.

A writing system, on the other hand, is a system of representing the spoken
symbols or phonetics of those symbols with graphic symbols. Chinese
characters are symbols for a combination of the phonentics of a Chinese
symbol and the symbol itself. The semantic symbols within the core lexicon
of most languages are nearly equal in semantics (every language has words
for body parts, colors, common animals, family relations, ect.). This means
that the Chinese writing system is easily ported to other languages, as
they are representations of lexical and phonetic symbols rather than only
phonetics.

Yes, the writing system Japanese are derived from the Chinese writing
system, but the languages themselves are distinct. Navaho and English are
different languages, but Navaho is written in roman script (slightly
modified). But this is just the writing system. English uses _roman_
script, which was used by Latin. Roman script was adapted from Greek
script, used by the Greek langauge. Greek script was adapted from
Phoenician script, and so on...


NOW I'm done. End of discussion. Go home. That's all I have to say, really!

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