A Computer Science Blog

German and Chinese? Surely , they have nothing to do with each other?! Well, apart from being languages, they really do have very little in common. So why do I have this strange title?

Few of my friends know that apart from computer science, my other keen interest is in languages (no not programming languages, world languages!). There is just something romantic about it.

My parents are Chinese (from Taiwan*) so I speak Mandarin. And I took it on myself to learn German (which was a somewhat arbitrary choice in all the languages of the world to learn – but that’s another story). So that’s why the title is “Myths about German and Chinese”.

I will start with dispelling myths about the Chinese language.OK, I confess I am no language expert and surely many will disagree with what I will say here. But I will say what I believe, then you can discuss it.

1. Technically Chinese is not a language. It is a language family. Belonging to the language family are languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Shanghainese and many others.
2. The Chinese “dialects” are actually more like Chinese languages. I believe it is inappropriate to say that Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien etc are dialects, when American English and Australian English considered dialects at the same time. In the most common sense, dialects should be mutually understandable. The fact is, Mandarin and Cantonese and the other Chinese “dialects” are not mutually understandable. It sort of like saying the Spanish and Italian are not different languages, but dialects. I’ll give you an example, and you can decide for yourself. For this purpose I will use the Hokkien “dialect” because it is the one I am most familiar with.

Hokkien: Kin-á-jit hit-ê cha-bó· gín-á lâi góan tau khòaⁿ góa
Mandarin: Jin tian na ge nühai dao wo jia lai kan wo.

- Source: Wikipedia

translated to American English: Today that girl came to my house to see me
translated to Australian English: Today that girl came to my house to see me

Well, I don’t think Chinese ” dialects” should actually be considered dialects, but decide for yourself.

3. Chinese characters are not pictographs or ideographs. The Chinese writing system is basically an enormous syllabary of sounds each presented by a character. There are thousands of unique characters. Each character represents a single sound – one syllable. Each syllable has a variance of 4 tones. Thus, Chinese is also not a monosyllabic language – many, many words are comprised of 2 or more syllables.

4. Except for Mandarin, other Chinese languages (or dialects if you wish) are not written, only spoken.

Ok I’ll leave it at that. Now let’s move to German. I really must say that I am even less knowledgeable in German, so please correct me if I get something wrong.

1. German is not easier to learn than French, for English speakers. Many think that English is a Germanic language and because of that it is easier to learn. Yes, English is strictly a Germanic language, but in reality the French sentence structure and vocabulary has so much more in common to English than German. Why? Without going into the history, let’s just say that France has had a lot of influence of England and the English language. Let’s see: German has 3 genders – der, die, and das, while French has 2 – la, le. Also German has a complex declension system – Nominative, Accusative, Dative and Genitive. This basically means that adjectives always need to have a different ending depending on the gender of the forthcoming noun, and also on the case. Another rather difficult aspect of German is the plurals. With Romance languages, you simply add an s. Well, not the case for German. There are around a dozen different ways to form plurals in German, and a lot of the time it is not possible to predict the formation if you haven’t simply memorized it when learning the noun and it’s gender. Want some examples?

Complex declension, something that Romance languages don’t have. Note how adjective endings change with article type, gender and case. Also note: ß is pronounced as “ss”. A sharp”s”. Due to recent reforms, ß can also be written as “ss”. But I think ß looks cooler

Der große Mann – The big man (a man is masculine, thus der)
Ein großer Mann – A big man
Der Mann ist groß – The man is big
Mit dem großen Mann – With the big man.

Die große Katze – The big cat (a cat is Femine, thus die pronounced as dee)
Ein große Katze -A big cat
Die Katze ist groß - The cat is big
Mit der großen Katze – With the big cat (in the dative case,die becomes der)

Plurals. The definite article for plurals is always die (at least in the nominative, and accusative cases). Here are some examples.

Das Auto, die Autos (the car, the cars)
Der Mann, die Männer (the man, the men)
Das Schiff, die Schiffe (the ship, the ships)
Die Platte. Die Platten (the plate, the plates)
Das Mädchen, die Mädchen (Mädchen means girl, and its gender is Neuter, not feminine. It just is.)

In English, words such as men, women, oxen, children have retained their Germanic plural forming traits. Also, in German pronouns are gendered. Meaning if you want to say “the plate is broken” with a pronoun, you need to say “she is broken”, instead of “it is broken”. If you want to say “the girl is happy”, you would “it is happy (es ist gluecklich)”, because the noun “girl” is neuter in German. This is the way it is. I just want to demonstrate that is really not possible to just extrapolate the plural from the noun – you just need to know it.

Sentence structure:

• Soll er nach Hause gehen? (Should he go home? literally: Should he to house go?)
• Soll er in das Haus einziehen, das er gerade hat renovieren lassen (Should he move into the house that he just renovated? Literally: Should he into that house move which he just had renovate let?)
• Ein Mann beißt den Hund or Den Hund beißt ein Mannboth mean the same thing. Both mean – the man bites the dog. The accusative case determines who/what is the does the action.

-Source: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language

French, Spanish and Italian on the other hand have a vocabulary and sentence structure that is a lot more like English.

2. Ok, this one is a personal opinion. Many people think that German sounds harsh and even ugly. I must say hearing those opinions really stunned me! One of the main things that drew me to German was its sound – it just sounds so precise, to the point, and having the verbs fall into place at the end of the sentence makes gives it a impressive ending to every sentence.

3. People often say “German is not a practical language to learn”. OK, there is truth here – but not for the reasons you may think. The main reason is that Germans speak English incredibly well! Seriously. I found that out after studying German for some time and meeting penpals and visiting German websites etc, etc. But I think you should learn a language because you enjoy doing, and want a challenge. And besides speaking German is fun! And if you go to Germany on business or leisure, many people will trust and respect you a lot more if you speak their mother tongue.

You might be surprised to know that Germany is Europe’s largest economy and most populous nation. Also, German is the most widely spoken language in Europe (excluding Russia). German companies includes BMW, Mercedes-Benz, AUDI, Porsche, Volkswagen, Diamler-Chrysler, SAP, BASF, Sennheiser, ALDI, Adidas, Puma, Allianz, BMG, Bosch, DHL (Deutsche Post), MAN (trucks and engineering), Miele, Telefunken, Deutsche Bank ……

German is also the second language of the Internet, after English.

And that’s all for now! Stay tuned

* When the Taiwanese tell you where they are from, whatever they answer they give, there seems to be always a bias whether be it perceived or imagined. I remain neutral to the political situation going on in Taiwan. No political opinions from me guys

Now I’m 4 weeks into my 3rd year of Uni, and I must say this year will be exciting as well as stressful.

The most interesting subject this semester for me is Artificial Intelligence for Games. For many people, Artificial Intelligence conjours up images of Terminator and iRobot and basically robots taking over the world. Sure, maybe one day but not yet

We’re using the programming language Python (from Monty Python) as a tool for learning A.I. We’ve looked into Finite State Machines (FSMs) which is basically a method to control agents in game environments where each agent has multiple states it can be in. E.g. a computer controlled villain can be in the state of attack, patrol, retreat, etc.  All very interesting. FSMs.

We’ve also been reviewing physics such as Vectors, Dot Products, etc. VPython (www.vpython.com) is a library that has data structures such as vectors and arrows. So you could simply write:

 v1 = vector(5, 10, 0)
and then use the arrow function to draw that vector out onto the screen. Two lines.

You can also write,

sphere()

and that will draw you a sphere

However, if you try

makeACoolGame()

that might not work.

Sure, python has its fallbacks such as not being a quick language – but then again, we’re only using it as a tool for learning A.I (and physics).

So that’s that!