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Topic: The awesomesauce with Chimerica (Read 31141 times)

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #75 –
China builds ambitiously in Africa as US sounds the alarm
Quote
For better or worse, U.S. suspicions about China's ambitions are playing out far beyond the confines of Africa. Chinese companies are building or financing power plants in Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, managing a port in Greece and launching railway projects in Thailand and Tajikistan, with aggressive plans to continue its expansion into Latin America.

Already, there are cautionary tales, critics say.

In Sri Lanka, the former president suffered a surprise election defeat in 2015 after his opponent criticized him for running up some $5 billion in debt to China to fund construction. In December, Sri Lanka's government sold an 80 percent stake in the port in Hambantota to a Chinese state-owned company after falling behind in repaying $1.5 billion borrowed to build it.
Basically, when somebody else does exactly the way USA has been doing all along, it's very suspicious and a cause for alarm.

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #76 –
I think the main question is how important that "state-owned" part is. Besides that it sounds like capitalism as usual.

Quote
In Africa, some of the China-funded roads have started to crumble, the U.S. has said, due to shoddy construction.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyra

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #77 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
I think the main question is how important that "state-owned" part is. Besides that it sounds like capitalism as usual.
Or imperialism as usual. European colonists often created "companies" (such as British East India Company and Dutch East India Company) which were merchant corporations, not owned by the state in the strict sense, but whose interests were heavily backed by the state. The unfortunate local rulers were misled by the assumption that they were negotiating with merchants about storehouses and trade routes, but ended up permitting garrisons for white men's armies.

When the state backs commercial interests this way (the specific demands always included for example the right for whites to be under the motherland's jurisdiction wherever they went, never under the local jurisdiction), does it matter to what degree the company is formally state-owned? Of course I admit that when the company is state-owned, it's blatantly obvious that the company represents the country's interests, but it should be similarly blatantly obvious when the ambassador requests tax breaks or other privileges for its own country's companies/industries, exemption for its citizens from local law as a condition for an investment or loan, etc. even though none of the companies are state-owned.
 

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #78 –
Any story invoking "Ansaldo Breda" is unlikely to have a happy ending, though they themselves had an end, being bought by Hitachi.

Quality only comes if you ask, plan, and test for it. Get rich quick schemes come with the opportunity.

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #81 –
I'm probably with the Chinese.

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #82 –
Many, many Moons ago I was on a link before pc days with the free Chinese Government on Taiwan. They very kindly sent me a nice magazine every few months whilst a London office sent me  every fortnight a four page newspaper. Unfortunately decades ago I overlooked the opportunity to remain on their sending stuff. I even got a very nice letter from the Presidential palace done in what looked like a rice paper. Chiang Kai Shek was a good age and still the Head of State so gives an idea of how long ago!  :D
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #86 –
Curious pronunciation of omicron at the beginning there.

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #87 –
A typical British (English) pronunciation: Their proclivity is to pronounce everything as if it were English (language, spelling), e.g. /vä'-lit/ instead of /vah-leh'/ for valet... The letters of the Greek alphabet!, included. One gets used to it.

(Who was the wag who described the Americans and the British as "two peoples separated by a common language"? :) Churchill, most likely; but authorities say George Bernard Shaw.)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
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Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #90 –
Quote from: jax on
I assume he has a corresponding pronunciation of Ω.
Didn't you mean ω? :)

But in all fairness the letter we're calling omicron is from the Greek o mikron, i.e., little o...so there's some logic to the "offending pronunciation".
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
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Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #91 –
Quote from: OakdaleFTL on
Didn't you mean ω?

I have the habit of using the uppercase (where applicable) when referring to the letter itself. with an implicit use/mention. So A is basically "a", but referring to the letter, not the pronunciation. I have no idea if it is "correct", but that is how I do it in every language. In other words the following two sentences would be pronounced the same, but (1) refers to the letter, and (2) to the word:

  • How do you pronounce Ω?
  • How do you pronounce ωμέγα?

An old complaint of mine is that Chinese uses English to transcribe European, and that is just about the worst language for that purpose. American English at that, but that doesn't bother me. (Hong Kongers and Singaporeans prefer British English, like the good post-colonials they are.) So how do you do the Greek alphabet in Chinese? I have absolutely no idea, so I used Google Translate. And for this Google Translate really flexes. 

I don't know it you also have prod GT into doing what you want, but one trick is to use a newline. That will usually create a new context for the part in question. GT cannot decide how to do it, so the letters in question and the length of the strings decide.  Try it yourself. There isn't a huge difference between English and Greek transcription and the letter in question (alpha, άλφα, and Α respectively), but there is one. So you can get Chinese transcription (e.g. gamma into 伽马, where 伽 (jia, sound transcription) is the "ga", and 马 (ma, horse), you can get the Latin/English transcription, you can get the Greek letter (lowercase), or you can get the Greek word. It depends.

If you translate the Greek letter from Greek to Chinese, you get them with a regular Chinese English pronunciation. If you translate them from English to Chinese, you get them with the pronunciation of Chinese speaking English (with a heavy American accent). 

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #92 –
The Wall Street Journal reports and "expert" calls the pronunciation Frenzie pointed out "Americanized". :) (Interesting stuff about GT, though!)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #93 –
Greeks would have you even say "veeta" instead of "bayta".

Just ignore them Greek snobs who prefer the world tiptoe their current modern pronunciation. The Greeks themselves are no longer aligned with their own classical pronunciation and are often not even aware of it, while much of the world (particularly the non-English part of the world) uses variants close enough to the classical Greek.

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #94 –
Quote from: jax on
An old complaint of mine is that Chinese uses English to transcribe European, and that is just about the worst language for that purpose.
Do you mean it's based on the Great Vowel Shift, which makes English spelling and pronunciation substantially different from pretty much every other language, or something even more pernacious?

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #96 –
Quote from: ersi on
Greeks would have you even say "veeta" instead of "bayta".

Just ignore them Greek snobs who prefer the world tiptoe their current modern pronunciation. The Greeks themselves are no longer aligned with their own classical pronunciation and are often not even aware of it, while much of the world (particularly the non-English part of the world) uses variants close enough to the classical Greek.


Depends on which Greek spoken. To quote the Wiktionary βῆτα page,

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Etymology
Borrowed from Phoenician 𐤁‬‎ (b‬ /bēt/). The letter name, beth, comes from Phoenician 𐤁𐤕‎ (bt), 𐤁𐤉𐤕‎ (byt, “house”).

Pronunciation

(5th BCE Attic) IPA(key): /bɛ̂ː.ta/
(1st CE Egyptian) IPA(key): /ˈbe.ta/
(4th CE Koine) IPA(key): /ˈβi.ta/
(10th CE Byzantine) IPA(key): /ˈvi.ta/
(15th CE Constantinopolitan) IPA(key): /ˈvi.ta/
http://ipa-reader.xyz/

The "bayta" would be ahistorical-ish, but the pan-European "beh-tah" pronunciation would just be a bit old (on the negative end of the year line). This is a pretty nice coverage of the ειvolution of ει:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOqdrWlR4Gw

But how should Hurricane Beta or the covid beta variant be pronounced? 

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #97 –
Quote from: ersi on
A technical question: How would you type ω in jEdit?
"ώ" is readily available to any Mac program... By selecting the correct keyboard input device. (System-wide shortcuts for switching such are standard...) Since the keyboard I normally use has no physical indicator for Caps-lock, I usually keep the Keyboard Viewer on screen(s).
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #98 –
So it works like in Windows, I see. In Linux there are three distinct layers: (1) TTY (console), (2) Xorg or Wayland (windowing system), and (3) the app.

The app's ability to make use of different fonts and layouts may or may not be there, but in Emacs it is there. It is possible to type Japanese or Greek as I wish in Emacs, independent of whether the windowing system or console is able to do it.

If the app has no independent such ability, then it depends on the windowing system or the console. The console fonts are most limited. I hoped I would be able to write in Linux (or BSD) console as per normal some day somehow (freely switching between Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Japanese etc.) but it turned out impossible.

Re: The awesomesauce with Chimerica

Reply #99 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
Quote from: jax on
An old complaint of mine is that Chinese uses English to transcribe European, and that is just about the worst language for that purpose.
Do you mean it's based on the Great Vowel Shift, which makes English spelling and pronunciation substantially different from pretty much every other language, or something even more pernacious?

I was thinking of the dual layer of transcription, first to English, then to Chinese. So β, that @ersi complained about, is 贝塔 (pinyin: bèitǎ). Whether that is "correct" or not is a manner of discussion, there is 25 centuries of Greek language development, as well as 5 centuries of reconstructed Ancient (and not so ancient) Greek. So maybe in this case it is the Dutch, not to English to "blame", and 贝塔 is a reasonable Chinese-English-Dutch-Egyptian-Greek approximation, of a letter used in maths, meteorology, epidemiology etc because these Greek letters are suitably international.

The Latin alphabet is the English alphabet (or ayebeesea) in Chinese, the names are Chinglish as well.  Wien/Vienna is  维也纳 (pinyin: Wéiyěnà). Though Södertälje is transcribed 南泰利耶 (or  Nántàilìyé, South Tälje), so there are a few exceptions. And Chinese phonology doesn't map that well to English phonology. Not perfectly to any other European language either, but I think we would be better off with e.g. Spanish or German. Other way around it's hard to say. Which language would do e.g. Chinese diphthongs better?

https://youtu.be/b9Ayvjy-Dgs?t=24
(bopomofo is traditional ordering)

Czech has its own transcription of Chinese, that makes sense if you can traverse Chinese and Czech. So the province of Sichuan, 四川 (which originally did not mean "four rivers") is transcribed in Czech S’-čchuan. The Czech love of consonant sequences extends into Chinese. Shanghai is Šanghaj. Yangzi River is Jang-c’-ťiang. Pinyin transcribed into Czech is pchin-jin.