Byron left a message on one of my previous blog entry; he/she said that it’s difficult for him/her to understand what I ever wrote. Well, that post was about some problem or illness in Chinese writings, since Chinese maybe the fuzziest language in the world, and it’s easy to be confused, misreading a Chinese sentence and giving a wrong interpretation. I just took for example in that post, one is a comment of charlesc while another is from a news program in a TV news channel in Taiwan. I think it is indeed not easy to understand this post without some basic knowledge with Chinese language.

Charlesc’s comment is under a context for discussing if PRC should give Taiwan two pandas as a gift, he said: “I love pandas too, but crossing the seas is too hard… (I saw pandas in the Shanghai Zoo two years ago, they were unhappy…)” (雖然我也想看熊貓，但是飄洋過海，太辛苦了～前年我在上海動物園看過，牠們不快樂…）This sentence is ambiguous just because the central and important subject is skipped, well, crossing seas is too hard – for whom? It maybe for “me” or for the pandas, then you can read this sentence in two ways: If it is too hard for “me”, that means charlesc suggest to receive the pandas therefore he can see the pandas in Taipei Zoo then. Another way is totally on the contrary, that is, he cares about not to let the pandas be hurt while crossing the seas. My conclusion is, you can read charlesc as a guy who agree and disagree giving pandas as a gift simultaneous.

By the way, the pandas were unhappy, for what? You can say that it is because they are limited in the Zoo, and we human should not separate the animals from their home in the nature just because we want to entertain us. In another way, you can say that they are unhappy just because they are in the “Shanghai Zoo, if they were in Taipei Zoo, they will be happy.

Another example is about the situation that the verb is shortened improperly. This sentence is the topic of a news story in a news TV channel, it could be translated as “a soldier accusing maltreated hurting his self.” (役男控受虐自殘) If we want to say this sentence in an acute modern Chinese syntax, is should be “a soldier accuses that he was maltreated and therefore he hurts his self”, and we should notice the character: 控 (Kong). 控 means control (控制) or accuse (控告), but, it is single here and it become ambiguous then, we can not tell that the soldier is accusing or accused.

And most at all, we may read 役男控 (Yi-Nan-Kong) as a word but not 役男 and 控. Well, 役男控 looks like a new Chinese term, 羅莉控 (LoLi-Kong), which is the Chinese translation of “Lolicon” invented by Japanese. “Lolicon” is the acronym of “Lolita Complex” which means the ones who enjoy sexual relationship with young girls. Then, 役男控 may be understood as “Soldier Complex”. My conclusion is, since people do not care about how to let their self be well-understood, how can we believe that people could be connected via words?