Hi Martin, 2012/4/1 "Martin J. Dürst" <duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp> > Hello Ambrose, > > > On 2012/04/02 0:29, Ambrose LI wrote: > >> For Chinese, I think it might be useful to think of this as a “why” >> question. >> >> In Chinese, the ideographic space can be used for honorific purposes. This >> is a bit old fashioned, but this is still in use in certain locales in >> certain contexts such as formal letters. So this whether ideographic >> spaces >> should be kept is sometimes (but not always) a semantic decision. >> > > Very interesting. Can you tell us where these spaces are used? For example > around the names of a person being 'honored'? Or throughout the text? > > I am probably not the best person to answer this, since by the time I went to school this is (IIRC) no longer properly taught. However, this seems to be still current usage. In Chinese, if you follow certain relatively old-fashioned rules (which as far as I undertand are no longer used in China—correct me if I’m wrong), in certain types of formal writing, respect can be indicated by a system of fullwidth spaces, line breaks, and outdents. As far as I understand, in Hong Kong the only two such devices still in use are the ideographic space and the line break. I am not sure what the situation in Taiwan is. The honorific ideographic space, if used, is prefixed to the name or noun (e.g., “your company”, “granddad”, etc.) being “honoured”, and, as far as I understand, it will occur throughout the text wherever the said name or noun is mentioned. > Regards, Martin. > > Regards, -- cheers, -ambrose <http://gniw.ca>
Received on Monday, 2 April 2012 02:07:15 UTC