It seems like everyone is using Twitter these days. From my
cousin (@HeidiZettlBand) to President Obama (@BarackObama), people use twitter
to update their friends on their lives, promote their personal brands, and
generally say goofy things to lots of people. (Hey, I’m on Twitter Too!
@Nathaniel_Hahn)
In China, people don’t use “Twitter”, but rather 微博(Weibo
{Pronounced “Way”- “bo” and pronounce the ‘o’ like the ‘o’ in ‘or’})， which means “Micro-Blog”. “Microblogging” is a very big
topic in China, much like Tweeting is big in the US.
For the most part, these websites are similar in concept, but there is
one very, very, very big difference.
Both of these websites only let you use 140 characters.
Why is this a huge difference?
See, in English, a “character” counts as a letter, which is
then combined with other letters to form a word, which is considered “thought
unit”. Then, these thought units are combined to form a sentence or phrase,
which then becomes a tweet.
In Chinese, however, a “character” is a character. (huh?) In
Chinese, each character by itself counts as a thought unit. Because of this,
the Chinese character 是, which means “is” is stored in a computer as one
character, rather than English’s two.
Since each character in Chinese counts as a thought unit,
Chinese Weibo users can tweet with 140 WORDS, as opposed to English’s 140
CHARACTERS.
Okay, so Chinese people can put more stuff in their tweets.
So what? Why does this mean that Twitter is making Americans dumber and Weibo
is making Chinese people smarter? This difference lies in the way that people
use the “140 character” limitation to form thoughts.
In English, since there is a 140 character limit, you often
have to consider what you’re going to say and alter your word choice in a way
that will let you post what you want. This sometimes leads you to posting
simpler words and thought concepts because you need to make the limit (don’t
you hate seeing that little “-10”?). For example, if you were squeezed in your
character count, you might edit some of your more elaborate word choices to
make them simpler: Galloped -> Ran, Enthusiastic -> Glad, etc. You might
also break down your grammar structure, or post abbreviations to words to make
it work. This means that Twitter users are becoming more accustomed to using
shorter, simpler words and concepts to express their meanings.
In China, since there is a 140 character limit, you often
have to edit your word choice to make sure that you can say what you want to
say. But rather than in English where you are forced to go to simpler words to
make it fit, in Chinese you use words (characters, remember) that are MORE
complicated and have MORE meaning packed into them. By making sure each word
has a LOT of meaning (even if it might not be as commonly used) instead of a
LITTLE, you’ll be able to fit more meaning into a smaller space.
In this way, Twitter forces English users to give up
complicated language structures, while Weibo forces Chinese users to seek them
out.
It’s not your fault, English. It’s just that you weren’t
designed to be a short-form language. When the makers of Twitter decided on a
data structure to let people post short messages, characters are the logical
choice. That’s what you get for having a reusable letter structure and the
ability to easily create new sounds, your language works TERRIBLY when it comes
to data storage. A lot of people think that Chinese “characters” are holding
the language back, but this is one area where the language structure is really
effective.
Think about this a minute: what if Twitter let you post 140
WORDS, instead of 140 CHARACTERS? How do you think your posting would change?
In addition, imagine that you’re like the Chinese language, and you don’t have
to ever use the word “the”. That would
be pretty sweet. You could post ridiculously complicated words as much as you
wanted, and you would make sure that your word choice was MEANINGFUL, rather
than simply fitting the character limit.
Twitter might never change its 140 character limit, but if they
do, it could radically change the way we think about short-form language
syntax.
Anyway, I think I’m going to tweet about this. Maybe I’ll
Weibo it too.
(NO WAY. WEIBO MAKES YOU USE YOUR PASSPORT NUMBER TO SIGN
UP. WHAT IS THIS MADNESS.)
Anyway, that’s life in the Middle Country.
-Nathaniel Hahn
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