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The Golem
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Jango & Boba Fett

+Jango & Boba Fett

Posted
Posted (edited)

Well it I would think that it would be based on the radicals so you would start with each radical and then the characters which are developed from that radical. How the radicals would be ordered would be ordered would, I imagine, be based on some philosophical scheme so you might start with {hey how come I can insert the Chinese but all I get when I submit is a "?"} as of course China is the centre of everything (and the only character I know) and then end up with the radical that conveys the concept most distant from China - having said that on my Mac the Chinese character palatte is ordered starting from those radicals needing least strokes (one) to those needing most strokes (seventeen) - that said I'm sticking with my original suggestion.

 

Did you know that in the west if you can recognise fewer than 300 words you are functionally illiterate but in China you need to know 6 times that number before you are functionally literate.

Edited by Jango & Boba Fett
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Archer4

+Archer4

Posted
Posted

Hmmm..... something I found out the other day, and actually (almost) came in useful in solving a cache puzzle yesterday:

 

Given that the Chinese language has no ordered alphabet, how are words arranged in a dictionary?

 

No idea - but hey, when did that become an obstruction... <_<

 

Is it number of upstrokes then the number of horizontals then number of diagonals :laughing:

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Jango & Boba Fett

+Jango & Boba Fett

Posted
Posted

Given that the Chinese language has no ordered alphabet, how are words arranged in a dictionary?

OK, checked up with my sister who is a Mandarin speaker and it seems that my previous answer contained bits of the answer but not necessarily put together in the right way, so here goes attempt two from what I think I've been told.

 

First off there is a traditional list of about 200 general character clusters, some of these are based on "radicals" (like I said) but some of them are characters that have the same/very similar pronunciation but aren't radicals. This apparently goes back to the Middle Ages and the order starts with the simplest and ends with the most complicated - oh yes and there are actually more than twice as many radicals as general character clusters.

 

Next within each character cluster the words are ordered from least to most brush strokes (not lines like I thought), although this can be hard for westerners to see as we tend to see characters in terms of straight lines made with a pen not fluid strokes made with a writing brush.

 

However having said all that it is possible to get a Chinese Dictionary with the pinyin system of words in alphabetical order.

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Jango & Boba Fett

+Jango & Boba Fett

Posted
Posted

Following on from Ian's theme, we all know that there are 26 letters in the English Alphabet (well not strictly true as there are a couple that have disapeared in the last few hundred years) but some of these letters represent more than one sound, and in the case of c & k the same sound. So

 

How many sounds are there in the English language?

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rutson

+rutson

Posted
Posted

Right, brain test, on my last tour out here I read a book about the raw English language so I SHOULD know this. I'm thinking that there are about 20 vowel sounds and about 22 consonant sounds, so I'll stab at 42.

 

I will resist a DNA reference...

I will resist a DNA reference...

I will resist a DNA reference...

I will resist a DNA reference...

I WILL!

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NickPick

NickPick

Posted
Posted

I'll agree with Rutson. My 4 year old has just started school, and they're using the Jolly Phonics books for learning reading, which teaches the 42 main sounds of english.

 

It sounds more like the meaning of life to me though. (because I can't resist a DNA reference)

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Jango & Boba Fett

+Jango & Boba Fett

Posted
Posted

I'll agree with Rutson. My 4 year old has just started school, and they're using the Jolly Phonics books for learning reading, which teaches the 42 main sounds of english.

Ah me thinks you are confusing the 42 shown on the Jolly Phonisc poster with the actual number of phonemes your Daughter is learning, easy mistake for you to make realy and rather strange that the Jolly Phonics scheme isn't more consistent. So ask your 4 year old how many phonemes she is learning. :laughing:

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NickPick

NickPick

Posted
Posted

I'll agree with Rutson. My 4 year old has just started school, and they're using the Jolly Phonics books for learning reading, which teaches the 42 main sounds of english.

Ah me thinks you are confusing the 42 shown on the Jolly Phonisc poster with the actual number of phonemes your Daughter is learning, easy mistake for you to make realy and rather strange that the Jolly Phonics scheme isn't more consistent. So ask your 4 year old how many phonemes she is learning. :laughing:

 

Hmm, so they have missed a few out (although I can't say how many because I cheated and used the internet). Now I'm curious as to which ones are missing (although my curiosity doesn't overcome my lethargy at the moment).

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Jango & Boba Fett

+Jango & Boba Fett

Posted
Posted

Mhhh so Rutson and NickPick have one half of the answer, and Dave from Glanton has the other,, now if only someone was clever enough to put the correct bits together.

 

A phoneme is a sound which is recognised as being distinct by the speaker of a language and is used by them, when combined with other phonemes to distinguish words.

 

An alophone is a sound wave packet associated with a phoneme, but indistinguishable in general speech from any other alophone which may be associated with that phoneme. For example in the word paper the first and second "p"s produce different alophones but an English speaker only only recognises one phoneme. Some phoneme have only one alophones while others have several.

 

The Jolly Phonics, or any other phonics system used to teach children actually deals with phonic patterns these are the associations of each particular letter with its most common phoneme, and also some letter groups with their most frequent phoneme (eg "th", "oi", "ng", ..). So it maps letter patterns onto phonemes, however some letter groups map to several phonemes (eg "ough"), there are exceptions to rules (hence the perfectly phonetically correct spelling of "fish" as "ghoti") and some phoneme map onto more than one letter group (eg f=ph=gh).

 

teacher.gif;)

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Jango & Boba Fett

+Jango & Boba Fett

Posted
Posted

Taking JF & BF's answer I calculate 161 - if the original foul was on the black there would be another 7 points awarded....possibly?

 

Then the free ball, then the 147...

Ah just spotted the flaw in KH answer (and the mistake in mine). You have to make the score at the table, but 7 of KH's points were made before he put down his pint and went to the table. Also if I'm going to have to make it at the table the foul my opponent makes has to be to put me into a foul snooker on all 15 reds, therefore I either make my oponent play again or get to nominate any ball to be the red ...... so after doing all that I might end up with a score of 161 (or even a tiny bit more) but only 15* would have been made at the table ...

 

{I've bitten this cherry once so someone else can make the logical deductions}

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purple_pineapple

+purple_pineapple

Posted
Posted (edited)

Taking JF & BF's answer I calculate 161 - if the original foul was on the black there would be another 7 points awarded....possibly?

 

Then the free ball, then the 147...

 

Ah, but then the additional 7 from the foul on the free ball wouldn;t count as part of the break. If jango means the highest score possible, including fouls from the other player, then its theoretically infinite, although the chances are that a miss would be called each time, and 3 consecutive misses and the frame is forfeited. I can;t be bothered to do the maths here, but it does require more than one visit to the table.

 

Phew - I'm going with Jangos reasoning, but a diff answer

 

155

 

ie 147 max, plus 1 free ball, plus the black after the first free ball.

 

Edit to say the actual SCORE would be 155 plus something for the foul, ie 4, 5, 6, 7

Edited by purple_pineapple
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Dave from Glanton

Dave from Glanton

Posted
Posted

Edit to say the actual SCORE would be 155 plus something for the foul, ie 4, 5, 6, 7

 

That was what I was thinking of (note I said "score" not "break", and "single visit to the table", so the opponent can't keep fouling ad infinitum), so a *DING* to purple_pineapple.

 

I think some of the other answers deserve a ding-ette for inventiveness and for taking the effort to show working. JF&BF came pretty close, but missed the fact that a free ball means potting any ball as a substitute red, followed by black.

 

OK, over to you PP

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Jango & Boba Fett

+Jango & Boba Fett

Posted
Posted

vaguely possible, but unlikely!

Yeh light has just gone on in the Brain, should have known really. There will be minute amounts used to coat the holes in the printed circuit boards of my smoke alarm But unless I'm an angler with bullet proof windows, and an interest in modern sculpture your answer is going to trump any other likely source. :D

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purple_pineapple

+purple_pineapple

Posted
Posted

In my darts case? Oh, and I think I have one or two traditional high-energy bulbs SOMEWHERE in the house.

 

I think that has to be a

 

DING!

 

to Mr Rutson there.

 

Jango appears to have got the answer as well, but has left it to others to say it... A light bulb is indeed what I was after, Wolfram being the original name for tungsten (and the reason why its chemical symbol is W )

 

Over to you, and well done to J & BF as well!

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