Re: Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing

On 23 Aug., 21:53, bmo...@xxxxxxx wrote:
On Aug 23, 11:46 am, qay <peter.pr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On 23 Aug., 17:45, bmo...@xxxxxxx wrote:

On Aug 22, 3:59 pm, qay <peter.pr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 23 Aug., 00:01, bmo...@xxxxxxx wrote:

On Aug 22, 2:33 pm, qay <peter.pr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I would like to know how the order was chosen in which the different
delegations came in. Usually they come in alphabetic order but the
Chinese language has no alphabet. I was told that the criterion was
the number of strokes in the first character of the name of the
country (in Chinese language of course). I think that the second
character was taken if the first character of two country names is the
same.

My main question is: as there is usually more than one country with a
given number of strokes in the first character, what is the next
criterion for the order?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics_Opening_Ceremony#Pa...

In accordance with Olympic tradition, the national team of Greece
entered first; the host country came last. As Chinese is written in
characters and not letters, the order of the teams' entry was
determined by the number of strokes in the first character of their
respective countries' Simplified Chinese names.[37] Countries with the
same number of strokes in the first character are sorted by those of
the next character. This made Guinea (几内亚) the second country to enter
following Greece as it only takes two strokes to write the first
character in the country's name (几). Australia (澳大利亚) marched 202nd,
just ahead of Zambia (赞比亚), which was the last country to march before
China. [38] The first characters of these countries' names (澳 and 赞)
are both written 16 strokes; the second characters (大 and 比) are three
and four strokes respectively.

I don't think that wikipedia is correct. For example, France (法国) came
before Poland (波兰). The first character of each name has 8 strokes,
the second character of France consists of 8 strokes whereas the
second character of Poland consists of 5 characters.

You may be right. But are you sure about the number of strokes for
those characters?

Sounds like you know more about Mandarin characters than I do. But for
example, how about this one? How many strokes? I believe it is only 4,
not 5.

天

I have heard that the radical of the characters which have the same
stroke count is relevant, but I do not know which radical table is
used, and I do not know what is done if the characters to be compared
contain the same radical.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Zitierten Text ausblenden -

- Zitierten Text anzeigen -- Zitierten Text ausblenden -

- Zitierten Text anzeigen -

I do not count the number of strokes by myself but get it from my
chinese dictionary (of course I could make errors as well). The
character 天 has indeed 4 strokes. It comes in my dictionary in the
list of radicals with 4 strokes.

My hope was that a native mandarin speaker would answer my initial
question about the nations order at the Beijing olympic opening
ceremony.

Yes, that would be best.

The order used is said to be used also in chinese
encyclopedias, but I have only language dictionaries where the order
is always in Pinyin.

Can you look up "France" and "Poland" in your dictionary? Maybe there
is a section on geography as there is with many English dictionaries.- Zitierten Text ausblenden -

- Zitierten Text anzeigen -

I have already made this lookup, see above.

I have found another wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics_national_flag_bearers
I have tried to understand how the nations are ordered. I didn't
succeed, because my knowledge of stroke order is insufficient. The
question is still open to me.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing
    ... Chinese language has no alphabet. ... character was taken if the first character of two country names is the ... given number of strokes in the first character, ...
    (soc.culture.china)
  • Re: Laz in Poland?
    ... I even tried googling for the list of nations in Chinese order. ... order, from the first character with twostrokes for Guinea, to 17 ... ordering by total stroke count is the system now used in dictionaries? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: What do the OTHER names in Ranma mean?
    ... but the English transliteration would be Ke Lun. ... The first character means quick or early and the second refers to an uncut ... I seem to recall someone linking Shampoo's name to some Chinese ...
    (rec.arts.anime.misc)
  • Re: maybe and easy question?
    ... Here is the character for tea on the Zhongwen site: ... Chinese look it up using strokes/radicals which Zhongwen also provides. ... I have no clue to the number of strokes or the radical in this ... >> about radicals and strokes but that doesn't do me anygood. ...
    (rec.food.drink.tea)
  • Problem with Chinese "Drop-Down List Box"
    ... first character to have the option with the same starting character ... we found that this cannot be done with "SOME" chinese ... the selection with USA in chinese does not perform the ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6.browser)