> Chinese characters are not an alphabet, they do not carry phonetics, they carry meaning. And, guess what, this is arguably better. Why? Because phonetics tend to shift quickly.
But I would think (and remember reading somewhere) that phonetics shift more quickly where there is no written record of the pronunciation. Chinese has dozens of mutually unintelligible dialects (Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Hakka, etc.). Maybe this fragmentation would be much less if they had a phonetic writing system in the first place.
> In a few decennies any spoken language has shifted, vocalisation is different, especially when the language is used by loosely coulped communities. And then you have to adapt spelling to new pronunciations. But what do you do with old books? And how do you keep the language united?
English (or Spanish, etc) is a real-world example of a mostly phonetic writing system, and I don't think it is that bad. We can still read old texts, even though our pronunciation of the words has changed vastly. If you go back far enough (e.g. to the time of Chaucer in the 1300s), it becomes hard to understand what is being said, but practically speaking I don't see this as a big problem. In contrast, I think it's very important to have a writing system that is easily learned, so that it is accessible to the entire population (not just those able to invest lots of time & effort).
"Germanic languages have special words for 11 and 12, such as eleven and twelve in English, which are often misinterpreted as vestiges of a duodecimal system. However, they are considered to come from Proto-Germanic ainlif and twalif (respectively one left and two left), both of which were decimal."
Side comment: that's a nice website; how did you make it? I see it's hosted on GitHub pages and that you use Bootstrap. Did you write all the HTML/CSS yourself, or use Markdown, etc?
Yes, but keep in mind you can't make Google Maps the default mapping application, so links to addresses (e.g. in calendar, web browser, contacts) will open in Apple Maps.
I love PTVS, but I keep running into a problem when I debug my code. One time it'll properly highlight in my IDE where an exception (or breakpoint) occurred; the next time it won't, and I have to look in the black Python console window and inspect the stack trace . Using PTVS 1.1.50530.0 with VS2010 Ultimate.
It must depend on your definition of "abbreviation". For example, Hamas and Fatah (the main political parties in Palestine) are both acronyms. Fatah is actually a reverse acronym.