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Do alphabets need to be so complicated? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 89 of 115 23 October 2010 at 8:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Hooray for hairless apes! And also us no-so-hairless ones.
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| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5174 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 90 of 115 23 October 2010 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, I think a lot of your fascinating culture would be much more difficult to discern without the complications of the Chinese writing system. It somewhat similar with English: without the bizarre spellings of many of our words - which it would be logical to simplify - there would be a great number of links to the past and our involvement (for good or bad!) with other nations lost. The "conservative" streak in me wants to maintain all the nuances and subtleties of the language, although I frequently find it irritating that I have to check on the spelling or meaning of a word because it is not necessarily what I would logically expect. Edited by Old Chemist on 23 October 2010 at 12:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 91 of 115 24 October 2010 at 11:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I have just checked the Harry Potter on online bookshop.
English version = 300 pages Chinese version = less than 200 Chinese writting is much more concise. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 92 of 115 24 October 2010 at 11:10am | IP Logged | ||
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on the other had... Japanese one over 400 pages.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 93 of 115 24 October 2010 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
Did I not already mention that most European peasants of bygone times were illiterate? Literacy in many parts of Europe can be accredited to (ironically) religion. When you talk about the people not being able to read Latin bibles, it's important to remember that most people couldn't read their vernacular either. It was the protestant movement that first established public education in many countries. In Scotland in particular, there was a conscious effort to teach people to read the Bible so that there would be no middlemen between individuals and God. This meant that Scotland had good provision of primary education in the late 1600s and early 1700s. By contrast, England didn't have universal provision until the law of 1870 was enacted to enforce it (and it took a long time for the full provision to be made available after this), which is pretty much contemporary with the Far Eastern examples you mention. So again, there is no evidence that eastern pictographs have ever been used to obscure information any more than any other writing system. And as I think I've already said, people far more knowledgeable than me have said that alphabets didn't exist until the invention of the "codex" (books, to all intents and purposes) which meant the amount of space taken up by a word was no longer an issue. As the Chinese continued to use scrolls, space was still at a premium, and the cost of adopting an alphabetic system was simply too high. There is no justification for paranoia here -- the whole thing has already been discussed to death by the experts, and it's a simple matter of economy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Qinshi Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5754 days ago 115 posts - 183 votes Speaks: Vietnamese*, English Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 94 of 115 24 October 2010 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | ||
You do realise that Chinese uses characters? Characters are more bunched up together. Compare, for example: Today is my friend's birthday. vs 今天是我朋友的生日。 vs Hôm nay là [ngày] sinh nhật của bạn tôi Edited by Qinshi on 24 October 2010 at 4:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5182 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 95 of 115 24 October 2010 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have heard and read so much about how we should learn Mandarin and how it will be an important language of the future. Since it requires a lot of time to master I would be hesitant to study it until I see how these claims play out. If there is one thing the us has taught me it is never blindly follow the advice of the media. The claims about Mandarin make sense but it's still speculation.
After reading about the complexities of the language I have decided that it might be asking too much to expect a very large number of Western speakers to learn it. I think that many Westerners will learn it but it won't be like the English phenomenon. I don't think that everyone in China should have to learn English either. We are living in an age in which the mysteries of foreign cultures are being unravelled and discussed in English; a language that no longer has any mystery to a staggering number of people in the world. English is everyone's language these days and that is sometimes disheartening in some ways. There is probably some value in not allowing a language to become a global language because it tends to lose some of its culture in the process. That is just my opinion on the matter. Edited by fireflies on 24 October 2010 at 5:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 96 of 115 24 October 2010 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||
Japanese novels have much smaller pages. Nothing to do with Japanese writing being less concise. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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