Reprint--From the information theory argument why Chinese is the most advanced language in the world--quoting multiple experimental data

"Reprint" Demonstrates why Chinese is the most advanced language in the world from the perspective of information theory – citing multiple experimental data

Chinese Computer Application Research Group (pseudonym: Cold philosophy?) ）

I. Criteria for judging the level of language

Speaking, is actually a communication protocol. In other words, the language is actually to turn the human mind through the vocal organs into a series of different frequencies, different waveforms of sound waves, and then the other body's auditory organs and associated brain tissue back into the mind. A communication protocol is a rule, a rule that prescribes how ideas/information should be transformed into signals that are easy to transmit.

On the computer, there are two basic criteria for communication protocols: "Transmission efficiency" and "noise immunity".

Transmission efficiency: In unit time, according to the communication protocol can transmit how much information.

Anti-noise capability: This communication mode can still ensure that most of the information is transmitted correctly under the same noise.

"Transmission efficiency" is divided into two aspects, encoding efficiency and transmission speed

Coding efficiency: This communication protocol can express a message with a short string of signals

Transmission speed: a signal that can be transmitted at much faster speed

To evaluate whether a language is advanced, it is necessary to analyze the above problems.

Text, is a kind of data storage, storage format requirements and communication protocols, storage format requires a small storage space, fast reading and writing speed, compared to the reading speed, writing speed is secondary. This is because the average one writing corresponds to a lot of reading, and people spend more time reading text than writing. Especially in the modern society, handwriting is less, computer input, printing, printing has greatly accelerated the speed of recording text, and the speed of reading is not much improved, so in modern society, reading speed in the definition of the text level occupies a more important position.

It is important to note that the "syllables" in the following discussion are defined in Western linguistics, roughly speaking, a set of successive vowels that together with their consonants form a syllable. For example to, Bliss, strength is Mono festival. Chinese BA and Chuang are also mono, although the length of single syllable words is not exactly the same, but at least comparable

Ii. Classification of languages

The world's languages are broadly divided into two categories, "solitary" and "integrated".

(The integrated language is divided into agglutinative language, inflected languages and other sub-types)

"Solitary language" expresses different meanings simply by the relationship between words and word.

"Synthetic language" can express different meanings by changing the form of words.

Let's give a simple example:

Chinese (orphan language): I told him yesterday.

English (General): I told him yesterday.

In English you can first see the told and him two variants, which turn tell into a told to indicate what happened in the past. To turn he into a him to represent the object

The Chinese use yesterday to direct the time, if not specify the time to use "already", "too" to express the past, and does not change the shape of the word, Chinese also through their respective positions to reflect who is the subject who is the object

In fact, English is already very close to the "isolated language" in the general language. There is no difference between the word and the general tense in the future tense of English, and the different tenses in many other languages are expressed in different forms. There are definite rules about the position of each word in English, and in many other languages, such as Latin, the position of the word can not be fixed. In other words, the sentence can be said: him yesterday told I then through the morphology of the main lattice and the word word to determine who told who who

This is very bad, because at the time of reading, there is always a difference, we want to read the order is: first read our brains need to deal with the part of the first, "solitary language" naturally has this advantage, many "integrated language" in the gradual development has also established similar rules, such as one of the descendants of Latin-French

Ancient Chinese was also a kind of "comprehensive language" but because of the limitation of Chinese characters, the morphological changes of ancient Chinese only exist in oral, for example, in the classical writings of the use of the law, such as "The king of the soil with thyme and princes" in the Minister (envoy, in the ancient times, is required in the Chinese pronunciation before adding "s" Is the inflection of a typical synthetic language.

Some people think that the current Chinese still have a certain combination of language color, they think that the addition of such as "the", "the" is actually the word deformation, this view can only be a matter of opinion

From the overall development trend, the world's spoken language from the "comprehensive language" to "isolated language" development, although not to say "isolated language" is certainly better than the general language, but this trend shows that "isolated language" of a certain characteristics of the historical development, this advantage is the compression of data

Third, data compression: "Isolated language," the superb place

When the computer developed into a new era, people began to study how to store video files on the computer, the first solution is extremely simple, that is, a frame of the image is all stored down, but this is undoubtedly inefficient, because there is too much redundant information

For a simple example, a night scene, a lot of places on the screen is black, why should each point of color repeatedly recorded it? So the next idea is to no longer store the complete information for each frame of the image, and store the difference between the next frame image and the previous one, and all the colors in the two images are skipped.

The "Orphan language" is exactly the effect.

As a simple example, when a person is talking about what happened yesterday in Chinese, it is only necessary to start by mentioning that "these things are happening yesterday", and that there is no need to mention the time, and the English language requires repeated use of tenses to show that this happened in the past

When communicating, you need to think about time, main/case, quantity, active/passive, which has an impact on communication, and of course, it will greatly reduce the time it takes to think about it, but even skilled speakers will make mistakes, and with the help of the context, these changes can be dispensed with.

Time deformation, you can rely on the first sentence to add time adverbial complete description, then describe the same time period of the sentence will no longer consider the description of time, which is "isolated language" data compression ability.

With the increase of human social communication, the context of a communication has become rich, many in the words, sentences under the conditions of a very efficient way of information exchange, it appears to be more and more redundant, so the world's main language has been to "isolated language" closer together.

About the efficiency of ideographic in each language, which is information density, the University of Lyon, France, in 2011, did an experiment.

http://ohll.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/Pellegrino_2011_Language.pdf

In this experiment, the researchers found 59 different language users, including English, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, and Spanish. They were provided with 20 paragraphs, which were translated into their respective languages, and then asked to speak at normal speed, the researchers recorded all the way through, and then the researchers calculated the number of all syllables, calculated the amount of the meaning (the basic unit of the ideographic expression) in the reading, and finally came to the conclusion

The result of the study is

"Chinese" information density is 0.94, ranked first

"English" information density is 0.91, ranked second

German (0.79)

French (0.74)

Italian (0.72)

Spanish (0.63)

Japanese (0.49)

The density of information here is obtained by calculating the number of senses contained in each syllable, since the number of the senses is counted from the original text-English version, it is possible to increase or decrease the meaning after translation, in order to prevent distortions in the translation process caused by the data standards are not uniform, the text of each language is translated into Vietnamese alone, It then divides the number of meanings contained in each syllable in the respective Vietnamese text, resulting in more fair data

This makes me think that, after large-scale water injection of modern Chinese information density is still so high, so what is the extent of classical writings? I'm sorry there's no such research.

However, according to the use of frequency weighted average, modern Chinese average words in the word number is about 1.5, in classical literature, many of them are single-syllable words expressed, compromise, I guess the information density of classical Chinese is 1.25 times times the modern language should be no problem, which in ancient times is a scary figure

Because Latin is not more than the main language of modern Europe is simple, by the limitations of the ancient text record space, the Chinese language is clearly more dominant in the text record, which may be the reason why the ancient Chinese writing records very rich

It is said that syllables cannot be used as a measure of the density of information, because different syllables have a distinct length of pronunciation. This question is very good, in fact, I will talk about the "English" and "Chinese" pronunciation length problem, English single syllable average pronunciation length is longer than Chinese, so in the oral information density, "Chinese" advantage is greater.

Iv. Advantages of transmission: tone

The transmission of spoken information is done through sound.

Sound is generally divided into four parts: sound quality, pitch, syllables, rimal

For a syllable in a language, sound quality refers to the combination of consonants and vowels, and the other three are well understood. Modern language is not very "rimal", because it can not be unified among the various people, and by the speaker's distance, mood, physical state and other effects, it is important to note that English "accent" is actually a change in pitch, and the remaining three elements are widely used in the language

Take Chinese for example

"Sound quality" is easy to understand, that is, pronunciation to remove tones

And the tone itself is divided into "pitch" and "syllables" two

The four tones of Chinese Mandarin is four different modes of pitch change

One sound is to keep the pitch

Two sound is pitch from low to high change

Three sounds are pitch from high to low to high

Four tones is pitch from high to low

Although our language class said softly is no tone, but in essence, it is shortened syllables, softly generally shorten the syllables four tones or a sound (sometimes the pitch is very low), but the tone is very short, more difficult to listen to clear, so Putonghua only as a specific use (modal particles, plural signs, etc.)

English "re-reading" is actually the difference in pitch, so strictly speaking, English is tonal, but only the English tone of only two: high and low, but the English tone is only used in some syllables, in addition to the question, emphasis and other situations, usually English words do not pitch, in addition to a small number of English words (such as record), English words do not use tones to distinguish different meanings, and English is indeed used syllables elements (such as sheep and ship) because English generally only uses the sound quality and syllables to distinguish the meaning of the word, it is generally considered a non-tonal language.

First, from "coding efficiency", we can say that "Chinese" is the most efficient language in the world.

Chinese is one of the few languages in the world to use pitch to distinguish different words, so from the coding, the ideographic ability of Chinese pronunciation is a dimension higher than the general language, that is to say, using a single syllable, Chinese can express different kinds of information, theoretically up to 4 times times of the general foreign language

Why do foreigners learn Chinese so hard, while Chinese learn English is not so hard? Is that the Chinese have mastered the pronunciation is the pitch change, now to learn the low-level two fixed pitch. In learning Chinese, one of the hardest problems for many foreigners is the tone. Because you are accustomed to two fixed pitches, you have not heard and practiced continuous pitch changes in your pronunciation.

It has been suggested that the tone itself will affect the speed of pronunciation, which of course exists, for example, two sounds, which require the tone to rise gradually. To show this, the pronunciation should show two tones, naturally is more trouble than a single tone, but the advantage of the tone is that the same set of consonants and vowels based on the formation of a variety of different pronunciation, So you don't have to use more consonants to differentiate two words with similar sounds (such as English Life and Light)

Syllables in English syllables, consonant-vowel patterns, are pronounced indeed slightly faster than Chinese. But other patterns, such as consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant (blight) or consonant-vowel-consonant, tend to be slower than Chinese pronunciation. and consonant-vowel patterns of syllables, because of the lack of English tone, so the number is much smaller than Chinese. Overall average, English single syllable pronunciation is slower than Chinese

For the conclusion that "English single syllable should be slower than Chinese", some people may find it not very convincing. Let us give a very simple example, the average Chinese people's elementary mathematics ability is often more than in Europe and America. This is not simply a question of education, and more crucially, it is the result of Chinese naming of numbers.

All numbers in Chinese are mono-syllable

6 and 9 have two vowels (or according to international academic, three vowels), with a slightly slower pronunciation

0 has a posterior nasal, may be slightly slower to pronounce, and a few with a volume of tongue tone, may be slightly slower

All numbers in English, except 7, are all single-syllable

Which covers the "consonant-vowel" structure (e.g. 4)

"consonant-consonant-vowel" structure (e.g. 3)

"Consonant-vowel-consonant" structure (e.g. 5)

"Consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant" structure (e.g. 6)

"Vowel-consonant" structure (e.g. 8)

Double vowel structure (such as 0, note the general number of 0 read "ou", do not read zero, the latter is too laborious)

The numbers that can be spoken in English roughly include the syllable structure of a variety of mono-syllable words in English, although there is no one of the most magical auxiliary-auxiliary-complementary-auxiliary-auxiliary structures, but that is as rare as the unit sound structure.

So the average number of English is slower than Chinese how much?

So the average number of English is slower than Chinese how much?

First we need to know that people's short-term memory of numbers is actually a memory of the pronunciation of numbers. In other words, the number of digits you can remember is determined by the total length of the number pronounced

Research shows (please download, read for yourself)

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/26140/0000216.pdf?sequence=1

Chinese people start short-term digital memory ability is higher than Americans, the literature shows that the average number of American college students memory length of 7.2, Chinese college students are 9.2. The number of short-term digital memory for American college students is 78.26% of that of Chinese students. In other words, the average pronunciation length of English numerals is 27.78% higher than that of Chinese numerals, and the effect of 7 (double syllable) on the average syllables is removed (10%) so the average pronunciation length of single syllable is about 17.78% higher than that of Chinese.

Further, China's numbers are completely single-syllable, so the entire digital table can be constructed in an absolute logical way. 96, is Keng plus a six. English is "90" (special words that are different from nine and 10) plus one 6. French is 4 20 plus 16

"Chinese" is the most concise and the most logical structure, is extremely rare in the world, 99 multiplication table, is built on this basis. Children in other countries, if they want to recite this form, can be said to be more difficult than the Chinese children several times, this language advantage improves the Chinese elementary mathematics ability

By the way, some people say that the ancient Chinese tone more ah, is the Chinese more development more and more back? This is certainly wrong, and some tones are influenced by the conditions of the speaker's emotions, which are more uncertain when identified. This issue will be explained in detail in the Anti-noise capability section

V. The advantages in information theory

From the information theory point of view, coding is very learned. For example, we know that a computer transmits information that actually transmits 0 and 1. So what if we transmit a variety of information that is not the same frequency? The answer is that the more frequent the occurrence, the shorter the encoding. This will improve overall efficiency.

For example, we only have four kinds of information to pass, according to the general idea, it is natural to use these four kinds of information respectively 00, 01, 10, 11来 expressed. Each message needs to be represented by a two-digit binary number, which means that the propagation of 100 messages requires a 200 binary number to be sent. But if one of the information is 91%, and the other three is 3%, then another encoding can be used: 1,01,001,000 the spread of this propagation means that 100 messages need to be sent 91+23+33+3*3=115 binary number. Obviously more efficient than the previous ones.

The world's major languages after thousands of years of evolution, the length of their vocabulary distribution, are more in line with the requirements of information theory, you will find the more commonly used words in each language, generally shorter. In English, I, you, he, she, US, are all single-syllable Words

English monosyllabic words are very rich, actually more than Chinese single syllable pronunciation. This is because English can be in a consonant-vowel combination before and after the addition of consonants to achieve a variety of mono-syllable pronunciation, so that the combination of the English single syllable word is a relatively large thesaurus, but there is a price, is the low noise performance, this problem we put in the next section to explain.

According to the definition of western syllables, the use of single-syllable words in English is more frequent than that of Chinese, and according to statistical analysis, the average word length of Chinese users is about 1.5 words (see the readingchinesescript:a Cognitive analysis), which has a chapter in the book "Eye Movements in Reading Chinese andenglish Text ")

The average number of syllables per word in adult English users is about 1.4 (see

This has also been supported by another study: the analysis of 10-hour audio recordings, with an average meici syllable length of 1.38).

So, in terms of the number of syllables, the average Chinese word is 7.14% longer than the English word, however, considering that the English one syllable is actually much longer than the Chinese single syllable (even the 17.78% binary of the previous section, 8.89%) plus the Chinese content of each syllable is roughly 3.3% higher than that of English. (see section III data) from the perspective of information theory, the efficiency of Chinese communication is basically higher than that of English.

This has also been verified by another experiment.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3111932/

This paper found 8 Chinese speakers and 8 English speakers, and then made them a group of two people. In one group, one describes the picture (the descriptor), and the other one paints (the painter) according to the description. Finally, the accuracy of the picture is compared, and the language of the descriptor is observed.

The result is that the Chinese descriptors are clearly more descriptive than the English descriptors, and the descriptors begin to describe the time difference between the painting and the painter, the Chinese user is less than the English user, the duration of the painting, the Chinese painter is less than the English user, the whole time, the Chinese group is significantly lower than the English user, and the Chinese group is faster And the more complicated the painting, the more quickly the Chinese group will be.

Painting results, 144 painting. The average Chinese group commits 8.1 errors each time

Where the descriptors average 3.7 errors each time the painter makes 4.4 mistakes

The English group made an average of 13.25 errors each time

Where the descriptors average 8.5 errors per commit, the painter commits 4.75

The gap between the two is still within the statistical error. So it's not significant.

(well, who says Chinese is not accurate in English?) ）

Then, in order to consider the artist's skill differences, let each painter directly against the original painting. Results the "Chinese" group was slower than the "English" group. During the painting, the Chinese group used fewer syllables than the English speakers, and the two groups of speech (the number of syllables per second) approached (this conclusion is consistent with the results of the previous broadcast speed analysis).

Although this is a preliminary experiment, it is still possible to see the advantages of Chinese in communication: fewer words, shorter time, and a similar description of the exact level (if not higher), the experiment also shows ... Chinese people's art level still needs to be improved ...

As for the main other languages in Europe, according to the data mentioned in section III, they are pronounced more frequently than English, and the information density is lower than English, and I think it is unlikely that those languages will surpass Chinese in this respect.

Six, the group of words logic

Because the English single syllable word resource is rich, but the average pronunciation length is longer, so you will notice that the proportion of single syllable words in English is higher than Chinese, and the use of multi-syllable words is less than Chinese, many logically related words have to squeeze into a limited single syllable thesaurus, the pronunciation of the loss of contact. This leads to the logic of "lack" of common words in English often

For example, we can easily say "rooster", "Hen", "chick", "egg"

And English has become "cock", "Hen", "Chick", "Egg", no connection

If the common words to establish a connection, then English must increase the number of syllables of these words, then the average word length will rise, from the information theory point of view, the transmission efficiency is lower, so the "English" can only be in the logical compromise of the group words

In contrast, Chinese is more leisurely, even under the current information efficiency, the Chinese can still guarantee that most of the word structure is logical, so compared to English vocabulary, "Chinese" vocabulary is more easily remembered, which produced a result, that is, the Chinese vocabulary is much more than English.

English user's vocabulary and new word recognition ability can be seen in 1995 years of the following papers:

http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/27/2/201.full.pdf

Among them, the average student's self-proclaimed word volume of 16141, after a number of selection tests found that the average can identify 71% of the vocabulary, that is, average college students ' vocabulary is estimated to be 11,460 words. The average number of elderly people claiming to be 21252, after a number of selection tests, found that the average can identify 80% of them, that is, the old people's vocabulary is roughly 17002, for the words have never seen the correct understanding of the probability, the University of 30%, the elderly 39%

I didn't find any relevant research in China, but this is the Chinese common Vocabulary (draft) of the commercial press.

http://wenku.baidu.com/view/51636fec551810a6f5248676.html

Everyone can go in to see their vocabulary, I feel that college students reach 50,000 should not be a problem. And this is certainly not a person's total word volume, but there are some words in English in a few words together, so Chinese vocabulary may not be much higher than the Americans, but I think the qualitative conclusion can be under

In addition, there may be some words you have not seen, you can see how much you can't guess the correct meaning ... I think there's really no difficulty except for the very few ...

In addition, both Chinese and English each have a weakness in the group words.

Chinese have a lot of "homonyms" such as "attack" and "Rooster"

English has a large number of "polysemy" English ball can be either balls or prom

In Chinese, the single syllable polysemy, which was used extensively in classical writings, is now mostly a double-syllable single word, and the true polysemy in Chinese (there is no intuitive logical connection between the meanings) is very rare. And the homonyms in English is also very few, can say that these two languages in each development path has made the compromise

As the proportion of English polysemy is relatively large, so although the English user's vocabulary is lower than the Chinese users, it does not mean that English is not as descriptive as Chinese, in addition, the vocabulary of American college students is much lower than the elderly, which means that they have not recorded all the words they can see, but at that age, not enough time to write down. Therefore, it can be seen that the reason for many more meanings of English words, it is likely that the memory of English words more difficult than Chinese.

Generally speaking, because the Chinese simplified pronunciation, and each syllable information density is high, this makes the Chinese can have the long average word length, therefore the group word logic has the certain superiority compared to the English, as to other main languages, the information transmission efficiency and the Chinese comparison difference is bigger. The main aspect can not compare, this secondary aspect does not need to compare

As long as their native language is the best, there is no need to brag about the best and most scientific of Chinese English and Korean.

Seven, strong anti-noise capability

As mentioned earlier, English relies on a large number of single-syllable words to be able to approach Chinese information transfer efficiency. But it's not without a price. To construct a large number of monosyllabic words, you need to use a large number of consonants in your vocabulary.

Consonants are divided into two types

A type of "sonorants" that is capable of continuous pronunciation, such as M, N, ng

(except for such consonants, all vowels are sonorants)

A class of "obstruction sounds" the sound itself is short, low intensity and low pitch.

Only when the obstruction tone is combined with a vowel can a sound with a greater intensity be emitted.

In Mandarin Chinese, all obstruction sounds are combined with vowels, while English and all phonetic languages in Europe use a large number of obstruction tones that do not combine with vowels, in fact, the obstruction tones that are not combined with vowels in ancient Chinese are extremely common, and the syllable structure is more complex than the many dialects of modern Chinese. But then this consonant usage was basically eliminated.

Specific ancient Chinese pronunciation cases, you can search the "about Guanju" Ancient Han language lang read

Although there are many controversies about the specific pronunciation of ancient Chinese in academic circles

But the complexity of the syllables in ancient Chinese is well represented in that reading.

Reply

Landlord: Top Sticker Vest 2013 time: 2013-08-13 01:43:11

The elimination of independent obstruction sound, the first speed up the pronunciation speed, the second guarantee that all sound has a high intensity. But the cost is to greatly reduce the single-syllable thesaurus, but in the comparison above we can see that the cost is worthwhile, the Chinese information transmission efficiency is still very high.

So let's move on to a previously mentioned topic, is it better to pitch more?

There's a funny argument that says, "Our Mandarin is called" Mandarin ", what do you mean? Full of adults, Manchu people after the Qing dynasty, can not speak our spoken English, he put a lot of tune removed, the entering tone removed. The pronunciation is more and more simple, and then forcing the whole country to say so, so we now speak more simple than Cantonese

This is a very foolish argument.

First of all, Mandarin this English word from Portuguese Mandarim Portuguese is derived from the word Malay m?nt?ri Malay the word originates from Sanskrit mantrin and the word Sanskrit means officials

In other words, Mandarin's willingness to be "Mandarin."

And the earliest record that Mandarin the word could find was in 1589.

We can find out where the "adult" was.

Many people think that Cantonese is the authentic Chinese pronunciation, which is not right. Cantonese has some pronunciation features of medieval Chinese. But it is also in the "medieval Chinese" based on the development of the voice is still a considerable difference

Some people think that the formation of Northern Mandarin/Zhongyuan Mandarin, because the barbarian invasion of "pollution" of the Chinese language, this argument is also wrong. The reason why Northern Mandarin is further developed on the basis of medieval Chinese is because of war and conquest. The Northern Hon Man and the language of the foreign deepened the exchange, multi-ethnic integration, education, gradually make some pronunciation easier

For example, Cantonese cabbage white is Baak6, Mandarin is the Bai2 in Cantonese, the tail of this k is a non-pronounced tongue action, this action slightly changed the original BAA's pronunciation, but this tone, if not laborious will be difficult to cause the BAA obvious changes. Bai, by contrast, is prone to the fact that the pronunciation of the double vowel ai is accomplished by the tongue following the jaw. We know that the power of the chewing muscle is larger than the tongue, the movement is fast, and the AI sound that relies on the jaw is clearly more prone to aak than the tongue-based sound, which is not a fair comparison, of course. In contrast, Mandarin Liu, Lang's pronunciation difficulty and Cantonese baak similar, but the tail of these two tones are sonorants, do not need to struggle to be able to send very clearly

Similar to this non-pronounced k, as well as the Cantonese in the end of the P and T, this way of pronouncing the formal name "plosives tail" in many Asian countries and dialects have, this should be "ancient Chinese" passed down characteristics, this "plosives tail" neither anti-noise nor labor-saving, in the exchange of more extensive, The more frequent northern dialects are hard to see, and should have evolved into other sounds.

Cantonese according to the specific dialect, there are 6-10 tones, its pitch pattern does not exceed the four tones of Putonghua, the reason why so many more tones, because the Cantonese also introduced a different benchmark pitch, for example, in some dialects, Cantonese 1th, 3, 6 sound is to maintain the pitch, But these three tones each maintain a different pitch height. such as Cantonese 2nd, 5 sound, are pitch from low to high change, but the starting pitch is different, Cantonese has a total of four different benchmark pitches, namely do, RE, MI and Sol, the similar situation in many Southern dialects exist.

This is why sometimes southern dialect sounds a bit like singing, probably why Wu Lennon soft language sounds very pleasant.

The biggest problem with Cantonese tones, however, is that each person's tone is different. Some people speak high tones, some people have low pitch, there is no uniform standard, even the same person when speaking, in low, calm, excited, the pitch is different, so, with an unfamiliar person to speak, there is a single pitch or two pitch, it is difficult to tell exactly what is the sound, Three to four base pitches must be present to determine exactly which sound the other's pitch belongs to. And whether these benchmark pitches will be frequent, this is a comparison of character

Of course, in terms of the redundancy of Chinese, part of the pitch judgment is not very important.

But this makes the Cantonese pronunciation changeable advantage greatly weakened.

In addition, the Cantonese 7, 8, 9 sound is a short sound, its pitch and pitch change mode and 1, 3, 6 sound no difference, the short sound anti-noise ability than ordinary syllables pronunciation, but their pronunciation faster, but in today's human oral communication, the bottleneck is the brain's thinking speed, pronunciation speed is too fast and no obvious benefits

I think it's very hard to say how many tones are most suitable for someone to ask. There is no objective assessment, but the tone of Chinese (and its dialect) is always stronger than a foreign language without a tone.

So is there any proof of the anti-noise performance of Chinese?

Some. Out of the country, especially to the European and American people, will find a problem. That is the Chinese people speak English, compared to the local people, always a little vague. Foreign language teachers always ask the Chinese to speak English when the mouth is wide open, the tongue movement to be strong, and even require teeth to bite a pencil to train the tongue movement

What is this for? Because the Chinese have become accustomed to the tongue movement of the pronunciation process.

Chinese pronunciation has a very high signal strength, and because of the abandonment of all individual pronounced consonants, vowels in one syllable can last longer (which is why we generally feel that Chinese speak slower than English) and we know that maintaining a signal for a long time also facilitates the fight against random noise. Strong pronunciation and long vowel duration, which results in a stronger anti-noise ability in Chinese with the same pronounced strength

In other words, in the same noise condition, the volume of Chinese required is even smaller.

Therefore, Chinese speakers do not have to work hard, the range of tongue movement than English and other obvious small

Viii. the speed of speaking

Speaking of the speed of speaking, we first look at this paper:

http://ldc.upenn.edu/myl/llog/icslp06_final.pdf

Figure 1 shows that, according to some of the conversation samples, when the silence and noise occupy the time

English speaking people can say 160-280 words per minute

Chinese conversation person is roughly 250 to 400 words (here is not a word)

This is almost the highest speed a normal person is not affected by his thoughts.

So it can be seen that the Chinese theory of the highest information transmission ability is "much higher than" English.

But in fact limited by the "speed of thinking", the speed gap between the two is not big

The following paper studies the probability that listeners can listen to each word correctly at different speed of speech.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169814104001581

English broadcasting average 210-252 syllables per minute and Chinese broadcasting average 240-260 words per minute no significant difference. It can be said that the speed of human acceptance of speech is now subject to the "human brain processing power" limit. The above broadcasting speed, is not the announcer fastest speaking speed, but in order to ensure that the audience normal listening to control the speed

With the deepening of communication, the speed of human speaking is actually accelerating, 40 years ago the average rate in the United States was 145 words per minute. Now it's 160-170 words per minute, China broadcasts 185 words per minute in the 60 's, and now it's 240-260 words per minute, which may be the richness of the information that makes the brain's processing power rise.

[img] http://801.tianyaui.com/res/2013/1114/1384417603144.jpg[/img]

Nine, Chinese characters: the Great Foundation

The beginning of Chinese is also a kind of "comprehensive language", which uses root and affix extensively. But from a textual point of view, Chinese characters have provided a very critical infrastructure for Chinese to become "isolated", and Chinese characters have led to the inability to record the form of a word on paper. The final inflection can only be marked with additional kanji. And this added Chinese character becomes a general logic rule, also loses the inevitable relation with the modification specific word, so that the Chinese becomes "the solitary language" gradually

It is precisely because the Chinese character separates "pronunciation" from "writing", so that Chinese speech can develop in a relatively free way.

As a result, Chinese phonetics has changed so much in thousands of years that our culture has not fragmented

Further, because the Chinese character is not limited by pronunciation, it can create a large number of phonetic-shaped characters, help Chinese to reduce the average length of syllables, improve the logic of the group words. Although in spoken language, the Chinese phonetic abnormity and English polysemy belong to "the same pronunciation may contain different meanings" situation. But on paper, the sounds of the odd-shaped words are easier to identify than polysemy, reducing the likelihood of ambiguity.

Some people may ask, there is not much ambiguity in spoken Chinese, so why do we need additional ability to eliminate ambiguity in the text? This is because oral communication is a two-way communication in general. If you find that there may be ambiguity, you can ask the other side, actively eliminate ambiguity

and text is often a one-way communication (not including online text chat ...). Once there is ambiguity, it is difficult to eliminate, so the ambiguity in the text generally need to be smaller than the spoken language. Our words, our voice and our whole language are organically combined. The pinyin or Latin language of Chinese characters is not clearly seen in this close connection.

The negative is South Korea, blindly text Pinyin, the results appear to waterproof material into a water absorbent material jokes (Korean "waterproof" and "water" pronunciation consistent, the result of construction company misunderstood the drawings)

Again, because the Chinese characters do not need space, so compared to a similar size of the English word, the same word to be high and narrow, which has a great advantage in typesetting (line spacing to occupy additional space, high and narrow can reduce the number of rows) plus the Chinese itself information density is high, so generally we see the Chinese version of the written documents are less

Ten, the comparison of reading speed

As with speech, reading speed is also constrained by the speed of brain processing, so the main language is not very different

The book "Readingchinesescript:a Cognitive Analysis" has a chapter "eye movements in Reading Chinese andenglish Text" devoted to reading Chinese and English when the eyeball movement, This is written by two scholars from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Sydney.

Skilled Chinese readers can read 386 Chinese words per minute

A skilled English reader can read 382 English words per minute.

The average person may be about 100 words lower

The speed is also dependent on the complexity of the article, the article simple words to read faster.

Chinese user eye each gaze can read 1.71 words (2.57 kanji) Each gaze averaged 257 milliseconds

English readers can read 1.75 words per gaze, averaging 265 milliseconds per stare.

On the whole, the reading speed of the two is not comparable

Xi. dual-line parallel reading capability: more stable

After a long period of research, people find that different language users use different areas of the brain in reading.

The following article provides a partial overview

http://www.pitt.edu/~perfetti/PDF/Brain%20activ%20process%20Chinese%20char%20and%20words-%20Tan%20et%20al..pdf

When reading your native language, reading "Chinese" is more active in the human brain than reading the "English" NPC. English-speaking readers mainly activate some parts of the left brain while reading, while Chinese readers activate both left and right brain, which is an interesting discovery.

Because, the processing area of the timing signal (voice is the timing signal) is generally in the left brain

The processing area of image and spatial information is usually in the right brain.

So, many people think that the Chinese reader's reading actually has two processing channels, that is, in reading Chinese, we always side through the image to directly recognize the meaning of the text, while the image is converted to pronunciation and then to recognize the meaning of the text, and the table sound language only a significant processing channel

12, not rigorous?

Some people say that the disadvantage of "Chinese" is not rigorous enough, which can be said to be the difference between the isolated language and the comprehensive language. The specific meanings of the words in the orphan language need to be determined by the context, if the context gives insufficient information, there may be ambiguity. In many cases, the context can only indicate what the word is more likely to mean, but not the other way around, although there is no problem in communication, but it can cause problems in documents that prevent others from being exploited.

Let us cite an example: "China will never use nuclear weapons first." ”

There are three interpretations of this sentence:

1. China will not use nuclear weapons until the enemy has not used them.

2. China will not use nuclear weapons until the use of conventional weapons

3. China will not be the first country in the world to use nuclear weapons

Obviously the understanding should be 1, but it's not possible to negate the possibility of 2 and 3.

Therefore, many people think that the "Chinese" of such a non-rigor will hinder the legal provisions and contracts.

But is English very rigorous?

He ran into a girl with an umbrella

Is it a man or a woman with an umbrella?

I saw a car with a big flag, whichlooked really evil

Which one looks wicked, the car or the flag?

China is not being the first to use Anuclear weapon.

Is this supposed to explain the above 1 or 3?

To be rigorous, you need to take into account what other people think when reading, and then use other statements to eliminate ambiguity.

By the way recommended funny English books "anguished english:ananthology of accidental assaults upon Ourlanguage" contains a lot of comedy ambiguous sentences, such as If you had not got any Fresh vegetables, you may get canned

Therefore, Chinese to say the rigorous, but also no problem, but more than the general more words

The analytic language itself is very high efficiency, spend some pen and ink, to achieve the rigorous effect, it is also completely can be done

So if there is a gap in this area, the gap is not big

Comparison of the origins of Chinese and phonetic writing

Now, some people think that this means that the phonetic alphabet is more advanced text, so the phonetic text defeated the ideographic/Italian tone, in fact, single from the development history of the two, is not get this conclusion.

Text, from the beginning is to record information with, all civilizations of the most primitive text, if it is naturally generated, are "hieroglyphs" this reason is not difficult to understand, at the beginning we may just record today is what day, I have a few cows and so on, it is obviously the simplest to draw a thing up. China, script Valley, Ancient Egypt, ancient India, Maya, all began to use hieroglyphs.

From the hieroglyphs, a civilization can develop a variety of different glyphs, but with the need to express the meaning of the rapid increase, it is necessary to constantly add new glyphs, then the more simple way is to make a part of the table sound part of the table meaning, Chinese characters in the expansion of the main use of "the word" strategy, Use escribed harmony to combine into a Chinese character

And Egypt's "Saint Chirography" is similar to this, a word of St. Chirography contains two parts, part of the ideographic symbol of the table tone, part of the ideographic symbol.

The main languages of Europe now originate in "Latin", and Latin comes from the Greek language. The alphabet of the Greeks was taught by the Phoenicians, and the letters of the Phoenicians came from the Egyptians, and at the same time, a "former Sinai letter", which may be a phonetic alphabet, was found, similar to the text of the chirography, similar to that of the holy One. Some scholars believe that the "Phoenician text" originated from the "former Sinai letter" and "the former Sinai letter" is a "holy book" a phonetic simplification, similar to the difference between pinyin and Chinese characters

So plainly, starting with Philip Beinecke, until now the European countries

The origin of its phonetic alphabet is probably derived from the chirography part of the Egyptian "Saint".

It should be noted that, because spoken language precedes the text, when a nation has not its own words, when exposed to foreign civilization, it is easy to use the "character system" of foreign civilization to build their own words, for these peoples, the simplest is to use advanced civilization of the letter system to directly express their own language pronunciation. As a result, the secondary civilizations of Europe, from which Philip was based, naturally used letters to record their language.

For example, although Japan introduced the "Chinese character" very early, but the Chinese character and its original language (there is no text at that time) is not compatible, and there is no simple pinyin symbol in Chinese, but Japan in order to be able to record their own language, eventually derived a flat kana, katakana for Chinese character phonetic notation, Later, these became the basic symbols of Japanese.

[Irrefutable: Japanese is a cottage of the Tang Dynasty sheet music, let who ashamed?

http://bbs.tianya.cn/post-worldlook-683879-1.shtml

As can be seen from here, when the "secondary civilization" in the non-development of their own hieroglyphics system is the original culture of civilization invasion, no matter what they first came into contact with the original civilized language, eventually will be on the use of "phonetic" path. Such a phonetic text is also very suitable for direct swallowed to introduce foreign language vocabulary, to facilitate the study of advanced civilization

This feature has been circulating to today

By the way, it has been said that Greece is a secondary civilization, and it has to be explained that Greece is the secondary civilization of Egypt and Mesopotamia and is nurtured by two native civilizations. This is why countries are discussing ancient civilizations in books. Greek civilization is more than ancient Egypt, the two rivers, China and other "native civilization" lower a level, once saw someone using Greece to deny China's status in ancient civilization, this is very ridiculous.

So why are there so few ideographs in the world? It is clear that the world's "native civilization" is already so few, and "secondary civilization" is more than a few orders of magnitude. The historical tide in the 30 years Hedong 30 years Hexi, the native civilization may also be conquered by the secondary civilization, after the conquest, the language may gradually die out.

Therefore, the use of phonetic text widely, this does not mean that the Ruby is excellent

I can only say that there are so few native civilizations in the world.

Reprint--From the information theory argument why Chinese is the most advanced language in the world--quoting multiple experimental data