How good is your Chinese?

[sunyata]

给你讲个故事，说是:

一个戗箜翮拿着簪齑郓黼芈氕嫠夤疋，突然蕺鬏餮麴羹鼙貔氅餍饔墼槭跸醴鼷痍髭蘖，于是就死了。

这个故事名字叫《没文化真不幸》。

*taken from a recent SMS message*

[Lu]

That looks like what you get if you look at a Chinese webpage with the wrong kind of decoding.

[xuezhongwen]

Or more likely, since utf-8 are 2-byte character set, if somehow one byte was delete from the whole string, the whole string was offset by one byte, which will cause all the characters after it to go haywire. It used to be that there are editors that can edit based on single byte characters, and can delete one from the beginning, and the rest of those will suddenly show up. Unfortunately it's hard to find those editors nowadays, even on English Windows, wordpad, word all adjust to double-byte automatically.

[xuezhongwen]

Or, really, more likely it's just a joke, since the title says '《没文化真不幸》'

haha

[sunyata]

heh, all these characters exist and are included in GB...

of course, most of these are archaic and aren't recognized by most Chinese today...hmm, this kinda goes along with dmoser's point :/

[szbpkst]

汉字真正有多少个很难具体统计出来，据说有4万多

常用的汉字有7千多

[cecilia_xiao]

不止吧？？？

虽然我认识的汉字还需要去掉一个零。。。。。。。

[seagate]

A good example of the necessity of simplifying Chinese characters. How pathetic those ancient Chinese people were to have to learn and write so many complicated characters - they didn't have computers, but they could have saved at least 50% of their ink had they got the Chinese characters simplified then.

[Ian_Lee]

Why is the problem related to the issue of simplification of Chinese characters?

The above set of Chinese characters which sunyata listed -- except two or three -- you will never encounter in your lifetime again unless you dwell in Classical Chinese Literature study.

So why is there the need to simplify something that you will never see/use/read again?

[nipponman]

Hmmm, not to troll here but it saddens me that you think that the ancient chinese were pathetic in their writing, seeing as I love traditional and abhor simplified. I think it is merely a matter of preference, do you want to be able to read what is written with the minimal amount of effort, sure simplified is for you, but then if that is the case you should probably take up Vietnamese instead of Chinese. Either way you go (simplified or traditional) you still have 'bout 3000-4000 characters to learn if you're a beginner, At least thats how I see it.

nipponman

[MarkH]

"A good example of the necessity of simplifying Chinese characters. How pathetic those ancient Chinese people were to have to learn and write so many complicated characters - they didn't have computers, but they could have saved at least 50% of their ink had they got the Chinese characters simplified then."

I really hope you are making a joke here. I am in the simplified camp for now, but that does not mean I do not appreciate the beauty of the older characters. Given your positition, should we just trash a whole lot of those dusty old caligraphy scrolls sitting around in museums and replace them with nice practical clear modern characters?

[Tsunku]

I got this SMS (or a similar one) too.

One of my Chinese friends could recognize far less than half of the characters. Another friend, extremely well-educated, knew about 60%. My other friends were amazed she knew 60% of them! It isn't about simplification, these characters are rare rare rare, never used, archaic characters. You will never see them used. It is a joke designed to make you feel dumb, not an argument for simplification.

[Guest IVYtony]

看来我这个中国人也是文盲了，呵呵，不认识几个字啊。从哪找来得呢？

佩服佩服啊

[xiaocai]

我仔细看了看，其实还是有不少的字目前依然在使用，而且也并不算罕见哦！

戗（qiàng/qiāng）：against（戗风）

簪（zān）：hairpin（玉簪）

氕（piē）：protium

蕺（jí）->蕺菜（jícài）：heartleaf houttuynia

餮（tiè）->饕餮（tāotiè）：glutton

羹（gēng）：thick soup（银耳羹）

氅（chǎng）：cloak（大氅）

槭（qì）：maple（槭木）

醴（lǐ）：sweet wine（醴酪）

痍（yí）：wound（创痍）

髭（zī）：moustache（髭须）

蘖（niè）：sprout（蘖枝）

[HashiriKata]

It's a good thing that I've spotted this thread. I've been spending the last 2 months deciphering this message. Could someone help, please? Just give me the gist of it.

[Edited by HK]

Will be much appreciated!

HK

[xiaocai]

我不太懂这个，不过如果不是乱码，那就肯定不是中文。原因如下：

1、不是现代汉语；

2、古汉语一般不会有这么长的句子；

3、一个虚词也没有。

[HashiriKata]

Many thanks, xiaocai! You're always very helpful.

Let's called this one of my most embarrasing mistakes.