Visual otomatapoeia?

[Dead Cat]

I'm pretty sure the moon also counts.

[Katya]

This reminds me of a picture I saw a little while ago.

[Portia]

This reminds me of a picture I saw a little while ago.

I think you'd like this book, I Love It When You Talk Retro.

[yayfulness]

That does sound fascinating.

[Laser Jock]

鐘means bell. So, time bell. Or you could say 鐘錶，Bell display.

Just curious, but is it actually possible to read those at the default size on this forum? Or would you have to increase the font size or something? Because to me, at least, all the strokes are completely indistinct at a normal size. (Granted, I don't know Mandarin either, but it just doesn't look like complex characters work well at small sizes because of screen aliasing. Things are all muddled, instead of having clear strokes. If someone had one of the new iPads, or the new retina MacBook Pro, that would probably help, but what if you don't?)

[Giovanni Schwartz]

鐘means bell. Or you could pick 鐘錶，which means bell display.

[Marduk]

I just have a 28 inch screen, so I could see it fine.

[mic0]

鐘means bell. So, time bell. Or you could say 鐘錶，Bell display.

Just curious, but is it actually possible to read those at the default size on this forum? Or would you have to increase the font size or something? Because to me, at least, all the strokes are completely indistinct at a normal size. (Granted, I don't know Mandarin either, but it just doesn't look like complex characters work well at small sizes because of screen aliasing. Things are all muddled, instead of having clear strokes. If someone had one of the new iPads, or the new retina MacBook Pro, that would probably help, but what if you don't?)

For comparison you might be interested in looking at a Chinese news page like this one. As you can see there is a range of font sizes, from the really small red words near the top (which are all readable, just tiny), to the huge headlines, to the blurbs under the headlines that are a more medium font. Of course, the site I linked to is all simplified Chinese, so a lot of the characters have fewer strokes than their traditional counterparts. Anyway, it's all readable.

[Laser Jock]

Haha. Thanks, Gio.

Mico, thanks for the example! Yeah, the smallest characters there are only slightly bigger than the ones here, but being simplified helps them not be just a blur.

I have to say that character-based languages seem like such a painful fit to computers (or typewriters, before), but clearly hundreds of millions of computer-using Chinese make it work fine.

[Katya]

I have to say that character-based languages seem like such a painful fit to computers (or typewriters, before), but clearly hundreds of millions of computer-using Chinese make it work fine.

Yeah, but they use pinyin for the character entry and they're forgetting how to write the more complicated characters from memory. (Also, the Chinese invented movable type 400 years before Gutenberg, but abandoned it because it was impractical for their writing system. Chinese typewriters were equally impractical.)

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Oh come on. Don't hate on the Taiwanese! Sometimes they use Zhuyin!

[Digit]

The title of this thread keeps making me think of the Bouba/kiki effect even though it has nothing to do with onomatopoeias.

[Katya]

Oh come on. Don't hate on the Taiwanese! Sometimes they use Zhuyin!

Ha! I didn't mean for that to come out so anti-Chinese speakers. Chinese is a really cool language and the writing system is beautiful and fascinating. And you can pack a lot more into a Chinese tweet, because Chinese words are comprised of far fewer characters than English words. (But logographic languages still face a lot of challenges in the computer age.)

[krebscout]

I love this thread.

[yayfulness]

The title of this thread keeps making me think of the Bouba/kiki effect even though it has nothing to do with onomatopoeias.

That is fascinating. When I was 11 or 12 and spent all my free time coming up with fantasy stories, I'd do almost exactly the same thing, except with good and evil characters. Good got smoother or rounder sounds, evil harder.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Yeah! Kamico, why is that? Why do Americans associate hard sounds with bad and round sounds with good? Why Russian and German typically harsh sounding languages to our ear, and French and Spanish more pleasing? Any linguistic reasons for this?

[Craig Jessop]

Because Spanish is awesome, duh.

[Marduk]

Because Spanish is awesome, duh.

QFT.

[yayfulness]

Because Spanish is awesome, duh.

QFT.

I'd like to QFT your QFT.

[Portia]

Yeah! Kamico, why is that? Why do Americans associate hard sounds with bad and round sounds with good? Why Russian and German typically harsh sounding languages to our ear, and French and Spanish more pleasing? Any linguistic reasons for this?

Yep. German, and to some extent, Russian, are full of consonant clusters. Schwartz. Kampf. Pfeffer. Spanish, and to a lesser extent, French, have phonological constraints leading to more vowels and fewer clusters. Why English-speakers would find that phonologically pleasing, I'm not sure. Perhaps it has to do with ease of production? I don't speak Spanish, but I can pronounce it well. (Italian even better.) I speak some German, and still find many of the sounds ("ch" and "ue") to be somewhat difficult to produce, and I pride myself on having a good "accent."

Also, Germany and Russia were our geopolitical enemies, where France and Spanish-speaking countries were usually our allies. Years of Cold War villains in movies . . .

I would LOVE to study the connotative implications of phonology, say, in grad school. Curse you, Gio! I need money!