Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id IAA07668 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 21 Mar 2001 08:05:38 GMT Message-ID: <A4400389479FD3118C9400508B0FF230010D1B62@DELTA.newhouse.akzonobel.nl> From: "Gatherer, D. (Derek)" <D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: The Demise of a Meme Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 08:58:47 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Joe:
The two main contenders in this arena are english
and chinese; others besides english are not doing so well on the
internet. The only reason chinese will hang around for a long while
is the inertial momentum contributed by such a massive and
monolithic population. Since the language itself is still
iconic/imagistic rather than purely symbolic (that is, it has failed to
inculcate the phonetic principle of text, which allows us to
construct an unlimited number of distinct words from just 26
letters) and requires hundreds of thousands of discrete characters
with which to communicate, it is eminently unsuitable for a
computer keyboard (job from hell - a chinese typesetter!). Thus I
predict that it, too, will be left behind, at least by the
cyberliterati/cognoscenti, and will survive only as a common form of
heathen (for those 'out in the sticks') conversation vehicle used by
the great chinese unwired.
Derek:
Ah, not so, perhaps. The Financial Times reported last week that Chinese
will be the main language of the Internet by 2006.
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