After Friday, the day when I publish my weekly Hive and crypto news roundup, I usually take it slower on Hive the next day on the creative side. Even though the roundup itself isn't as much creative work, as much as it is... work. 😀
I listened to a 3-hour podcast earlier in the day that offers a good counter-balance compared to our often rather skewed perspective nowadays strongly leaning toward everything and anything technological. I've often been bothered by the belittling of anything biological and what makes us human and the praises to new tech which will "improve" us (especially if there's nothing wrong with us, as an "upgrade"). Maybe I'm wrong, but as much as I want to keep up with many borderline tech and science discoveries, at least at the informational level, we are moving very fast toward an obscure direction. It's like we discovered a black hole close by, and we are plunging head first into it. Of course, scientifically, that doesn't really makes sense, but as a metaphor, it's probably pretty good for what we are doing.
Anyway, this is not necessarily what I wanted to talk about today but I got sucked into it.
What I did afterwards was supposed to be the topic for my post. You may know I started to learn Chinese (i.e. Mandarin). Small steps, and kind of slow, but it has been going. I took a break over the holidays, and found it quite difficult to re-start the habit in 2025, finding reasons to postpone it more and more. Well, today was the day when I finally restarted.
The AI didn't quite understand my prompt, but I'm not going to wait in queue again for another take at it.
I haven't gone far yet. Guess what I learned today after I reviewed my previous lessons? The days of the week in Chinese.
For most people speaking only modern languages from the West, this is going to sound unusual.
Did you know the Chinese don't have names for the days of the week?
In English, we say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, ... .
I believe all languages formed in Europe have names for the days of the week.
Well, in Mandarin, to say Monday, you say "week 1", meaning the words that mean "week" and the number 1, which is the first day of the week in most countries.
To say Tuesday, you say "week 2". And to say Sunday, you say "week 7". And that's how I learned the days of the week and to count in one lesson...
Now, I haven't gotten to that part in Chinese were one would need to distinguish between Monday and "week 1" as in the 1st week of something. How do they do that? I do not know yet.
What I know is that they automatically removed the need for 7 distinct words in the Chinese vocabulary by doing this. And I know from reading somewhere else this simplification of the vocabulary is done in other ways.
For example, starting from "Niú" (meaning, "ox"), they derive any related words:
- "Niúnǎi" means "cow" (literally meaning "ox" + "milk")
- "Xiǎo niú" means "calf" (literally meaning "young/little" + "ox")
- "Gōngniú" means "bull" (literally meaning "male" + "ox")
- "Shuǐniú" means "buffalo" (literally meaning "water" + "ox")
and so on. You see how the number of words in Chinese seem to drop significantly?
That doesn't make Chinese simpler, or better. Only different.
In the end, I'd like to apologies in advance to Chinese speakers for things I may have interpreted the wrong way for the time being. Please do correct me if I say stupid things, lol.