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Do alphabets need to be so complicated? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 97 of 115 24 October 2010 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Mandarin will become a must for well-educated East Asians. For the rest of the world, not so much.
English is extremely far from being "everyone's language". For example, your average person on the street in East Asia can still not communicate in English. Don't be fooled by all the statistics of hundreds of millions of Chinese learning English. It's true that they are trying to learn English, but only a fraction of them reach proficiency in the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5182 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 98 of 115 24 October 2010 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The people who travel between China and the West for business should know both languages. It doesn't make much sense for everyone else to know both unless they have the desire to learn and a lot of time. 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 99 of 115 25 October 2010 at 11:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
And that's a benefit of different scripts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 100 of 115 25 October 2010 at 1:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yup, as I said, Chinese stayed pictographic because they wrote on scrolls and space was at a premium. Mediterranean languages went alphabetical because of the invention of the codex, so space wasn't as important. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7224 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 101 of 115 25 October 2010 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Just so we're clear, the Greek and Roman alphabets predate the invention of the codex by many, many centuries. Furthermore the Chinese have been using books or book-like things for a really long time now as well. Actually, since the West was using papyrus (Expensive to import and useless for storage in damp climates.) and mammal-skins (Expensive and limited in potential supply) while the Chinese used cheap and relatively easy to produce paper (Or prior to that, bamboo strips) for the bulk of their writing, I would argue that space was at even more of a premium for those Mediterranean languages and their long-winded alphabets. Since I'm already here, I might as well say that I suspect the reason why the Chinese writing system is as complicated as it is, is because it's still used by the Chinese. Nothing more, nothing less. The Latin alphabet is the miracle of simplicity that it is (Regardless of English's own absurd orthography) because it's an adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation of a writing system every bit as complicated as Chinese (In this case, Ancient Egyptian). Over the process of adapting the structures of writing to new, different languages the writing systems produced became simpler and simpler. Meanwhile, while the Chinese language both written and spoken has changed enormously since their own invention of writing, there's never been a clean break; no population replacement, no extended dark ages that saw people forgetting how to read and write, no conquest by another group with enough cultural clout to dominate (Or even resist being dominated by) the native Chinese culture, etc etc. Just millennium after millennium of Chinese people writing Chinese. Practical reasons like space have nothing to do with it, and impractical reasons like keeping people ignorant even less. Any sort of cost/benefit analysis at all is missing the point; it's more about momentum than anything else. (I think momentum is the right word, but I've never been great with the sciences...Objects in motion tending to stay in motion unless operated on by a sufficient force? Or am I making that up? I checked Wikipedia but there were formulae and my eyes started glossing over) 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 102 of 115 25 October 2010 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think the word you're looking for is 'inertia'. Good analysis, by the way. I agree. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7224 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 103 of 115 26 October 2010 at 4:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thank you, yes, inertia's exactly the concept I was looking for. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5174 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 104 of 115 26 October 2010 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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You remind me of how you can apply physical and chemical principles even to complex things like large groups of people. There is one I particularly like, Le Chatelier's Principle which states that a system acts so as to minimize the effects of a change - compress a gas and it soon gets hard to decrease the volume further. To apply this to groups of people and languages, think of the invasion of a country: at first the invaders' culture and language dominate, then the original language usually makes a come-back in an altered form, for example Norman French vs. English. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as the almost complete supplanting of the Celtic languages in the West of Europe by Latin, but even here some words have survived. I wonder if some genius will sometime establish explanations for linguistic change in scientific terms. Grimm's law and the like are not explanations,of course, they are purely descriptive albeit useful.
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