General Questions Thread

[yezhanquan]

Yes, dictionaries are your best friend.

Also, note that there are different ways of pin yin. PRC uses hanyu pinyin, while Taiwan uses symbols which I don't recognise, but my parents do.

Also, the simplified/traditional script is enough to make one's head spin. What you've just typed is the simplified script used by PRC and Singapore, among others. Hong Kong and Taiwan uses the traditional script.

[[DOT].L]

Originally Posted by yezhanquan

Also, note that there are different ways of pin yin. PRC uses hanyu pinyin, while Taiwan uses symbols which I don't recognise, but my parents do.

Ah, yes, the Zhuyin system. It's exactly the same as Pin Yin, really. Pin Yin is simply a revised version of the Zhuyin system, replacing the symbols with the Roman alphabet. I don't know why that change was made, but the two systems do the exact same thing.

[LiberLibri]

Thanks a lot for the answers. So Chinese people begin their learning from the phonograms too. Tell me two more things please.

1. A quick search told me that Pin Yin was codified in 1958, and Zhuyin was made at earliest in 1913. Had there been a different system of phonograms for the educational purpose in China before the 20th century?

2. The pronunciation of a Chinese letter differs from a dialect to another. Do the Chinese pupils use one stanrdised dictionary (probably based on Beijing Mandarin), or they use ones suitable to their own languages respectively?

[[DOT].L]

Originally Posted by LiberLibri

Thanks a lot for the answers. So Chinese people begin their learning from the phonograms too. Tell me two more things please.

1. A quick search told me that Pin Yin was codified in 1958, and Zhuyin was made at earliest in 1913. Had there been a different system of phonograms for the educational purpose in China before the 20th century?

2. The pronunciation of a Chinese letter differs from a dialect to another. Do the Chinese pupils use one stanrdised dictionary (probably based on Beijing Mandarin), or they use ones suitable to their own languages respectively?

Can't help you with question number one, but number two is an easy one.

Students use standard Mandarin dictionaries, most notably of the Xinhua brand. Speaking in one's local dialect is strongly discouraged, sometimes outright banned, in schools. Doing so can lead to verbal warnings and sometimes corporal punishment (not quite sure if corporal punishment has been made illegal in schools as of yet). All official education institutions in China use Mandarin as their teaching language. In casual social settings, however, people tend to communicate in their local dialects.

Mandarin has begun to dominate the vocal landscape of larger Chinese cities more and more in recent years. Being a native of Shanghai, I was raised speaking the Shanghai dialect. Mandarin was only a necessity in class. Outside of the classroom, everybody spoke in the local dialect. Nowadays, I find many of my younger cousins and children of their generation no longer able to speak in their local dialect as a result of constant Mandarin usage in their lives. This creates a bit of a rift between generations since many elders never learned Mandarin.

[yezhanquan]

To add to the above, my forefathers are from Fujian. My grandparents and parents are very competent in Hokkien, unlike myself (Somehow, my brother is better at this.). In Singapore, speaking dialect is for non-official uses. While I personally don't feel the loss, my parents feel that it is important for me to learn Hokkien. Also, the official stand is that priority should be given to Mandarin.

Also, do note that in Hong Kong and Guangdong (and much of south China), Cantonese is widely used. It's probably the only dialect that the PRC government can't do anything about. In fact, the Mandarin which is used today was the Beijing dialect. Cantonese very nearly became the Mandarin which all of us had to learn, as it came in second during the selection.

As for question 1, before the 20th century, Mandarin has a very different way of writing called "wen yan wen". It's a bit like how Shakespear's English differs from modern English. This form of writing, together with the "lack" of phonograms, meant that education was difficult, which was the case anyway.

[Noyemi K]

I have a really, really dumb question.....

Since the cyrillic alphabet is always butchered by some smart-asses who think they're russian or something, what in the world would make them use a cyrillic "Deh" in place of roman "A"? The Russian "A" is the same frigging thing! д =/= A
Even if they don't know, they can find out if they tried. Also, я in place of R is pretty annoying, when the former is not "erh", but "yah".


Why do people do this, and what makes them think it is a good joke when it is offensive? This is a serious question.

[xris]

Originally Posted by Mikhail Faulken

I have a really, really dumb question.....

Since the cyrillic alphabet is always butchered by some smart-asses who think they're russian or something, what in the world would make them use a cyrillic "Deh" in place of roman "A"? The Russian "A" is the same frigging thing! д =/= A
Even if they don't know, they can find out if they tried. Also, я in place of R is pretty annoying, when the former is not "erh", but "yah".


Why do people do this, and what makes them think it is a good joke when it is offensive? This is a serious question.

Because they think it's cool?

It's the same reason people use |) instead of D or \/\/ instead of W, etc. etc.

It looks similar but it's different, it makes the name look "unique" as far as they are concerned. Chances are they know nothing of the Cyrillic alphabet and care even less about it.

[Noyemi K]

Originally Posted by xris

Because they think it's cool?

It's the same reason people use |) instead of D or \/\/ instead of W, etc. etc.

It looks similar but it's different, it makes the name look "unique" as far as they are concerned. Chances are they know nothing of the Cyrillic alphabet and care even less about it.

It makes more sense now.... I simply could not imagine not knowing it.

[LiberLibri]

Thanks again, [DOT].L & yezhanquan.

Originally Posted by Mikhail Faulken

Why do people do this, and what makes them think it is a good joke when it is offensive? This is a serious question.

It is called faux Cyrillic. In addition to the usage as an innocent cool fashion, it is also employed intentionally to evoke eastern Europe and ex-USSR. You may regard it as offensive, but you know people often feel a joke funnier when it is somehow impolite.

By the way, Cyrillic also takes an important role in Japanese smilies. (;ﾟДﾟ)

[Noyemi K]

Originally Posted by LiberLibri

Thanks again, [DOT].L & yezhanquan.



It is called faux Cyrillic. In addition to the usage as innocent cool fashion, it is employed intentionally to the evoke eastern Europe and ex-USSR. You may regard it as offensive, but you know people often feel a joke funnier when it is somehow impolite (offensive, blasphemous, discriminative etc.).

By the way, Cyrillic also takes an important role in Japanese smilies. (;ﾟДﾟ)

It tends to ekove my anger..... like people saying s--t like "ching chawng" when referring to chinese people talking, with no respect to dialect, etc.

By the way, that Paul McCartney thing nearly killed me >_<ll

[LiberLibri]

Σ(・Д・ﾉ)ﾉ shocked
（ノд｀） sad
（´∀｀） laugh

Does anyone know a good website to learn how the smilies in Russia, China or any other areas are?

[cicido]

http://evchk.wikia.com/wiki/%E8%A1%A...AC%A6%E8%99%9F
Here's one if you understand Chinese.

[Amray]

Originally Posted by xris

Because they think it's cool?

It's the same reason people use |) instead of D or \/\/ instead of W, etc. etc.

It looks similar but it's different, it makes the name look "unique" as far as they are concerned. Chances are they know nothing of the Cyrillic alphabet and care even less about it.

It's basically just how text speak was born.

"alrite m8, cumin out 2nite?"

It is just a way to seperate from the normal boring English lanuage. Although they do not seem to realise how annoying and stupid it is. That was either the case or it was just pure laziness to type whole words out.

[Onizuka-GTO]

here's a question that has eluded me, (being not a man of economics or business)

How on earth do they make money from the stock market?

i mean seriously. they go up and down like a yo-yo and i can never know how you can earn a regular wage (i.e. monthly pay check to pay the bills and food) without losing the lot.

[[DOT].L]

Originally Posted by Onizuka-GTO

here's a question that has eluded me, (being not a man of economics or business)

How on earth do they make money from the stock market?

i mean seriously. they go up and down like a yo-yo and i can never know how you can earn a regular wage (i.e. monthly pay check to pay the bills and food) without losing the lot.

There's no such thing as a "wage" when it comes to investing in the stock market. One profits by the method of "buy low, sell high." One buys shares of a stock at a price and sells the shares when the price rises above the price of which one originally bought the shares at, thus resulting in profit (ignoring commission rates).

Playing around with the stock market is risky business. Predicting how a stock will respond to shifter factors is the essence to success. Easier said than done, of course.

[TinyRedLeaf]

One profits by the method of "buy low, sell high." One buys shares of a stock at a price and sells the shares when the price rises above the price of which one originally bought the shares at, thus resulting in profit (ignoring commission rates).

And then, there's also the short position, ie, "sell high, buy low". ("Buy low, sell high" is known as the long position.) It then becomes even more arcane when you consider the possibilities offered by spot and future trading (for commodities) and derivatives (for various financial instruments). It gets even better. You can also invest in vintage wines and fine art, essentially betting on capital gains through valuation fluctuations.

But these financial instruments are all ultimately tied to a physical product, be it company equity or a piece of precious metal/grain/energy/real estate. As such, you can make educated guesses about how prices will fluctuate in the future based on how macroeconomic and microeconomic factors affect demand and supply for these goods. This is how many investors/speculators make their money - by crunching numbers and placing "bets" based on their trend analyses.

However, for that particular breed of speculators with significantly larger risk appetites, there is also currency speculation. These people bet on the daily fluctuations of national currencies, from the US dollar to the Japanese yen and the euro - practically any free-floating currency actually. When it comes to forex speculation, there are no fundamentals. It all boils down to guts and technical analysis, ie, these speculators are "chartists". They study how trends are moving on daily/weekly/monthly charts, and make their bets depending on how the wind blows. Yes, it sounds scary, but that's really how it works. It's all about luck and intuition, about making seemingly irrational bets based on personal feelings about which direction the bulls and bears are moving on any particular day.

The thing is, daily fluctuations in forex measure at fractions of cents. So how do forex traders make any significant amount of money? By leveraging heavily on "margin" accounts. Think of these as debit/overdraft accounts. A stockbroking firm extends these trading accounts to speculators, allowing them to take speculative positions at factors of several 10s, 100s or even 1,000s. When they win, they win big. But when they lose, careless forex traders can fall into bottomless pits of no return.

[Onizuka-GTO]

erm...okay understood that you earn by the differences you do by selling the stock at a higher price.

so i guess you can only earn a living on the stock market is working for a company i.e. middle man, and if you want to do the trading yourself you have to have a lot of money already.


If that is correct.

not going to ask about the other stuff, you just left me behind.

[xris]

The main problem is that it's not an easy question to answer, partly because there are so many ways it can be done so it becomes rather subjective.

Originally Posted by Onizuka-GTO

How on earth do they make money from the stock market?

Your question is rather vague. When you say "how do they make money", who do you mean by "they"? There are a large number of middle men that are involved in a potential shares sale / purchase transaction so it's rather difficult to answer how "they" or anyone makes money if we do not know who it is in particular you are referring to.

If I own some shares in a company and I want to sell them, I typically would contact my share broker and inform him of my desire to sell them (how many and what sort of price I would be looking for). The share broker then would contact a share trading company (as I am in the U.K. I would expect this would be a company connected to the London Stock Exchange). The trading company would then send out a trader on the trading floor of the Stock Exchange who would then try and find someone like himself but interested in purchasing the shares at the desired price. This chain is then repeats itself for the buyers side.

Of course, this is rather an outdated model since nowadays it's done over computer networks that connect the buyers and sellers (indirectly thought the network of share brokers and trading companies).

While shares do have a "listed" price, please remember that the true value is only that you can obtain (due to speculation, rumour, supply, demand and so on). The price listed on the Stock Exchange is only an average of the recent transactions, it really is just a guide.

And to wrap up, the above is a very simplified explanation which only reflects reality slightly

[Ledgem]

The majority of money is made from buying stocks when they're cheap and then selling them when they're higher. That's essentially the gambling aspect of the stock market, and the only way that your average person really hopes to make great sums of money from the stock market.

For big-time investors, there is another way to make money. Certain companies pay out dividends to their shareholders. That is, for every one share of stock that you own, you'll get a certain amount of money paid out per period of time (I believe it's per quarter). This is usually less than $1 USD, which is why your average investor doesn't really rely on this too much.

For example, as of now Microsoft pays out $0.11 per quarter per share, I think. Their current stock price is around $28. For you to get $1 from Microsoft per quarter (or $4 per year) you'd need to spend $280. Consider that there are 9.31 billion stock shares for Microsoft as of now, though, and you can see that it's quite possible to get a fair bit out of Microsoft per quarter if you own enough. (Note that 61% of those shares are held by Microsoft/Microsoft employees.) Again, the majority of money and returns on your investment will come from selling off your stocks when the price of the stock goes up far beyond what you paid for it. Dividends are something of an added bonus.

[LynnieS]

There are quite a few ways you can make money in the financial markets, but mutual funds are, IMHO, preferred for the average investor. For stocks, I've seen books, guides and what-not going from buying the [Warren] Buffett way(TM/C) to various technical analysis techniques. For derivatives, the books that I've seen usually split into two camps: one that is rather basic (and seems to be geared toward "Hey, you can be a millionaire trading XXX") and the second being [much] more technically-geared - e.g., pricing and volatility models.

Are you talking about the average investor, privately wealthy individuals, banks and other big financial institutions, or etc.?

Originally Posted by Onizuka-GTO

]so i guess you can only earn a living on the stock market is working for a company i.e. middle man, and if you want to do the trading yourself you have to have a lot of money already.

Leveraging or using derivatives, for example, will give you more purchasing power, but I personally see them as more like gambling than anything else. If you don't know what you're doing, take enough care, or etc, then you can get into serious trouble. Back in the late 1990's and when I first got out of university, day-trading was very popular in the U.S., but I can't help but wonder how many of those guys are still in the business (trading for themselves or for someone else)...