153. In Character
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chinese is one of the oldest still-spoken languages in the world. But when technologies arrived like telegraphy and computing, designed with the Roman alphabet in mind, if Chinese wanted to be able to participate then it had to choose between adapting, or paying a heavy price. And sometimes both were inevitable. Jing Tsu, author of Kingdom of Characters: the Language Revolution that Made China Modern, recounts how Chinese contended with obstacles like alphabetisation, Romanisation and standardisation.
Find out more information about the topics in this episode at theallusionist.org/character, plus a transcript and the full dictionary entry for the randomly selected word.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the illusionist in which I, Helen Zoltzman, bring language is my plus one. |
| 0:09.0 | Today's episode is about how the Chinese writing system has adapted or been adapted to |
| 0:13.4 | contend with a lot of obstacles in its interactions with the rest of the world as technologies |
| 0:17.9 | like typing machines, telegraphy, computer programming have been designed with the relatively |
| 0:22.4 | tiny Roman alphabet in mind. |
| 0:24.1 | So how does Chinese, a completely different writing system, negotiate that? |
| 0:28.9 | They tuned, find out! |
| 0:30.9 | I'll be doing something a little bit different in two weeks instead of a new episode in your |
| 0:35.1 | pod feed. |
| 0:36.1 | I'll be live streaming to youtube.com slash illusionist show to talk about how this show is made, |
| 0:42.8 | what such features like the in-witches and the randomly selected words are for, how the |
| 0:47.0 | show has changed in its nearly 7.5 years of existence, how a topic goes from a little |
| 0:51.6 | germ to an idea in full bloom or at least partial bloom. |
| 0:54.8 | And I could even go into how a specific episode came about if there are ones you are particularly |
| 1:00.1 | interested in. |
| 1:01.1 | So if you're curious about this show or about making podcasts yourself, join me for |
| 1:06.0 | behind-scenes illusionist at youtube.com slash illusionist show on 1 May 2022. |
| 1:12.7 | There will be two showings, 10 30 AM UK time to catch the awake hours of people east of |
| 1:18.0 | the Atlantic and then 7 PM UK time for those more westfully. |
| 1:22.4 | The videos will also be available afterwards on the youtube channel, but if you're there |
| 1:26.5 | live you get to participate in the chat which to me is the funnest part of a live stream. |
| 1:31.3 | So that's the first of May at youtube.com slash illusionist show and the usual audio pod |
... |
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