Zhanga: July 12, 2006

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Wednesday, July 12, 2006 (5 comments)

This is really, really, really weird. I don't have words for this and I'm still collecting my jaw from the ground.

Ok, so first a brief lesson for those of you who aren't fobs. To enter Chinese into a computer, you enter the pinyin which is a phonetic representation based on the Latin alphabet. (There are other ways to type Chinese, but for most of us this is the easiest.) So to get "hello," you would type "ni hao" and choose the correct one from the choices that the computer gives you (lots of Chinese words and phrases sound the same):

(The correct choice here is the first one, which is already highlighted. The computer tries to sort the choices so the best, most frequent, etc ones are first.)

Now, I was trying to type in 我们的爱 (wo men de ai), which means "our love" and happens to be the name of my favorite song. I found a pretty good techno remix of it a few days ago, but it just randomly cut off in the middle. So I was looking for another one. Well, to type in "wo men de ai" I of course have to type in "wo men" first. Look what happened:

The first choice is 台湾. That, by the way, is spelled "tai wan" and unsurprisingly means Taiwan. Why did that show up as a choice when I typed in "wo men"? I have no idea. Interestingly though, 我们 means "us." "Us" = "Taiwan"?

Then I typed the last two words in pinyin:

And wtf? The first choice does not say "our love." Well, it sort of does, but not literally. It says "One China," or more specifically, it refers to a unified China/Taiwan. It is written as "yi ge zhong guo" in pinyin. Nothing at all like "wo men de ai" which is what I typed in. Why did it show up as a choice!?

This has really weirded me out. Typing 我们的爱 has always worked fine on this machine, even about three days ago when I found that techno remix. The past three days are significant, though: all the arguing on those "Face It - Taiwan is [NOT] part of China" groups must have fried my computer's brain?

This can't be coincidence. This is just so weird.

12:24AM

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