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[hillburra]

(hane)

heinous

[lordnincompoop]

(nous)

Nostoc

[Sean Mirrsen]

(toc/tok)

Tokamak (reactor)

[lordnincompoop]

(mak/mac)

Macintosh (the boot)

[LeoLeonardoIII]

You know this game would be hilariously easy if we were all native speakers of Japanese and this game were in Japanese. Is it the same way with Mandarin?

[blah28722]

Mandarin and Japanese are really different in how they work. Japanese features a relatively small set of sounds (50 or so if I remember correctly) that are put together in order to form meaning. It's similar to how English has the 5 base vowels (not that 'y' is a real vowel) consonants that make different sounding words (ba, cha, da, etc.).

Chinese, on the other hand, has a far larger number of vowels. There are 3 "middle vowels" that can either be used on their own or with one of the 13 other "bottom vowels". This produces 42 possible vowels (note that not all are used, see "Bopomofo"). There are also 5 different modes of pronouncing one "word". While some/most of these combinations aren't used, this comes out to about 7500 different ways to pronounce a single word, compared to English's 24 consonants to 15 vowels (including "oo", "ay", "ee", etc), which equates to about 360 possible sounds. This is why you often see native English speakers having a much harder time learning Chinese, and not the other way around.

So no, not very similar at all


-Toshiba

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Does that make it less or more impressive that this is a Chinese game? I mean to say, is it easier if you have a larger range of possible pronunciations? I'd assume so, because having a larger vocabulary makes the game easier in English.

(tosh)

Toshiba

[blah28722]

This game isn't exactly a tough game (It's basically the Chinese version of that one car game where you try to go through the alphabet by finding them on signs or license plates). I wouldn't say the massive possibilities make it tougher, as there are only a few hundred "core" words that are used often.

But if all the players had a very large vocabulary (Chinese vocabulary), it'd be more impressive. It could probably go on forever with each person only using 2 to 4 syllables (note that the 4 syllable isn't necessary, but it's basically worth "style points" because 4 word phrases in chinese are often something like proverbs).

(ba)

Balance

[silhouette]

(ance)

awnser

[hillburra]

(ser)

Certain

[lordnincompoop]

(tain)

tainted

[Psyco Jelly]

Isn't there a rule against monosyllabic words?

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Also, are we trying to make it hard or easy for the next person? Because up till now I've been using the reply word with the easiest further answers.

[lordnincompoop]

Well, just in case there's a rule for monosyllabic words, I changed it to tainted. I believe there's at least a few words starting with "ed".

[hillburra]

(ed)

editor