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The end of Hanzi/Kanji?

  Tags: Hanzi | Kanji | Writing System
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66 messages over 9 pages: 1 2 35 6 7 ... 4 ... 8 9 Next >>
chucknorrisman
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 Message 25 of 66
03 November 2010 at 2:38pm | IP Logged 
furrykef wrote:
Incidentally, I have a Korean aunt who refers to learning Korean hanja as "learning Chinese", leading her to make silly statements such as that all Korean students must learn how to write Chinese. It baffles me...

Those kinds of sentiments are fading away these days, though. You would be surprised at how much Chinese characters were used back in the days (by that I mean 70s and 80s), and how little is used nowadays.

Edited by chucknorrisman on 03 November 2010 at 5:15pm

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Romanist
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 Message 26 of 66
04 November 2010 at 12:12pm | IP Logged 
I can't see Japanese and Chinese writing systems falling out of use any time soon. But as far as we Westerners are concerned, I think it will pose less of a problem in future, because people will be doing more and more of their reading on electronic platforms like an iPad, and within a few years these will probably be able to convert entire texts to and from Romanized form with just a single click..
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OneEye
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 Message 27 of 66
04 November 2010 at 2:29pm | IP Logged 
Romanist wrote:
people will be doing more and more of their reading on electronic platforms like an iPad, and within a few years these will probably be able to convert entire texts to and from Romanized form with just a single click..


The thought of having to read a text in pinyin gives me headaches. It would be unreadable. Romanized Chinese just doesn't work. It's that simple. Japanese, maybe; I'm not familiar enough with it to say.
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Huliganov
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 Message 28 of 66
04 November 2010 at 8:15pm | IP Logged 
stelingo wrote:
It seems that forgetting how to write Hanzi/Kanji is no longer a problem which faces the foreign learner. 'Character amnesia' is a growing problem in China and Japan among young people, now used to using alphabet based input systems on mobiles and computers. There is even a suggestion this could be the beginning of the end for Chinese characters.

Wired youth forget how to write in China and Japan


Are you kidding? They are even planning which English word will be written in which hanzi character!
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chucknorrisman
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 Message 29 of 66
04 November 2010 at 10:23pm | IP Logged 
I personally think that if Japanese will continue to borrow English words instead of making its own, it would be nice to see kanjis newly made for those words.

Edited by chucknorrisman on 04 November 2010 at 10:23pm

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furrykef
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 Message 30 of 66
06 November 2010 at 5:19pm | IP Logged 
OneEye wrote:
Romanized Chinese just doesn't work. It's that simple.

If you can understand it spoken, why couldn't you understand it written? The only reason you think it doesn't work is you're not used to it. Unless you can demonstrate in some way that Romanized Chinese does not accurately transcribe the details of spoken Chinese, I'm simply not going to believe otherwise.

chucknorrisman wrote:
I personally think that if Japanese will continue to borrow English words instead of making its own, it would be nice to see kanjis newly made for those words.

And I think it would be very much not nice to see it. You'll either end up with ateji, which pointlessly complicates things, or you'll have to devise an entirely new system so that there is a reasonable correlation between the English word and the new character.


Edited by furrykef on 06 November 2010 at 5:19pm

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GREGORG4000
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 Message 31 of 66
06 November 2010 at 5:45pm | IP Logged 
chucknorrisman wrote:
I personally think that if Japanese will continue to borrow English words instead of making its own, it would be nice to see kanjis newly made for those words.

I think they should be adapted to existing characters, so there'd be a new type of reading and eventually we would be able to write English using a mixed script. Really, that would be awesome.

Edited by GREGORG4000 on 06 November 2010 at 5:45pm

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OneEye
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 Message 32 of 66
06 November 2010 at 6:36pm | IP Logged 
furrykef wrote:
OneEye wrote:
Romanized Chinese just doesn't work. It's that simple.

If you can understand it spoken, why couldn't you understand it written? The only reason you think it
doesn't work is you're not used to it. Unless you can demonstrate in some way that Romanized Chinese
does not accurately transcribe the details of spoken Chinese, I'm simply not going to believe
otherwise.


It isn't that simple. You're assuming that the purpose of written language is simply to record spoken
language. That works when you're talking about alphabetic languages but not with Chinese. Written
Chinese, especially in higher registers, uses a lot of classical expressions and turns of phrase that simply
wouldn't make sense in pinyin. Written Chinese and spoken Chinese are two different beasts, to a much
greater extent that in most other languages. So again, it just wouldn't work without significantly altering the
way the language is written (beyond the superficial level of the script).

Edited by OneEye on 06 November 2010 at 6:38pm



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