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The end of Hanzi/Kanji? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6473 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 41 of 66 15 November 2010 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Who says I expect anything? This isn't some conference on deciding Chinese policy. We're just being hypothetical here. For one thing, people in China (generally) don't speak English or Swahili, but many do speak Mandarin (and those who don't are supposed to do it anyway), so I don't understand your point. For another thing, this isn't really relevant. Somebody said Mandarin in pinyin is unreadable, and I was making a counterargument. The political impossibility of switching to pinyin doesn't even enter into it.
Who said anything about a monotone? Pinyin has tone markers. What sort of non-vocal cues might be necessary? I doubt it's necessary to wave your hands around or something to be understood in Mandarin.
No, it wasn't. How many written languages significantly differ from the spoken ones? Not very many. English doesn't, Spanish doesn't, Italian doesn't, etc. Why does Mandarin have to be different? Edited by furrykef on 15 November 2010 at 3:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6851 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 42 of 66 15 November 2010 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think "because it is" is the best answer here. I don't really see the point in suggesting it should be any other way.
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| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6473 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 43 of 66 16 November 2010 at 1:13am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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But it isn't. There is no reason (beyond politics and culture) why pinyin is a poor orthography for Mandarin Chinese.
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| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 44 of 66 16 November 2010 at 2:16am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I agree with you, but I admit to never having seen such a homonymphobic language written in a simplified script. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6851 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 45 of 66 16 November 2010 at 5:12am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm not really following you here. Your question was why Mandarin has to be different from other languages, and my answer was that it just is. And then you counter with "but it isn't?" You're contradicting yourself. The reason pinyin is a poor choice for written Chinese has already been discussed. For Mandarin, yes, it would work. But people don't write Mandarin, they write Chinese. The written language may be based on Mandarin, but it isn't the same. Mandarin is a spoken language. Again, you're assuming that the purpose of writing is to record speech. Were that the case, pinyin would be a viable way to write Chinese. But that isn't the case, especially with Chinese. I don't feel like repeating myself in the same thread, so please go back and read what I've written earlier if you're unclear of the reasons. Also, Rethinking Writing by Roy Harris may be a book worth finding if you're really interested. He outlines why the conventional Western view of writing (namely, that it is a substitute for, and thus inferior to speech) is flawed. At this point I feel like we're going in circles. I've outlined the reasons that pinyin couldn't currently be used for written Chinese without extensive language reform, and rather than putting forth any argument you've simply ignored what I've said and stated that there's "no reason (beyond politics and culture) why pinyin is a poor orthography for Mandarin Chinese." You've completely avoided the arguments that I've presented. Besides that, to a large extent, language IS culture (in the words of my old anthropology professor) in that the two are largely inseparable, and that the culture is what has shaped the language to be what it is today (and thus makes pinyin an unacceptable choice of orthography). You've missed the root of the issue here. The language isn't what it is purely due to chance; it has been shaped over millennia by the culture that has used it, and so the culture is an inseparable part of the language. It is that culture which insists on using classical phrases and allusions in writing, and which insists on terse phrasing in writing which would be unintelligible in speech, and indeed which insists on using Chinese characters to write their language because it happens to be the best orthography for the job. You can't simply throw the culture out with a parenthetical phrase in order to enforce an arbitrary, imperialistic reform. 3 persons have 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 46 of 66 16 November 2010 at 6:16am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm sorry for being unclear. The paragraph I wrote above was intended to be all about Japanese. The only part that was meant to be about Korean is the sentence where I said that Koreans were able to get rid of hanja, so Japanese could theoretically do the same. As I hope is clear from my edits above, Japanese speakers overwhelmingly view kanji as a boon and a necessity to their language, which is why they will not follow the Korean example in practice (at least, they are headed nowhere near that direction now). Edited by Lucky Charms on 16 November 2010 at 6:21am 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 47 of 66 16 November 2010 at 6:25am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You could just as well say there is no reason (beyond politics and culture) why the Chinese shouldn't all just give up their respective languages and speak English ;) Edited by Lucky Charms on 16 November 2010 at 6:26am 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 48 of 66 16 November 2010 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
And that's technically true, but that has nothing to do with anything discussed in the thread. Again, I was making my argument because of this post:
And my response was the only reason you would find pinyin unreadable is you're not used to it. That's all I'm trying to argue here. (I should add that nobody has yet actually addressed this argument, except for the (in my opinion) irrelevant point that Written Chinese is written differently from Spoken Mandarin.) People sometimes seem to act like Chinese is some ultra-exotic language that simply cannot be written properly with anything but characters, and I'm simply calling BS on that idea. Edited by furrykef on 16 November 2010 at 4:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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