Chinese writing '8,000 years old'

BBC ^ | Friday, May 18, 2007

[OldGuard1]

The Bible says what it says. You’re free to disagree with it and think whatever you want.

[MHGinTN]

Biblically, the universe is in its seventh day (earth days), from God’s perspective at just prior to the big bang where He started it all. From our perspective, looking back toward the big bang, the universe is 13+ billion years (earth years) old. [If interested, google Gerald Schroeder.] Dimensions Time and Space were brought into expression at the bang, so God chose to count based on our earth day periodicity, whereas the universe created has specific physical characteristics which cause temporal persepctive to be different when looking ‘over your shoulder’.

[bkepley]

They decided to put the date of this writing outside of the biblical timeline.

I doubt they care what the biblical timeline is. I doubt God cares either.

[Zhang Fei]

Having looked at the etchings in question, I’m skeptical that etchings = writing system. The Egyptians had entire works written in hieroglyphics. The Chinese discoveries don’t look too different from cave drawings.

[OldGuard1]

You really doubt God cares what people believe?

As for the scientists, I’m not saying that *this* specific case was intentional - just that these “just outside the Bible’s timeline” numbers happen more often than you’d expect from random chance. 8000 years here, 10000 there, 9000 over there, etc.

[OldGuard1]

You really doubt God cares what people believe?

As for the scientists, I’m not saying that *this* specific case was intentional - just that these “just outside the Bible’s timeline” numbers happen more often than you’d expect from random chance. 8000 years here, 10000 there, 9000 over there, etc.

Just something I’ve noticed, that’s all. Not trying to start an argument here; I know not everyone believes that the Bible is the word of God, and that some people don’t believe it is but still consider themselves Christians.

[John Leland 1789]

Writing from Shanghai.

Actually, 5,000 years would be more like it. Not 8,000.

Chinese is a real language, but it is one of the most general, non-specific languages yet on earth.

Unlike English, to which new words can be continually added, Chinese words themselves (the characters or pictographs) cannot be increased in number. Therefore, for modern technology and science, the characters must be used in new combinations to describe modern things. Chinese people learning modern technology and science must continually refer to the English language for help, and that they do. It can be said that, in China, where English study is readily available, the country advances. Where English language skills are at their lowest, China virtually remains in the 18th and 19th centuries.

[Candor7]

“In the future we will target your aircraft carriers with
undefeatable missiles before invading Seattle.”

[Exit148]

The oracle bone form of the roof/pig is supposed to show a pig ready for sacrifice in the home. But one of my books says that an earlier form shows 3 people under a roof —man/woman/child.

[mr jakob]

Chinese people learning modern technology and science must continually refer to the English language for help, and that they do. It can be said that, in China, where English study is readily available, the country advances. Where English language skills are at their lowest, China virtually remains in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Japanese seem to get by pretty well on the technical field using Chinese characters. Japanese medical and engineering (except CS) words are almost exclusively written in Chinese characters (many of which are identical in Chinese). The Japanese are also notorious for low levels of English proficiency. Thus, the problem isn't the script, but the education level. Educated people in China also happen to learn English. This is an obvious case where correlation doesn't equal causation.

Also, Chinese words and Chinese characters are two separate concepts. "Shehui" (society) is one Chinese word consisting of two Chinese characters. There is not a single native Chinese speaker who would read "shehui" as two separate words. Combining morphemes (in the case of Chinese, characters) to make new words is nothing new. German does this for practically all of its modern vocabulary. Is Germany also stuck in the 18th and 19th century?

[SunkenCiv]

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[burzum]

The Japanese seem to get by pretty well on the technical field using Chinese characters.

The Japanese have more than one writing system commonly in use. They use hiragana characters for syllabification of Japanese words, katakana for syllabification of foreign words, and the Chinese characters (kanji) for representing particular words or phrases of hiragana. This makes the Japanese language very adaptable to new words and new words are commonly added. While those words can't use the kanji characters, they can just be written in hiragana or katakana (if they are loan words). For example, ニュートリノ is neutrino in katakana which is niyu-torino in romanji (though I haven't indicated the emphasis). Occassionally, kanji is updated (the last time I think was after WWII) so words get standardized. For example, antiproton is 反陽子 which breaks down to はんようし in hiragana (since proton was presumably included in the last standardization).

Read a couple articles from Asahi or some other Japanese language news source and you will start to understand how the Japanese language has adapted with its different character sets (in general, kanji are complex, hiragana are soft, and katakana are sharp).

[SunkenCiv]

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