Ken wrote:
> Kevin Wayne Williams wrote:
> 
>>Ken wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Kevin Gowen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>If you fix your chat machine you will be able to...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>I wonder what makes you think I have control over this particular
>>>"chat" machine...
>>>It would be a bit uncivil of me to install an IME on a system I don't
>>>own.  Temporarily pointing a X11 server to a net-accessible font server,
>>>on the other hand, doesn't leave any customizations behind when I leave.
>>>Having no IME available makes inputting e.g. japanese a quite tedious
>>>copy and paste process, but one sometimes doesn't have a choice.
>>>Anyway, these concepts are probably beyond the intellectual grasp
>>>of a person who has never used anything more advanced than a small
>>>personal computer -- sorry, "chat" machine...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>...post in hanzis [sic] as easily as most of the rest of us do.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Interesting, this "[sic]".  It seems you hasn't been able to figure
>>>out how to copy the two text lines with the HTML "&xxx;" entities
>>>into a clipboard and paste them between <html> </html> tags and open
>>>the resulting text file in a web browser.  Why am I not surprised.
>>
>>
>>Why on earth would anyone bother to cut and paste your post? What did 
>>you say around it that make it so compelling that anyone would go to 
>>that effort? Using a bizarre plural of "hanzi"...
> 
> 
> 
> The transmogrification was absolutely involuntary and was presumably
> caused by some mismatch and interplay between the character set
> specification in Gowen's original post and the reply I was posting
> and the character set configuration of the non-asian IME web client I
> was using and DejaNews' front-end language settings.  I don't care
> enough about the problem to analyze it further, and would rather post
> in romaji.

This statement alone makes me believe that we are discussing Japanese,
not Chinese, and is the way I came to my original conclusion.
> 
> Anyway, I originally wrote:
> "[...] but the message contents sometimes *requires* "hanzis"..."
> 
> Grammatically speaking, KWW, after "requires" one usually expects a
> substantive.  Now, as you seem to be ignorant of that fact, "hanzi"
> is a compound word which literally means chinese CHARACTERS.
Actually, am perfectly aware of it. I am also aware that the plural
forms of "hanzi" and the more appropriate word, "kanji" , are "hanzi"
and "kanji", respectively. Now, as you seem to be ignorant of that fact,
"kanji" is a compound word which literally means Chinese characters,
being written 漢字, where 漢 means "China", and 字 means, well,
"character(s)."

> 
> Which version would make more grammatical sense, then?
> 
> "[...] but the message contents sometimes *requires* chinese character
> 
> "[...] but the message contents sometimes *requires* chinese characters"
> 
> "[...] but the message contents sometimes *requires* greek character"
> 
> "[...] but the message contents sometimes *requires* greek characters"

Hmm.. I like those versions that use the word "characters", but
typically, I put capital letters on proper adjectives, like "Greek" and
"Chinese."
> 
> 
> OTOH, when Gowen writes "post in hanzis [sic]", he uses "hanzis" as if
> designated the chinese alphabet.  In that case, he should preferably
> have written "post in hanzi", but semi-literate people 

KGII is numerous things, but "semi-literate" is not one of them. You
certainly don't impress me as being more literate. Strangely enough, you
don't even seem more polite than he is, and the average rabid skunk can
pull that off.

> like him are
> not really aware of the semantics of the terms they use...
> Had I elected to use "hanzi" as meaning the "chinese alphabet", I would
> have written:
> 
> "[...] but the message contents sometimes *requires* writing in hanzi"
> 
> Notice the difference
> 
> 
> 
>>when I am pretty sure you 
>>are referring to Japanese text (I'm not sure ... I didn't go through the 
>>cut and paste tango), where the word "kanji" would be more appropriate, 
>>didn't do anything to make me want to go to the effort.
> 
> 
> Let me summarize this for you:
> 
>  - you don't even know whether the post was actually in Japanese,
>    but are happy second-guessing -- confident in your probably oh
>    so impressive knowledge of asian languages -- its author and
>    *assuming* that the word "kanji" would have been more appropriate

Unless you know a way to write Chinese in romaji (which you listed as an
alternate choice), then my assumption is pretty well founded. "Asian",
by the way, not "asian."
> 
>  - based on that ignorant assumption, you then proceed to try to
>    "logically" deduce that Gowen is probably right
> 
> To put it mildly, this looks like the pretty shallow thinking, the
> kind of which one expects only from an airhead :-
Actually, my reasoning was more like "poster does not know how to
pluralize "hanzi", does not know how to post correctly formatted text,
therefore, he probably didn't write anything of value." Nothing has
changed my opinion so far.

> 
> 
> 
>>KGII is proof of an old axiom: just because someone is an asshole 
>>doesn't mean he's wrong.
> 
> 
> I resent the implication that my own asshole credentials might not
> cut it.

Actually, I think your post was more than sufficient to prove your
credentials.

Let me summarize it for you. You don't know the mechanics of making a
properly formatted post. You correct people on issues where you are
wrong. You don't know how to use proper adjectives or pluralize the
loanwords "hanzi" and "kanji".

Goodbye.

KWW