Language and Literacy
Benson Fong
In article <4v0gfo$n...@sjx-ixn5.ix.netcom.com>, va...@ix.netcom.com(varda
goldstein ) wrote:
> For the 1930s campaign and other modern campaigns for the most part I
> find that some players try to 'rape' the language rules and soon are
> overly skilled in a number of languages.
>
A common problem, to be sure.
> To compensate for this I came up with an idea that, assuming you are
> literate in your base language, will help tone down the language
> problem of GURPS.
>
You'd be well advised to check out Compendium I for a variety of
fixes to GURPS's clearly broken language rules. The solution I
like best is to base languages on half of IQ. I also like
heavily modifying Language Talent, which is way underpriced.
> To be literate in another language of a different alphabet TYPE (I
> don't know the names as of this moment and I'm still researching) it is
> more difficult.
>
> Example 1: Going from English to German is simple. Same alphabet.
>
> Example 2: Going from English, Spanish or German to Russina is more
> difficult. A whole new alphabet!
>
> Solution: Raise the difficulty on these languages one level down on
> the chart.
>
> Russian goes from a M/A to a M/H if you wish to be literate. It says
> in the rules that it is easier to pick up a language verbally than
> writing because you can correct in real time with verbal communication.
>
I think you're dealing with two different things here. It's easier
to pick up a language with a speaking teacher than just with a book,
*BUT* that's not the same as learning the spoken vs. written forms
of a language. We discussed this issue extensively on GURPSnet a few
weeks ago perhaps inconclusively, but my position was this: relative
to the difficulty of learning a language, learning a new script
(unusually difficult scripts like Japanese excepted) is a trivial
task. Just about anyone smart enough to gain access this newsgroup
would be smart enough to learn Greek or Cyrilic script in a day,
or a more different alphabet like Arabic in a week. Having learned
the script, you would, essentially, be entirely "literate" in the
related languages (your ability to read limited only by your
general knowledge of the language). Now, given that a character
point is approximately equal to 200 hours of study, learning a new
script is worth a negligable fraction of a point, not nearly enough
to justify kicking something up a level of difficulty.
Like I said, check out the Compendium. It's full of good stuff
anyway.
varda goldstein
For the 1930s campaign and other modern campaigns for the most part I
find that some players try to 'rape' the language rules and soon are
overly skilled in a number of languages.
To compensate for this I came up with an idea that, assuming you are
literate in your base language, will help tone down the language
problem of GURPS.
To be literate in another language of a different alphabet TYPE (I
don't know the names as of this moment and I'm still researching) it is
more difficult.
Example 1: Going from English to German is simple. Same alphabet.
Example 2: Going from English, Spanish or German to Russina is more
difficult. A whole new alphabet!
Solution: Raise the difficulty on these languages one level down on
the chart.
Russian goes from a M/A to a M/H if you wish to be literate. It says
in the rules that it is easier to pick up a language verbally than
writing because you can correct in real time with verbal communication.
Remember JFK said to the German people "Ich bin ein Berliner" which
litteraly translates to 'I am a pastry' based on how the German
language works...
Well that doesn't really fit in here but it's a neat story ;)
Ed
TBF
O
Feedback welcome.
Scott D. Orr
In <4v0gfo$n...@sjx-ixn5.ix.netcom.com> va...@ix.netcom.com(varda
languages are written in two (or three, or more) different alphabets,
despite the fact that it's exactly the same language: for example,
Serbian is written with the Cyrillic alphabet, while Croatian is
written with the Latin alphabet, but it's actually the same language;
there are many more such examples, especially in Central Asia, where
the Soviet Union imposed the use of the Cyrillic script on local
languages, but the newly independent states have shifted to a Latin
alphabet in recent years.
More to the point, the real similarities between languages have little
to do with the alphabet: despite the fact that the Slavic languages
use two different alphabets and 4 (that I know of) different
orhographies doesn't change the fact that these languages are at least
as close to one another than French is to Spanish, or Italian, and much
close than English is to German. If you want to base language
difficulty off the speaker's native language, what you really need to
do is give a bonus to learning languages from the same language group
(Twilight: 2000 did this, making such languages half cost); any
linguistics textbook ought to have a handy chart adequate for this.
If you're concerned that languages are too easy to learn, try the
alternate language rules in Compendium I -- these are based on
articles that were published in Roleplayer, and are vailable on SJG's
WWW site.
Scott Orr
Bill Seurer
In article <4v0gfo$n...@sjx-ixn5.ix.netcom.com>, va...@ix.netcom.com(varda goldstein ) writes:
|> Remember JFK said to the German people "Ich bin ein Berliner" which
|> litteraly translates to 'I am a pastry' based on how the German
|> language works...
UL (sort of)! That's no more true than if he had been in Hamburg and said
"Ich bin ein Hamburger!" and all the press thought he was a greasy
sandwich.
--
- Bill Seurer ID Tools and Compiler Development IBM Rochester, MN
Business: BillS...@vnet.ibm.com Home: BillS...@aol.com
Bruce Kvam
sd...@ix.netcom.com(Scott D. Orr ) wrote:
>I don't think that's all that realistic: as a matter of fact, many
>languages are written in two (or three, or more) different alphabets,
>despite the fact that it's exactly the same language: for example,
>Serbian is written with the Cyrillic alphabet, while Croatian is
>written with the Latin alphabet, but it's actually the same language;
>there are many more such examples, especially in Central Asia, where
>the Soviet Union imposed the use of the Cyrillic script on local
>languages, but the newly independent states have shifted to a Latin
>alphabet in recent years.
>
>More to the point, the real similarities between languages have little
>to do with the alphabet: despite the fact that the Slavic languages
>use two different alphabets and 4 (that I know of) different
>orhographies doesn't change the fact that these languages are at least
>as close to one another than French is to Spanish, or Italian, and much
>close than English is to German. If you want to base language
>difficulty off the speaker's native language, what you really need to
>do is give a bonus to learning languages from the same language group
>(Twilight: 2000 did this, making such languages half cost); any
>linguistics textbook ought to have a handy chart adequate for this.
>
>If you're concerned that languages are too easy to learn, try the
>alternate language rules in Compendium I -- these are based on
>articles that were published in Roleplayer, and are vailable on SJG's
>WWW site.
One solution is to make reading and writing an alphabet a different
skill from speaking. There's no question that this is the case in real
life, but GURPS makes the simplifying assumption that Literacy bestows
the ability to read and write in any language that you know. In
reality, some writing systems are more difficult to learn than others,
independent of the language that is expressed with them.
For example, speaking Japanese is probably a M/A skill; writing and
reading it is probably a M/VH skill (even if you can speak it).
Speaking Italian is a M/A skill, but reading and writing Italian (if
you speak it) is a M/E skill. Speaking English is probably an M/A
skill, while reading/writing it is a M/A skill (because of the
confusion with spelling, etc.). This is probably too much detail, so
I've proposed something simpler.
Off the top of my head, I'd propose following degrees of difficulty
for the various scripts. Rationale for these is below.
Cyrillic, Latin, Greek (other simple symbol sets): M/E
Hebrew: M/A
Arabic: M/A
Cuneiform: M/A
Hieroglyphics: M/H
Chinese, Korean: M/H
Japanese: M/VH
Default skill level for a literate person in the normal script of
their native language is IQ for M/E and M/A writing systems, IQ-1 for
M/H systems (Chinese) and IQ-2 for M/VH systems (Japanese).
The Cyrillic, Latin and Greek alphabets are straightforward. A small
number of symbols (24 to 32) with upper and lower-case variants. These
are probably easier than M/E to learn, but what the heck. I think
Thai, Georgian, Hindi and Armenian also fall into this category,
though some of these alphabets have upwards of 30 or 40 letters.
Languages that use Latin include all the Western European languages,
Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Croat, Romanian, Albanian, Turkish,
etc.
Languages that use Cyrillic include Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian,
Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Moldavian (recently switched to Latin
because it's basically the same as Romanian), Mongolian, Uzbek, etc.
Greek is used only by Greek, but Coptic uses a similar alphabet.
Arabic and Hebrew don't normally indicate the vowels. This makes
reading those languages more difficult for someone who isn't very
familiar with the language -- you have to figure out the vowels
yourself, from context. Rdng Hbrw cn b vr chllngng, f y s wrds lk
"room," "rim," "ram," "ream," etc.
Arabic also has three or four forms for most letters (initial, medial,
final and stand-alone). To someone used to the Latin or Cyrillic
letters, Arabic looks like a bunch of very similar squiggles and dots.
Languages that use the Arabic alphabet include Arabic (obviously),
Farsi, Urdu, Afghan, and some languages of Africa.
Turkish used to use the Arabic alphabet, but switched to Latin in the
1920's. It was often the case that the same spelling (without vowels)
was used for eight different words. I think Mongolia is trying to
switch back to Arabic from Cyrillic, but they're encountering a lot of
resistance.
The Chinese writing system is obviously harder than Latin. There are
literally thousands of characters. But there is generally just one
symbol associated with each word. And it is actually somewhat
phonetic, according to some linguists. Most Chinese tend to believe it
is completely ideographic, but if you look at the way each character
is constructed (according to this theory), part of the character is
ideographic and part is a phonetic cue. A literate person can often
guess the pronunciation of a word without knowing what it actually is.
Korean is interesting because it was "invented" by a king who was a
trained linguist. Korean used to use a great many Chinese characters,
but recently they have been abandoning the "hanja," as they are
called. Chinese characters still appear with some frequency, however.
The native Korean alphabet consists of a small number of letters
(about 30, I think). It combines up to four of these letters in each
"cell" to form syllables. Thus, Korean appears to be very complex,
with lots of different characters, but in fact the characters are just
combinations of simpler symbols.
Cuneiform, as I recall, is a syllabary as opposed to an alphabet. That
is, each symbol represents a syllable: ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, ra, ri, ru,
re, ro, etc. A major problem with syllabaries is that they have a
difficult time representing sounds that don't exist in their language
(more on this later).
Hieroglyphics were actually both ideographic and phonetic. As research
has progressed over the centuries, it has been found that the
ideographic content of hieroglyphics was pretty small. Mostly each
hieroglyph was used to represent a particular sound. But sometimes
they throw in an ideographic usage, and that makes it hard to know
exactly what it is you're reading, especially if you don't know the
context.
The Japanese writing system is, to put it politely, challenging. It
uses two different but similar syllabaries (katakana and hiragana,
forty-some glyphs each), plus the Chinese characters (kanji, which
number in the thousands). The syllabaries, as mentioned above, consist
of vowels, consonants followed by vowels, and one lone consonant: N.
This makes accurate representation of foreign words in Japanese
impossible. For example, the Japanese spelling of the word "system" is
spelled "shi-su-te-mu" in katakana. Convention usually lets you figure
out the correct pronunciation (they often drop the letter 'u' anyway),
but the average person doesn't pronounce most foreign words right
because of this. For example, NEC is pronounced "en ee she," because
in the Japanese phonetic system it's just impossible to say "see." The
syllables beginning with "s" are sa, shi, su, se and so.
The kanji are the Chinese characters. Many have been modified over the
years to make writing them simpler, so they aren't identical to the
original Chinese characters. However, they're very similar, and a
Japanese person can make out a lot of what's going on in a Chinese
text. The same can be said for a Chinese reading Japanese, though it's
trickier than that. The Japanese mix kana and kanji in their writing.
Katakana are mostly used for foreign words, while hiragana are used
for grammatical particles and native Japanese words that have no
kanji. A Chinese reading Japanese can get a completely wrong view of a
text because they can't read those particles -- which indicate things
such as "not."
Each kanji can have several different pronunciations, usually
including at leaset one Japanese and one Chinese pronunciation (the
"on" and "kun" readings). This is the real challenge in reading
Japanese. A literate person can often figure out the right
pronunciation from context, even if they don't know the word, because
often pairs of kanji were chosen to represent the idea and the sound.
It also goes the other way. There can be as many as 20 different
spellings for the same utterance. This huge number of homonyms is due
to the way Japanese imported Chinese words into their language.
Chinese is tonal -- each vowel can be uttered in several different
ways, rising, falling, flat, etc. When the Japanese adopted Chinese
words, they threw out the tones, resulting in tons of words with
exactly the same pronunciation.
It's usually said that an Italian or German speaker can became
completely literate in a couple of years. An English speaker takes
perhaps 10 years, while a Japanese speaker takes fifteen. And as soon
as the Japanse is no longer exposed to all those kanji, they begin to
forget them. And the crazy thing is, they still know how to say the
word -- they just can't write it down!
Scott D. Orr
In <3214d918...@news.io.com> bk...@visi.com (Bruce Kvam) writes:
>
>Off the top of my head, I'd propose following degrees of difficulty
>for the various scripts. Rationale for these is below.
>
>Cyrillic, Latin, Greek (other simple symbol sets): M/E
>Hebrew: M/A
>Arabic: M/A
>Cuneiform: M/A
>Hieroglyphics: M/H
>Chinese, Korean: M/H
>Japanese: M/VH
>
>Default skill level for a literate person in the normal script of
>their native language is IQ for M/E and M/A writing systems, IQ-1 for
>M/H systems (Chinese) and IQ-2 for M/VH systems (Japanese).
>
language in a formal setting, rather than simply learning it by ear --
it's basically impossible to learn the language without learning the
alphabet, and, as another poster pointed out, true alphabets are VERY
easy to learn (not really worth worrying about).
OTOH, I seem to remember seeing rules learning ideographic languages
at some point -- GURPS Japan maybe?
>The Cyrillic, Latin and Greek alphabets are straightforward. A small
>number of symbols (24 to 32) with upper and lower-case variants. These
>are probably easier than M/E to learn, but what the heck. I think
>Thai, Georgian, Hindi and Armenian also fall into this category,
>though some of these alphabets have upwards of 30 or 40 letters.
>
>Languages that use Latin include all the Western European languages,
>Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Croat, Romanian, Albanian, Turkish,
>etc.
>
>Languages that use Cyrillic include Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian,
>Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Moldavian (recently switched to Latin
>because it's basically the same as Romanian), Mongolian, Uzbek, etc.
>
The dividing line in Europe is religious: Orthodox peoples use
Cyrillic, Catholic peoples (and to the north and west, Protestant ones)
use Latin. It's very much an identity issue in Eastern Europe. (The
exception of course is the Greeks -- though many Cyrillic characters
are close to Greek ones.)
BTW, I believe that the Uzbeks (and quite probably other Central
Asians, but the Uzbeks are the only ones I have actual knowledge of)
wanted to switch to Latin, too -- the big advantage is that it makes
computer keyboards more standard.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
In <4v3c46$b...@dfw-ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> sd...@ix.netcom.com(Scott D.
Orr ) writes:
>>Languages that use Latin include all the Western European languages,
>>Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Croat, Romanian, Albanian, Turkish,
>>etc.
>>
>>Languages that use Cyrillic include Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian,
>>Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Moldavian (recently switched to Latin
>>because it's basically the same as Romanian), Mongolian, Uzbek, etc.
>>
>The dividing line in Europe is religious: Orthodox peoples use
>Cyrillic, Catholic peoples (and to the north and west, Protestant
>ones) use Latin. It's very much an identity issue in Eastern Europe.
>(The exception of course is the Greeks -- though many Cyrillic
>characters are close to Greek ones.)
Oops -- the other exception is Romanian, which is a Romance language --
but more than that, using the Latin script is important to the
Romanians' view of themselves as the descendants of the Romans.
Scott Orr
Berislav Lopac
Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> I don't think that's all that realistic: as a matter of fact, many
> languages are written in two (or three, or more) different alphabets,
> despite the fact that it's exactly the same language: for example,
> Serbian is written with the Cyrillic alphabet, while Croatian is
> written with the Latin alphabet, but it's actually the same language;
Sorry, I don't want to be rude, but you'd have to check the facts when
you state something like that. Croatian and Serbian are two *different*,
although similar languages - not unlike the Scandinavian languages like
Swedish and Norwegian. And this is not result of the recent war, but it
came down through centuries: the commies in former Yugoslavia wanted to
"unite" all its peoples by drowning them in one artificial, Yugoslavian
nation, among other things inventing a hybrid Croato-Serbian (or
Serbo-Croatian, whatever) language. In fact, a Croat and a Serb would
have problems communicating if each talked in his own native tongue.
On the other hand, you got the point: one language can be easily written
in various alphabets. Besides Croatian and Serbian, which can both use
either Latin or Cyrillic alphabet (although Croats despise the latter,
most of them had to learn it in school under the commies), and even the
medieval glagolic script (I don't know the English word), all the Asian
languages, from Arabian to Japanese, use both the original alphabets and
the Latin transcription.
Berislav.
David Conner
Speaking from experience, I'd agree that learning the Cyrillic alphabet is
basically pretty trivial, certainly not enough to make Russian a M/H
skill. I would suspect that a language like Cantonese or Japanese would
be different, but I've never attempted to study them, so I'm not certain.
Personally, I think the optional rules on "accents" in the Compendium work
pretty nicely. IMO, for game reasons, a slightly less-realistic approach
to language is good in most circumstances. But the "speaking like a
native with half a point" thing is a bit much. I think the Compendium
rules solve that problem nicely without over-complicating things.
Arne Jamtgaard
Bill Seurer wrote:
> (varda goldstein ) writes:
> |> Remember JFK said to the German people "Ich bin ein Berliner" which
> |> litteraly translates to 'I am a pastry' based on how the German
> |> language works...
> UL (sort of)! That's no more true than if he had been in Hamburg and said
> "Ich bin ein Hamburger!" and all the press thought he was a greasy
> sandwich.
The explanation that always made sense to me was that this incident
showed
the difference between:
"I am Danish"
and
"I am a danish"
If he had said "Ich bin Berliner!" he would have gotten it right...
Arne
a little fish in a big pond
There are several different language rules for GURPS scattered about
the 'Net, and I thought I'd add mine to the growing cacophany. I have
them up at
http://www.GeoCities.com/TimesSquare/6918
along with some other rules for GURPS. Comments of any sort gleefully
accepted.
a little fish in a big pond (Thomas Weigel)
Scott D. Orr
In <4vbn5q$6...@bagan.srce.hr> blo...@jagor.srce.hr (Berislav Lopac)
writes:
>Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>> I don't think that's all that realistic: as a matter of fact, many
>> languages are written in two (or three, or more) different
>> alphabets, despite the fact that it's exactly the same language:
>> for example, Serbian is written with the Cyrillic alphabet, while
>> Croatian is written with the Latin alphabet, but it's actually the
>> same language;
>
>Sorry, I don't want to be rude, but you'd have to check the facts when
>you state something like that. Croatian and Serbian are two
>*different*, although similar languages - not unlike the Scandinavian
>languages like Swedish and Norwegian.
Okay, I'm not going to get into an emotionally-charged flame-war on
this subject, but since you wants facts, here are some facts:
Most of the following is drawn from Ivo Banac's _The_National_Question_
_in_Yugoslavia_: _Origins_, _History_, _and_Politics_. Professor
Banac, for the record, is a Croat, and a patriotic one at that, though
I'm told that his feelings about the present dictatorial government
of Franjo Tudjman are rather negative.
In reality, there are several different dialects of both "Croatian"
and "Serbian"; this was particularly true in the 19th century, when
the languages in the area were standardized, but it's still somewhat
true today. In point of fact, several of the dialects spoken by
"Croatians" are closer the the language spoken by most "Serbians",
and vice versa -- the original divide between the Serbians and Croats
was based on religion, not language, although efforts have since been
made to make the language divide fit the (religiously based) ethnic
divide. Note also that within a particular region all people
originally spoke a similar dialect, regardless of religious
identification (though of course the religious mix among regions varies
greatly, and hence so does the usage of particular dialects by
particular ethnic groups). Slovenian is somewhat distant from both
Serbian and Croatian.
However, all of the Serbo-Croatian dialects are _extremely_ close to
one another; indeed, all of the Slavic languages, throughout Eastern
Europe, are quite close to one another -- much closer than the Western
European languages (with the possible exception of Spanish and
Italian). This closeness is due to the widespread influence of Old
Church Slavonic, the original liturgical language of all Orthodox
peoples, and in fact at one time it was even proposed that only a
single Slavic language should be standardized from all of the Slavic
dialects.
The dialects native to the former Yugoslavua are distinguished
on two different dimensions, each of which has three different
variations.
The first dimension is based on the word that speakers use for "what".
The varations are "ca" (cha), "kaj" (kie), and "sto" (shto).
The cakavian dialect is limited to Illyria and the Dalmation coast, but
had a profound role in Croat culture: the early body of Croat
literature was dominated by this dialect.
Kajkavian is limited to northwest Croatia, in the area around the
modern Croat capital of Zagreb; a considerable amount of literature
also exists in this dialect.
Most of the Slavic dialects in the area, however, are stokavian,
including all of Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia, and parts of
central, eastern, and southern Croatia. For this reason, when
a single language (called "Serbo-Croatian") was standardized
for Yugoslavia after WWI (before the "commies" came along),
the stokavian dialect from the Belgrade area, which had been
standardized as the Serb literary language, was used as the
primary basis of Serbo-Croatian.
The stovakian dialect is further divided along a second dimension,
based on the "reflexes" of Old Slavonic character called "jat'"
(that is, in each dialect, when certain words are changed in certain
ways different things happen to way they're pronounced and spelled).
These sub-dialects are ijekavian, ikavian, and ekavian. The dialects
of Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzogovinia are ijekavian, those of western
Bosnia and central Croatian are ikavian, and those of Serbia are
primarily ekavian. The kajkavian and many of the cakavian dialacts
are also ekavian (as are Slovenian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian),
meaning that on thise dimension the some of the Croats are closer to
the Serbs that to other Croats, while the Montenegrins are closer
to the Bosnians. The ekavian stokavian dialect of the Belgrade
(Beograd) are is the basis of modern "Serbo-Croatian" (the fact that
this dialect shared the ekavian reflec with cakavian and kajkavian
facilitated this choice), though Croats have traditionally used the
Latin alphabet for this language, while Serbs have used the Cyrillic
alphabet.
Of course, I'm sure that the Croats have recently re-incorporated
cakavian and possibly kajkavian elements into "Croatian" in order
to further differentiate themselves from the Serbs and Bosnian Muslims,
but I have no idea what sorts of changes have been made.
Scott Orr
Berislav Lopac
Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> In <4vbn5q$6...@bagan.srce.hr> blo...@jagor.srce.hr (Berislav Lopac)
> writes:
> >
> >Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I don't think that's all that realistic: as a matter of fact, many
> >> languages are written in two (or three, or more) different
> >> alphabets, despite the fact that it's exactly the same language:
> >> for example, Serbian is written with the Cyrillic alphabet, while
> >> Croatian is written with the Latin alphabet, but it's actually the
> >> same language;
> >
> >Sorry, I don't want to be rude, but you'd have to check the facts when
> >you state something like that. Croatian and Serbian are two
> >*different*, although similar languages - not unlike the Scandinavian
> >languages like Swedish and Norwegian.
>
> Okay, I'm not going to get into an emotionally-charged flame-war on
> this subject, but since you wants facts, here are some facts:
>
> Most of the following is drawn from Ivo Banac's _The_National_Question_
> _in_Yugoslavia_: _Origins_, _History_, _and_Politics_. Professor
> Banac, for the record, is a Croat, and a patriotic one at that, though
> I'm told that his feelings about the present dictatorial government
> of Franjo Tudjman are rather negative.
Just for the record: this descroption applies for me too (although I'm
not a professor.
I am extremely glad that you are so imformed about my country, since you
are correct in most points. But let's finish this discussion (after all,
this is a rec.games, not an alt.chauvinism group).
I had no intention to get into an emotionally-charged flame-war on this
subject, but I wanted to emphasise a simple fact: no matter what reason,
but Croats and Serbs *are* two different peoples, who live in different
countries and speak *mostly* different languages. I am deffinitely *not*
a nationalist (during the war I had a half-Serbian girlfriend), but we
are here simply somewhat paranoid about those who sound like they would
lke to put us back into the same country (I'm not saying that you do).
Well, I hope that you will agree with me to put an end to this
discussion.
Berislav
--
Visit my Web page: http://jagor.srce.hr/~blopac/