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40hz:
Ambrose Bierce summed it up best in his book The Devil's Dictionary, first published in 1911.

FREEDOM, n.

1. Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half dozen of restraint's infinite multitude of methods.
2. A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly. (see: liberty).

The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either.


--- End quote ---

In many respects, not much has changed since then.

Renegade:
+1 for Ambrose Bierce

Dormouse:
This is an area where English is simply deficient and Chinese excels. Where a single pronunciation and spelling in English is ambiguous, Chinese characters differ and make the exact meaning clear. We really need to be verbose at times in English in order to not send the wrong message.
-Renegade (January 10, 2011, 08:10 PM)
--- End quote ---

 :huh: :huh: :huh:

You then go on to give some examples that clarify the meaning rather than using the word "free".

As a constantly evolving and highly flexible language(s), English gives a vast range of options to its speakers. Ranging from words that define meaning precisely, to usages rich in allusion or insinuation, to usages (frequently colloquial) that almost seems designed to allow the maximum range of meanings to be eked from limited vocabularies. Precise meaning can come from the individual word or word groups or can arise from the context.

The whole "free" thing arises from people enjoying the word play the word 'free' offers.

Admittedly, it also seems to have been deliberately misused in this thread to imply things that were never meant. "Free market" and "free speech" are usages where the meaning is defined in the specific word pair rather than the word 'free'  as an adjective. Just as there is a misuse of the concept of 0 in an equation. Simply people having fun, I assumed.

Renegade:
You then go on to give some examples that clarify the meaning rather than using the word "free".
-Dormouse (January 10, 2011, 09:28 PM)
--- End quote ---

That's exactly what I mean --- unless you want to simply become overly verbose in English, you end up with lots of ambiguity. In normal discourse, there's no reason to assume that degree of verbosity. Hence, situations like this where confusion or red herrings arise.

The real pain is that it's not socially acceptable to be so verbose. People get angry or leave or tune out. You end up coming across as condescending (or as a "know it all" or something like that) without intending to.

Here's a fun example in Korean with the Chinese characters behind the words (reference):

?? (??) - Means "reason" or "circumstance"
?? (??) - Same pronunciation but different Chinese - means "ejaculation"

In the spoken form, there's the possibility of confusion, while in the (academic) written form, there isn't, though there is the possibility in the common written form which generally leaves out the Chinese.


EDIT:
Looks like there's a bug somewhere as the text broke.

Deozaan:
This is an area where English is simply deficient and Chinese excels. Where a single pronunciation and spelling in English is ambiguous, Chinese characters differ and make the exact meaning clear.-Renegade (January 10, 2011, 08:10 PM)
--- End quote ---

I could bring up the fact that with the digital age many Chinese don't even know how to spell the words they use every day because there are so many thousands of characters to memorize.

Then you could bring up the fact that even with only 26 characters in the English alphabet, many who speak English can't spell the words they use every day.

That's when I'd point at that at least they can spell it phonetically so you can understand what they mean even if they don't have the correct spelling. As I understand it, there's no such thing as phonetics in written Chinese. Using the wrong character gives you a completely different word with an entirely different meaning.

The weaknesses cited from the ambiguity of English and the inflexibility of Chinese are some examples that make me love the idea behind Esperanto (even though I probably know slightly more about Esperanto than I do about Chinese, which is to say, not much). I don't think Esperanto is perfect, but I'd say it's probably the most perfect language on Earth today. :)

But I think we're straying quite a bit off topic now.

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