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The efficiency of Chinese characters | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 25 of 81 02 September 2011 at 3:45am | IP Logged | |||||
Well then you're entire quotation of that nit-picking of selected Chinese terms has absolutely ZERO relevance to the discussion at hand, because whether you write it "rén rén" or "人人", you're still using the word for "man" twice to convey the meaning of "everybody" (again, this is absolutely NO different from the reduplication of Malay/Indonesian or the idiomatic framing of French). And whether you write "dòngwù" or "动物", you're still expressing an animal as a "moving thing" — Chinese characters have NOTHING to do with this lexical issue. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| MarcoLeal Groupie Portugal Joined 4834 days ago 58 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 26 of 81 02 September 2011 at 1:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@ cathrynm
Like you said, old scripts get lost all the time but that's because countries/institutions don't take care of their heritage. Wikipedia has the following to say about the history of the Vietnamese alphabet: "Scholars like Pamela A. Pears who study the effect of French Colonialism on native peoples assert that the French, by imposing Roman alphabet on the Vietnamese, cut the Vietnamese off from their traditional literature, rendering them unable to read it." However, they also claim: "Because the period of education necessary to gain initial literacy is considerably less for the largely phonetic Latin-based script compared to the several years necessary to master the full range of Chinese characters, the adoption of the Vietnamese alphabet also facilitated widespread literacy among Vietnamese speakers—whereas a majority of Vietnamese in Vietnam could not read or write prior to the 20th century, the population is now almost universally literate." With Hangeul, same story. "In explaining the need for the new script, King Sejong explained that the Korean language was fundamentally different from Chinese; using Chinese characters (known as hanja) to write was so difficult for the common people that only privileged aristocrats (yangban), usually male, could read and write fluently. The majority of Koreans were effectively illiterate before the invention of Hangul. Hangul was designed so that even a commoner could learn to read and write; the Haerye says "A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days." Hangul faced opposition by the literary elite, such as Choe Manri and other Korean Confucian scholars in the 1440s, who believed hanja to be the only legitimate writing system, and perhaps saw it as a threat to their status.[6] However, it entered popular culture as Sejong had intended, being used especially by women and writers of popular fiction. It was effective enough at disseminating information among the uneducated that Yeonsangun, the paranoid tenth king, forbade the study or use of Hangul and banned Hangul documents in 1504, and King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of Eonmun (언문청 諺文廳, governmental institution related to Hangul research) in 1506." I do realize that this no longer applies to modern China or Japan where high literacy rates have been achieved regardless of the effort you have to put in learning characters (even though I could argue that this had a lot to do with the fact that children in these countries do spend much more time at school than elsewhere). I'm just quoting these articles to show you that drastic changes don't cause all the "pain and chaos" you claim they do. Sure, the few rich people that could afford to be educated in the old writing system (and the even fewer among them that bothered to read those ancient texts) lost the ability to do so but now there's widespread literacy. Is this really a dilemma? @ starrye Well if they solve the problem of homophones in speech that easily then they aren't a problem in writing either. There's also a context in writing and, as far as I know ,an alphabet (or syllabary, for that matter) can mark pitch accent. They have their own custom made kana that represent all the syllables in Japanese, all they had to do was slowly phases the kanji out. So let me see if I got this right. They have a Japanese-made alternative (at least if changed to mark pitch accent) to kanji (a writing system based on a foreign one, even if customized) that the entire population can use and that requires them to learn a fraction of the amount of symbols. It's not like they even had to replace anything when it comes to education. All they had to do was simply drop the unnecessary load. It didn't even have to happen at once. It could be gradual. Yet they don't. How can this be understood as anything other than being stubborn? A writing system isn't and can't be a ceremonial robe. Like I've repeated time and time again in this topic, it's an everyday life tool for storage and dissemination of information. It shouldn't be cumbersome. I hear you saying it already, "But it's their culture!". Again, what about the Vietnamese and the Korean? Are their cultures so incredibly different that it would be OK for them to do that but not for Japanese? I have a hard time believing that. Of course, you could now say, does it really matter what the reason is? The point is they didn't change. To which I have to reply, yes it does matter. It matters because when they refuse to change just because they're stubborn, then citing their example is irrelevant in a debate in which the topic of discussion is efficiency. @nway If you read my first post again you'll understand that I posted that exchange just because the Chinese native speaker claimed that: "Once you have learned the five selected characters, it then becomes an absolute breeze to learn the following words formed with two of the selected five characters:" Implying characters are helpful in the acquisition of new vocabulary (which you agree has everything to do with efficiency, don't you?) but, because I don't agree that, at least, those particular examples back his claim, I quoted another poster that had briefly pointed out why. Unlike what you seem to have understood, the point was never to say that Latin alphabet would do a better job. Only to disprove that Chinese characters do. The point was never to discuss those examples in detail but you decided to do it and claimed characters were useful in that situation (thus presenting a counter-argument to my thesis). Because of that, I had to explain in more detail that I don't think they do. How is this unrelated to the topic of efficiency? Edited by MarcoLeal on 02 September 2011 at 1:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 27 of 81 02 September 2011 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
I am not certain that there ever were firm plans to go over to a Roman alphabet, only that during the 1950s and 1960s the government was encouraging familiarity with Roman letters, perhaps as a first step to introducing an alphabet. And especially during the Cultural Revolution, there was certainly a will to break with China's cultural past. That could also have included ending the use of characters and going over to an alphabet. In the end, though, perhaps it was just seen as a change too far. http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/3604/chinesepropaganda23.jp g I googled "Chinese propaganda posters", but most images that came up just had characters. It took a bit of searching to find one with Roman script. It appears to date from the 1950s which is when I think there was a fairly brief vogue for using Latin script. Edited by William Camden on 02 September 2011 at 2:24pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7223 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 28 of 81 02 September 2011 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Says who? I'm the first one to agree that the Chinese writing system isn't the most efficient, and I can't stand the people who insist that it's somehow particularly well-suited to the Chinese language as I've argued against in other threads, but I can't agree with what you're saying. Who are you to decide what a writing system can and can't be? I'm about as laid-back as a person can be without actually being in a coma and even I find myself a little bit offended by the way you're projecting your personal values over the rest of the world. A writing system can absolutely be a "ceremonial robe" as you call it; Chinese is completely functional as an everyday tool for the storage and dissemination of information, and has been such for more than 3000 years. If you're personally offended that most people don't find Chinese characters being somewhat cumbersome enough of a reason to abandon them then that's just too bad, but you need to chill. There's more involved than people who disagree with your views just being "stubborn"...Like, oh, I don't know, maybe they like their writing system, warts and all? 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5094 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 29 of 81 02 September 2011 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, in writing they still are- the reason being that Japanese is written with no spaces. But if you are asking whether or not it's possible to write Japanese with strictly an alphabet or syllabary only, it is. It can be written with the roman alphabet (romaji). It can also be completely written in kana alone (children's books are written this way), though it would probably need to be adjusted a bit to include spaces. But this is a different issue from the question of whether or not they *ought* to write their language this way. Why should they? With such a high literacy rate as it is, is there a real cost-benefit to doing so? I appreciate what you're saying, and I can see your prescriptive. But I feel your argument rests on the premise that kanji are really that difficult and unwieldy to learn (assuming people have access to education to teach them to read and write, but that can apply to any country). I don't think they are. They are certainly not any worse than all those grammar and spelling drills I had to cram in school for my own native English. They are not any worse than having to memorize genders or hundreds of irregular conjugations, I don't think. Sure learning 2,000 characters may seem like an unnecessarily difficult and unwieldy task, if you are thinking of them as individual pictograms floating out in space with no context. But really, it is just a matter of learning 2,000 words. And yes I am going to say it again, it's part of their culture, so why *should* they? Because Korea did it? Because it would make Americans or Europeans feel better about learning their language? Those aren't good reasons. If China or Japan feel they are perfectly efficient enough, then why should they change?
But again, the question of whether they are inefficient largely hinges on the premise that they are prohibitively or unnecessarily difficult. You are saying that their writing system is less efficient, and since they do not change, this must be due purely to stubbornness. While I do think it is part of their culture and therefore important in that respect, I also don't agree characters are significantly inefficient enough to warrant an unnecessary change. I'm not suggesting characters are superior... just that, at least in the case of Japan, they are just fine with the system they have. Edited by starrye on 02 September 2011 at 4:50pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| MarcoLeal Groupie Portugal Joined 4834 days ago 58 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 30 of 81 02 September 2011 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Cthulhu
Did you keep a straight face while writing that? I'm asking this because I wonder how you can write such a clearly emotional post and still say things like "I'm about as laid-back as a person can be without actually being in a coma" or "but you need to chill". If any of us is completely chill about this it would be me. Offended? No, I'm not offended. What about my posts suggests I am? The fact that I am, I don't know, defending my views? And yes I said defending because that's what I'm doing and because that's what supposed to happen in a debate. I'm not imposing anything. I'm sorry if I don't append "In my opinion" to every assertion I make but I thought it wouldn't be necessary. "Chinese is completely functional as an everyday tool for the storage and dissemination of information, and has been such for more than 3000 years." Well that's what's being debated here and what, at least, me (for all the reasons I've stated), Koreans and Vietnamese disagree with you about. "Like, oh, I don't know, maybe they like their writing system, warts and all?" That's exactly what I'm trying to figure out. If these writings systems are kept for any objective reason or if it's because they like it with their (many) warts and all. And yes, I've expressed my opinion that if that is the case then it doesn't make any sense because it turns out that I can have an opinion even if it's not politically correct. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ygangerg Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5318 days ago 100 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French Studies: German | Message 31 of 81 02 September 2011 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think what Cthulhu was saying is that your tone is rather aggressive here, particularly on a topic that you claim to not have a personal stake in. I have to say, out of any of us, you're not "completely chill about it." You're actually coming across as rather combative.
Just sayin'. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 32 of 81 02 September 2011 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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. Edited by nway on 02 September 2011 at 6:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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