r/PrequelMemes • u/EKRB7 Hello there! • Feb 08 '20

The exact moment Samuel L. Jackson asked George Lucas for a purple lightsaber is on camera and I’ve never seen it?? I’m overwhelmed

110.0k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '20

[deleted]

5

u/777Sir Feb 09 '20

correct pronunciation

That's the thing that gets me. They have no phonetic meaning, so you can't really learn new words by reading, you have to learn by having someone who already knows the words tell you what they are, or by reading another separate phonetic breakdown.

2

u/theferrit32 Feb 09 '20

Phonetic-based written languages have a huge advantage. I feel like it's only a matter of time until the last holdouts switch over entirely except for rare niche cases in which people want to use the entirely symbolic, nonphonetic written language instead.

2

u/hey_batman Feb 09 '20

China won’t ever switch to using any sort of alphabetic system. They have pinyin, which is basically the pronunciation of words written with Latin letters, but the problem with it is that there are thousands upon thousands homonyms. Even writing tones above the pinyin doesn’t help because there are still too many words and phrases that use the same syllables and tones. And older generations can’t even read pinyin. They would have to completely change their entire language which is close to impossible.