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The end of Hanzi/Kanji? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes  Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 33 of 66 06 November 2010 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
I wasn't talking about atejis or a new system. I was thinking about making new characters. For example, instead of writing アニメ for "anime", a new kanji that will just take up one spot (and look nicer) will be invented instead, from semantic or phonetic compounds. Sort of like what's talked about here: http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/mojicakes.html Edited by chucknorrisman on 06 November 2010 at 11:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6950 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 34 of 66 08 November 2010 at 4:06am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't think that would be practical for foreign loanwords in Japanese. One reason is that since loanwords like アニメ are multisyllabic, how can one single character contain all the necessary phonetic components? The only way to reflect the pronunciation would be to split it up into 3 characters (e.g. ア could be something like 亜 for the pronunciation with a 目 radical or something related to movement for the semantic aspect, and so on for 二 and メ). Obviously this would result in something very unwieldy, and アニメ is much simpler both to write and read. On the other hand, creating a single kanji that makes clear the meaning (e.g. combining some radicals that evoke drawing, movement, and watching) would be easy to understand semantically but the pronunciation wouldn't be clear. As to the original topic, I largely agree with Ari's post. He writes that foreign loanwords in Chinese are often written with a decided-upon characters, and that this might be the beginnings of an alphabet. In fact, this is exactly how Japanese kana (both hiragana and katakana) came about (though at different times, by different people, and usually based on different ateji, which is why most of them are different between the two sets). The same ateji began to be generally used to express non-Chinese words (native Japanese words, as it so happened in this case), then a shorthand developed for these ateji, which is how we got the kana. The kana for アニメ are derived from the ateji 阿仁女, according to this chart. And actually, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned bopomofo, a Chinese alphabet which has developed the same way (as shorthand for certain Chinese characters: see here). So I guess you can say that it's already happened as Ari predicted. ;) Also, I read on another thread that these bopomofo are used in Taiwanese TV to transcribe some non-Mandarin Taiwanese words. You can see in the Wikipedia article that these are also used like furigana in Japanese, to show the pronunciation to children who are learning hanzi, and also for computerized hanzi input. So the development of bopomofo looks identical to the development of kana in Japanese. Who knows if, given time, they'll catch on to the extent of Japanese kana in the distant future? But it is certain that it won't happen anytime soon, if at all. In fact, the fact that a Chinese alphabet does exist, but is almost exclusively used as an intermediary stepping-stone to the hanzi shows in itself that there is something lacking about an alphabet system in the eyes of the natives. If that weren't the case, then surely bopomofo or pinyin would be a lot more heartily embraced and widely used, since the human tendency is generally toward conserving effort wherever possible? It doesn't seem that 'tradition' and 'nationalism' alone would be enough to overcome human laziness (or desire for efficiency, whichever way you want to look at it). There must be something about the hanzi intrinsically connected to the language that makes it impossible to do away with them, which Westerners without a high proficiency in a Chinese language don't understand. In fact, I suspect this might be the case, judging from the fact that not one of the native speakers or high-level Mandarin learners have argued that hanzi will die out or are unnecessary. As for kanji in Japan, the Korean example shows that they aren't strictly necessary for the language, so the future of kanji depends on whether they are viewed by native speakers as a boon or a nuisance to the language. In my experience, the answer is overwhelmingly the former. The number of kanji in general use may go up or down in the coming years (the consensus in this thread seems to be that recognition is higher than ever, but handwriting ability is getting worse), but they are here to stay at least for the foreseeable future. This isn't even a topic of debate in Japan, as others in this thread have mentioned. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 35 of 66 08 November 2010 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
I see. But then aren't most characters unmatched phonetically if they go by the native Japanese readings, since the phonetic compounds were based on the Chinese pronunciations?
Which Koreans are you talking to? The vast majority I know, the younger people, can't recognize the characters, either. The older can recognize pretty well, but aren't that great at writing them. The consensus about it from what I've seen is that the Chinese characters must go away from Korean. There are those who state that for the time being, Koreans should learn them because Korean has too many Chinese words as of now to function without the characters, but I don't know anyone who considers it a boon rather than an undesirable necessity. I personally think they may go away in about two decades, but we'll see about that. As for the Japanese, do they consider the characters a boon or a necessity? I asked it in page 2 and never got answered. Edited by chucknorrisman on 09 November 2010 at 5:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6473 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 36 of 66 15 November 2010 at 5:13am | IP Logged | |||||
So... why not simply write it the way it is spoken, the way almost every other language does it? :P 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5522 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 37 of 66 15 November 2010 at 10:25am | IP Logged | |||||
Or why not just write in English or Swahili? Seriously, do you expect them to start writing in a completetly different way, just to be able to do away with their characters? Written Chinese has already gone through a revolution of sorts, instead of writing in Classical Chinese as they did up until very recently, it is nowadays closer to the spoken language. Still, when you write you tend to use a larger vocabulary, with more homophones. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5522 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 38 of 66 15 November 2010 at 10:29am | IP Logged | |||||
No problem at all, kun-readings of almost all characters are already multisyllabic. Why do you think that it would be harder to say that character X is to be read "anime" than to say that character 承(る) uketamawa(ru)? If you're still not convinced, there are already a few examples of non-chinese loanwords written with single kanjis. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5522 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 39 of 66 15 November 2010 at 10:32am | IP Logged | |||||
What you mean is this: "if you can understand it spoken in a completely monotone voice and without the aid of any other non-vocal cues, you can understand it in pinyin", which is probably true. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 40 of 66 15 November 2010 at 11:16am | IP Logged | |||||
That ... was a joke, wasn't it? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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