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From: fbaube@note.nsf.GOV
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: What is a byte
Message-ID: <9103@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 1-Sep-87 15:47:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-adm.9103
Posted: Tue Sep  1 15:47:53 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Sep-87 01:08:12 EDT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
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[feed the line eater]

in article <650@gec-mi-at.co.uk> adam@gec-mi-at.co.uk writes:

> A Chinese word is made up of one or more characters. Each character
> has a value of one phoneme. There are about 5000 phonemes in common use,
> and there is an agreed 16-bit code for the most common phonemes.

If *characters* means *Chinese* characters, this is a very
simplified description of Chinese etymology.  Compound characters
are formed in different ways.  For some, the constituent
characters' phonetic values, taken together, equate to the
phonetic value of the word represented by the compound
character.  In other compound characters the constituent
characters combine in a concrete way (e.g. band + saw =>
bandsaw), and in others the combination is more abstract or
metaphorical (e.g. muck + raker => Woodstein).

> I've been on the net for
> a while now and I didn't know that comp.lang.c was short for
> comp.lang.chinese (though looking at that convoluted employment
> test had me wondering......)
>
>      -Adam.

It beats debating FORTRASH  :-)