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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 1387766" data-attributes="member: 177"><p>The fact that contempoprary Chinese is dependant on tone does not preclude the possibility that the tonal nature of the language could change in the future. </p><p></p><p>Imagine that for some (probably business related) reason in the future, lots of speakers of Western languages start to pick up Chinese. But, not being native speakers of such a strongly tonal language, none of these westerners get it quite right. And now the Chinese have to deal with French-accented Chinese, and Russian-accented Chinese, and Southern-American-Accented chinese, and Boston-accented-Chinese...</p><p></p><p>At that point, if communicating with these people is really called for, perhaps it is best to let your language flex to meet them, and a form of the Chinese language develops that is not so tonally dependant. Or maybe it is just <em>differently</em> dependant on tone. Perhaps the language shifts to use tone differences western language speakers are more able to catch... </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It presumes a certain amount of fluency in the langage present in their time period, not with 20th-century Chinese. And, if they've been borrowing for a long, long time, their usage and pronounciation would be expected to change from present-day norms.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm a physicist by trade. Do you know how frequently I run into things in sci-fi shows that would hurt my suspension of disbelief? One needs to learn to set one's own pet knowledges aside to fully enjoy fiction. Worry about the show's internal consistency. Don't worry about it's consistency with exterior reality.</p><p></p><p>As for the hijack - I wouldn't worry about it. It isn't like there's anyone saying anything else now anyway <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 1387766, member: 177"] The fact that contempoprary Chinese is dependant on tone does not preclude the possibility that the tonal nature of the language could change in the future. Imagine that for some (probably business related) reason in the future, lots of speakers of Western languages start to pick up Chinese. But, not being native speakers of such a strongly tonal language, none of these westerners get it quite right. And now the Chinese have to deal with French-accented Chinese, and Russian-accented Chinese, and Southern-American-Accented chinese, and Boston-accented-Chinese... At that point, if communicating with these people is really called for, perhaps it is best to let your language flex to meet them, and a form of the Chinese language develops that is not so tonally dependant. Or maybe it is just [i]differently[/i] dependant on tone. Perhaps the language shifts to use tone differences western language speakers are more able to catch... It presumes a certain amount of fluency in the langage present in their time period, not with 20th-century Chinese. And, if they've been borrowing for a long, long time, their usage and pronounciation would be expected to change from present-day norms. I'm a physicist by trade. Do you know how frequently I run into things in sci-fi shows that would hurt my suspension of disbelief? One needs to learn to set one's own pet knowledges aside to fully enjoy fiction. Worry about the show's internal consistency. Don't worry about it's consistency with exterior reality. As for the hijack - I wouldn't worry about it. It isn't like there's anyone saying anything else now anyway :) [/QUOTE]
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