for one of my essays, I am going to compare Old Chinese 帝 to Proto-IE "deiwos"

College Essays
1

<p>As they can be linked through the comparative method. (Yes, Mandarin "di", Hokkien "ti", Greek "Zeus", Latin "Deus", French "Dieu", Sanskrit "Deva-" and English "deity" are all related.) </p>

<p>I am using it as a vehicle to compare how all my life as a migrant have been told culturally the East and West as different as oil and water, but now I reject this statement outright.</p>

<p>However, I am slightly worried that the Chinese characters might cause a problem for some AdComs' computers. Advice?</p>

2

<p>Your essays need to be in english, if you are applying to US colleges. Otherwise you are at risk of having your essay be off putting to a tired, bleary admission officer who has to read over 100 essays a day.</p>

3

<p>It’s in English – but linguistics is going to be one of my major – it makes sense to be talking about one of my passions, doesn’t it?</p>

<p>I don’t think it’s possile to describe other languages without actually using examples…</p>

4

<p>just use “di” ignore the character.</p>

5

<p>Yes, but you risk having your essay unreadable if there are foreign characters in the text. you should contact the colleges you are applying to and ask if their computer systems can handle foreign text.</p>

6

<p>The problem is that Mandarin “di” is not pronounced as English /di/… how would “/ti/ with an unaspirated/slack t” sound? It’s sort of unwieldy.</p>

<p>Furthermore, the Old Chinese word was /te:s/, not /ti/. The character allows you to keep using the same morpheme, even as the phonemes that indicate it change.</p>

7

<p>Does the way of pronouncing that word actually matter?
The admission officers probably won’t be able to pronouce it correctly even if you use the chinese letter. </p>

<p>Or am I totally misunderstanding your point? :(</p>

8

<p>Just use pinyin.</p>

<p>di1 , di2, di3, di4</p>

9

<p>use the character with the pinyin in parenthesis.</p>

10

<p>I don’t think OP wants to fill his essay with “di1” .. that looks awful. Look, the point of your essay isn’t how you pronounce the Mandarin word for God. It’s your love for linguistics. So just make life easier for the adcom, use pinyin WITHOUT the character(unlikely anyone can read it, so what purpose does it serve besides looking cool?) and get your interest in the intersection between linguistics and culture across, not the proper pronounciation for a Chinese character..! Italicize: di</p>

<p>It’s not like the adcom is going to say: OMG! Should be an unaspirated/slack “t” but here the applicant used “d”… automatic REJECT!!</p>

11

<p>“Look, the point of your essay isn’t how you pronounce the Mandarin word for God. It’s your love for linguistics. So get your interest in the intersection between linguistics and culture across, not the proper pronounciation for a Chinese character..”
I edited and condensed from the above post, but this is a good summary of what I was trying to get across.</p>

12

<p>Well the issue is that the character has different pronunciations across dialects too, but I get the hint.</p>

<p>I will try to include the character and a pinyin romanisation in parentheses – it wouldn’t be counted against me if the character shows up in squares (but with the romanisation showing up fine), would it?</p>

13

<p>Just make sure your essay is readable and understandable to someone who knows NOTHING about linguistics. I suggest you show your essay to someone outside the area of linguists before you send it off.</p>

14

<p>upload your essay in .PDF also, make sure you have translations and explanations at hand.</p>