rainwaterspark (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rainwaterspark) wrote2009-10-28 09:25 pm
rainwaterspark) wrote2009-10-28 09:25 pm
Entry tags:
People argue about stupid things.
All right, first, a heads-up, I'm slightly crabby because I'm tired (I've been suffering from a sort of chronic fatigue) and I have to submit a proposal for my history final paper by Friday and I STILL have NO idea whatsoever (thanks to the completely open prompt). So, the following post will be less diplomatic and politically correct than usual, because I'm seriously annoyed.
The How-to-learn-any-language forum seemed like a great place for me, because it's more active than the Unilang forum, but I've started to realize that there are some completely nonproductive debates going on there.
Case in point: one thread was started about Chinese characters being "inefficient" and that they should be got rid of in favor of writing entirely in pinyin.
Anyone who's learned Chinese to any degree will know that that is impossible on many levels. I would have forgiven that question as arising from ignorance, but then this other person jumps in and starts arguing for the romanization of Chinese. I couldn't help it--normally I'm reserved, especially in internet debates, but his arguments were so ludicrous that I had to jump in. But s/he never admits defeat--just keeps going and going until everyone (or me, at least) is sick of arguing.
Part of the problem stems from the fact that this poster's English isn't the best; either that, or s/he can't write arguments in general, because s/he keeps contradicting him/herself.
Another problem is that s/he thinks s/he's absolutely right and is pretty arrogant about the whole thing.
Finally, his/her arguments just don't make any sense.
S/he talks about homophones in Chinese (and there are a ton of them) as not being a problem, then proposes that homophones should be romanized according to their classical pronunciation (...what? That's like telling all English-speakers to go back to speaking Old English), says that pinyin isn't phonetic (are you going to call written English or French phonetic, then?), and basically keeps adding more and more nonsensical BS.
There was another argument about how calling a computer an "electric brain" (as it's called in Chinese) doesn't make sense, and I'm sitting here thinking, "Why are you wasting time arguing about this? You're not going to change the word for computer in Chinese anyway."
ARGH. I want to like the HTOLAL (lazy here) forum, but I can't. At least Unilang has fewer arrogant people who don't waste time arguing about things that are not worth arguing about.
The How-to-learn-any-language forum seemed like a great place for me, because it's more active than the Unilang forum, but I've started to realize that there are some completely nonproductive debates going on there.
Case in point: one thread was started about Chinese characters being "inefficient" and that they should be got rid of in favor of writing entirely in pinyin.
Anyone who's learned Chinese to any degree will know that that is impossible on many levels. I would have forgiven that question as arising from ignorance, but then this other person jumps in and starts arguing for the romanization of Chinese. I couldn't help it--normally I'm reserved, especially in internet debates, but his arguments were so ludicrous that I had to jump in. But s/he never admits defeat--just keeps going and going until everyone (or me, at least) is sick of arguing.
Part of the problem stems from the fact that this poster's English isn't the best; either that, or s/he can't write arguments in general, because s/he keeps contradicting him/herself.
Another problem is that s/he thinks s/he's absolutely right and is pretty arrogant about the whole thing.
Finally, his/her arguments just don't make any sense.
S/he talks about homophones in Chinese (and there are a ton of them) as not being a problem, then proposes that homophones should be romanized according to their classical pronunciation (...what? That's like telling all English-speakers to go back to speaking Old English), says that pinyin isn't phonetic (are you going to call written English or French phonetic, then?), and basically keeps adding more and more nonsensical BS.
There was another argument about how calling a computer an "electric brain" (as it's called in Chinese) doesn't make sense, and I'm sitting here thinking, "Why are you wasting time arguing about this? You're not going to change the word for computer in Chinese anyway."
ARGH. I want to like the HTOLAL (lazy here) forum, but I can't. At least Unilang has fewer arrogant people who don't waste time arguing about things that are not worth arguing about.
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Ignorant people who try to argue a blatantly invalid point really irritate me.
Also, I think you should be less PC more often. :D It's good for your soul.
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I was tempted to tell the poster outright that his/her argument was illogical and irrelevant, but then I shrugged to myself and decided it wasn't worth getting flamed.