Martian Language - General Aspects

General Aspects

The Martian language is written from Chinese by means of various substitution methods. Just like in l33t, where the letter "e" is replaced by the number "3", in Martian, standard Chinese characters are replaced with substandard ones, or foreign scripts. For each Chinese character, it may be replaced it with:

  1. A character which is a homophone
  2. A character which looks similar
  3. A character with a similar radical
  4. A character with the same or similar meaning
  5. The Latin script, Cyrillic, hiragana, bopomofo, katakana, the IPA, other unicode symbols, SMS language, etc.

For example, the 星 in 火星文 huoxingwen (星 is literally "star"; 火星 is "Planet Mars") can be replaced by "☆", a Unicode symbol that visually represents an actual star. 的 is commonly replaced with の, as it has the same intended meaning in Japanese. 火 can become 吙 just by adding a 口 radical, which alters very little in terms of sound (but changes the meaning), and visually maintains the 火 image. In the same principle, 文 wen, language can be replaced with 魰 by adding a 鱼 fish radical, which makes the character still look similar. Also, 的 is sometimes replaced with "d" due to its sound, as with 比 being replaced with "b"; Cyrillic can be used in a similar manner. Martian language and brain-disabled characters overlap with one another; however, BDC only includes Chinese characters and nothing else, while Martian language incorporates BDC, as well as scripts such as Cyrillic, Hiragana, Bopomofo, SMS, and others.

Read more about this topic:  Martian Language

Famous quotes containing the words general and/or aspects:

    Women born at the turn of the century have been conditioned not to speak openly of their wedding nights. Of other nights in bed with other men they speak not at all. Today a woman having bedded with a great general feels free to tell us that in bed the general could not present arms. Women of my generation would have spared the great general the revelation of this failure.
    Jessamyn West (1907–1984)

    The happiest two-job marriages I saw during my research were ones in which men and women shared the housework and parenting. What couples called good communication often meant that they were good at saying thanks to one another for small aspects of taking care of the family. Making it to the school play, helping a child read, cooking dinner in good spirit, remembering the grocery list,... these were silver and gold of the marital exchange.
    Arlie Hochschild (20th century)