Freedom's Just Another Word

And when Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology, half-owned by Microsoft, recently launched a Chinese version of MSN My Space, a blog-hosting service, it ceded to Chinese demands to block words like “freedom” and “democracy” from use in blog titles.

This Newsweek article looks at it from a technology perspective. But really it's a language issue. Amritas, a blog by a professional linguists with a deep knowledge of Asian languages, is linking to, and commenting on, suggestions for ways the Chinese can get around the blockers.

Stepping over the "block" may not be difficult at all, as it turns out. You can use essentially the same trick junior high school boys use to get rude words broadcast: You have the PA system page someone with a plausible sounding name that is a homonym for something else. Ah, come on; you did it, too: "Will Heywood Jablomi report to the information desk."

Chinese contains thousands of homonyms -- words that sound the same but are built of totally unrelated characters. According to one of the writers Amritas cites:

All one would need to do is combine, for example, the characters for "word" [actually 'character'] and "swim." It's utter nonsense to any filtering program, but together ["ziyou"] they have exactly the same pronunciation and tones as the word ["ziyou"] for freedom.