Does Wealth Make Your Country Stupid?

[Will9]

Originally posted by LordShiva


"grammar"

Do you reread my posts to check for errors? When I read I simply don't notice small mistakes. I use the context and what letters there are and I simply don't realize.

[LordShiva]

I was a writing tutor in college, and now I'm a consultant who presents Powerpoint documents to clients every week. I get in trouble if I let grammatical and spelling errors through

[Straybow]

Originally posted by DaShi
We've all made fun of some of the really dumb things that happen in America. However, when it really comes down to it, Americans still perform dismally on many tests regarding general knowledge. America also has a higher highschool dropout rate compared to many other western nations.

Don't forget that 80% of lottery winners go broke within 5 years. The biggest loser was the guy from West Virginia who blew $113M in only 4 years.

[Kidlicious]

Re: Does Wealth Make Your Country Stupid?

Originally posted by DaShi
What makes your country so stupid?

Stupid is what stupid does

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Barnabas
Lol, Chinese dont know alphabet

No tech trading for them

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Will9
Japan has come up with a 46 (I think) letter alphabet to replace its old 4000+ one (they still learn and use the old though, but I don't know which one is used more frequently). Why can't China do this?

There's a simpler solution that involves 20 fewer symbols.

[Drake Tungsten]

Chinese and Japanese would both be difficult to write with just the standard 26-letter alphabet. Japanese is workable if you add some diacritical marks above certain vowels to differentiate between their long and short versions plus apostrophes to indicate glottal stops, but Chinese would seem to require even more modification. You have to indicate which tone to use somehow...

[Kuciwalker]

You're still thinking about this the wrong way.

[Drake Tungsten]

I don't think we can persuade them to speak French, which would otherwise be the ideal solution...

[Barnabas]

How many vowel sounds does chinese have?

And how many tones?

I think they could still get an alphabet, they just need some more signs

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by DaShi


China did try to make pinyin more common, but it didn't really catch on. It's still taught at schools there though.

I'm guessing use of pinyin couldn't account for less effort by the students put into learning the logogram characters?

[Drake Tungsten]

Pinyin sucks. So does the new Korean transliteration scheme. Revised Hepburn is the bomb for Japanese, though...

[Dis]

I have an idea.

use English.

[Last Conformist]

English? Why settle for the second best - Tibetan spelling is even more thoroughly fcuked up.

[Drake Tungsten]

English is a sub-par language. It's a muddled hodge-podge of Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin, Greek and a smattering of other languages and its grammatical and spelling rules are so full of confusing and unnecessary exceptions that it boggles the mind of foreign speakers used to more logical languages. No, it would be better for everyone if French returned to its position as the world's lingua franca. Even you dim-witted Anglo-Saxons should be able to adapt; your own language is a quarter French anyway...