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The efficiency of Chinese characters | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4965 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes  Speaks: French*, English | Message 50 of 81 03 September 2011 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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No offense but I don't think Britannica or Wikipedia is authoritative in the subject being discussed.
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| MarcoLeal Groupie Portugal Joined 4834 days ago 58 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 52 of 81 03 September 2011 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
@OneEye
If the simple expressing of a view about the efficiency of a different writing system is cultural imperialism then call me imperialist all you like. If hiding behind these cliches makes you sleep at night, be my guest. Besides, even if culture really was what's at stake here, culture isn't a sacred subject that can't possibly be debated. And for the umpteenth time, no I'm not trying to impose anything on anyone. The purpose of this thread was to get insight, not to give insight, not to impose any views. If any opinion was supposed to have changed with this discussion it was mine. You and all other posters before did change my opinion in a crucial point. Before this discussion I took some of the events in China and its neighborhood (Vietnam and Korea's decision to abandon chinese characters, the introduction of simplified Chinese, the usage of zhuyin as a teaching tool in the first half of the 20th century, the fact that they encouraged knowledge of pinyin, the fact that they decided to change their written standard to one that more closely resembles spoken Mandarin) as signs that culture wasn't what was keeping them from changing. I was wrong. Apparently these signs aren't good enough. Ok, so, unlike me, China gives culture more weight than it gives efficiency. Fair enough. They do with their alphabet whatever they like but I'm entitled to disagree even if they couldn't care less about my opinion and when called to justify it I gladly do it. Because that's all I'm doing. Presenting my views, submitting them to scrutiny and listening to different opinions so that I can have a better informed view. I'm not trying to convince anyone and then again, even if I were, what exactly is wrong with trying to convince anyone of anything? Convincing means to present arguments and expect their strength will appeal to their reason. Imposing is something else. Isn't convincing a major part of debating? Are you offended if someone tries to convince you? If so, too bad for you.
Ah! Time for the good old ad populum fallacy. Because that's what it is. A fallacy. But if to you this is somehow a valid argument then let me remind you that it's not because I think I know a better way. It's better because pretty much everyone else (and guess what, this everyone else is 4 times as many billions as the billions in China) thinks so, because the alternative too has been around for thousands of years and because history has shown that changes always happen in the direction of this alternative.
Fair enough. I can't possibly argue with this. You do know infinitely more about Chinese than I do. So here's my argument condensed: - Efficiency is more important than Culture; - This written standard + characters system is inefficient because it requires learning some 3000 symbols while if the standard was changed to closely resemble spoken Mandarin and an alphabet was adopted it wouldn't be necessary; - At least changing the written standard is quite possible since China has done it in the past and, even though, like you claimed in your last post, this change didn't make the written standard identical to the spoken standard and was still a literary one, it at least made it more similar and such a change in the future could make them even closer. The first premise has nothing to do with my knowledge of the language (and is the only strong opinion that I have) but the other two do. So please go ahead! Destroy the argument! Shut me up for good! Don't get me wrong, there's absolutely no sarcasm or arrogance here or thinking this argument is flawless. I know there can be flaws and I simply don't want to make false claims, that's why I started this thread, so if I'm wrong I beg you to correct me! I don't want you to do my research for me. This is me doing my research!
How does "You're suggesting taking that away from them" follow from replacing the characters by an alphabet? Do I need to know the meaning of the characters to appreciate their beauty? If that's what you think then you're deeply mistaken. That's not true for me and apparently also not for the countless people that decide to tattoo Chinese characters on their body. Regardless of whether if you approve of doing this you can't deny that this proves people can recognize the beauty without knowing the meaning. @Nguyen Thank you very much for giving us the perspective of someone that lives in a country in which this change has taken place. I suspected the fears of cultural disaster that some posters clearly have were grossly exaggerated and even stated it but said by you it definitely gains much more weight. @Mapk Yeah I've been careful to make the distinction but still it's easy to think that criticism of the writing system means criticism of the language. If you or anyone thought that's what I'm doing here then let me assure you that's not the case. Haha, yeah I guess Chinese characters are always a more delicate subject. I'm interested in that thread though. Can you link me to it? @DNB
cathrynm has made a similar point. You might want to read my replies to her for more detail but here's my counter-argument in a nutshell: Generations are cut from their history by the natural evolution of the language. Even without any change in writing system, from what I've gathered, only very educated Chinese can read Classical Chinese in its original from. How is this problem solved? Translating. Like Nguyen suggested, if a transition is made slowly enough and the characters are slowly phased out instead of replaced overnight then translations would surely keep up. Also I don't see what's so preposterous about suggesting a different alternative. If anything, I think it's condescending to depict the Chinese as permanently attached to tradition and locked in the past. Besides even if you're not entitled to impose anything on anyone, anything can be debated. Anything. Also it probably feels like I think I'm an educated westerner and trying to set them free because of Europe's colonial past. I come from Portugal, a country that "simply" started large scale slave trade. Yes we've done a lot of things wrong and are ashamed of them. Yes we've tried to impose views on other people. But are Germans all Nazi because they are German? This is pure and simply an exchange of ideas. Also it's not true that alphabets are the flag of the west and that therefore I could only be a westerner if I'm advocating their efficiency. Nguyen's post should prove this.
Well, what is this obsession with leaving things as they are just because that's the way they are? Progress can't happen without change.
After reading this I'm forced to question if you've been reading my posts. I admit they are very long but then again I repeated this point quite a few times. I'm all for getting rid of those things!
And how do I feel about those images? Simple. I feel that the Chinese characters are indeed beautiful but that reducing their number doesn't mean changing their aesthetic principles. Runes are an alphabet too and yet you see them carved in many Germanic artifacts. Why? Because they too are beautiful and they too had an almost "mystic" connotation despite being few. I've never claimed that I think Chinese characters should be replaced by the Latin alphabet. In fact I think they don't. They should be replaced by an alphabet especially designed for Mandarin. @paranday I also agree that there must have been some imposition by the French but what Wikipedia seems to suggest is that this was only the final blow to the characters. I don't think Nguyen is implying that they've been adopted by the public from the very beginning, only reminding us that it was the Portuguese who introduced them long before they were made compulsory and that, because of this fact, the translation of old texts into this new writing system had time to catch up. Also with
He/She is echoing precisely what bathrobe's says about the popularity of the script despite it's colonial origin. Edited by MarcoLeal on 03 September 2011 at 3:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6659 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 53 of 81 03 September 2011 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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«- Efficiency is more important than Culture; « Not at all. You’re wrong here. Or well, you’re not wrong per se, but
this is not an objective argument, this is what you think. You regard efficiency of more worth than tradition and culture — a lot of people do not. Actually, most people do not. That’s why we have coloured clothes and people we are ties, that’s why we put wallpaper and paintings on our walls and that’s why we have flowers in our windows. All these things are unnecessary and require of us a lot of energy and reduced efficiency, however, few people would give away colours and pretty things for the mere importance of greater efficiency. I’m sorry to say, but, your argumentation sound more like the fix idea of a teenager looking to change the world than estimating the efficiency of syllabo-ideographic signs. This shows when you argue that genders are unnecessary in romantic and germanic languages: this is absolutely ridiculous. This is not how languages work. Everything that the speakers of a language do not find useful they will remove, this is hoe languages evolve, but yet genders still exist in German, in French, thus the speakers of these languages have use for the genders. « Runes are an alphabet too and yet you see them carved in many Germanic artifacts. Why? Because they too are beautiful and they too had an almost "mystic" connotation despite being few. « Runes were dropped for religious reasons and also because the only written language for long was Latin, and when people begun writing in their own native languages, the runes were forgotten. «Also it probably feels like I think I'm an educated westerner and trying to set them free because of Europe's colonial past. I come from Portugal, a country that "simply" started large scale slave trade. Yes we've done a lot of things wrong and are ashamed of them. Yes we've tried to impose views on other people. But are Germans all Nazi because they are German? This is pure and simply an exchange of ideas. Also it's not true that alphabets are the flag of the west and that therefore I could only be a westerner if I'm advocating their efficiency. Nguyen's post should prove this. « They’re not smart enough to figure out that they need this great invention I use, therefore I have to tell them this! How is this not condescending to the Chinese? Don’t you think they’ve known about the alphabet? It did arrive to China long before the Europeans did. That the Vietnamese use an alphabet does not really make it less condescending. Also, they suffer from 17th century spelling due to the old alphabetic orthography that they now day use; much like the French and the English. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MarcoLeal Groupie Portugal Joined 4834 days ago 58 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 54 of 81 03 September 2011 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
@Hampie
Of course that's what I think. That's what I've always said. That I think efficiency is more important than culture. Now, even if it is true that most people disagree, that makes me wrong because...?
Of course people like to have all those things when they're doing it for pleasure. If I wear a colorful clothing it's because I like it. Everybody is entitled to learn the characters because they like them and I have no objection whatsoever that they do it. Now if you're talking about work-environment dress codes imposed by companies or something like that and that are inefficient then yeah I do have something against that too.
Regardless of whether that's what I want, am I supposed to take offense or even just feel uncomfortable with being called a teenager who's trying to change the world? Leaving things as they are just because well...that's how they are is not at all more justified. I see nothing wrong with pointing out what you think is wrong as long as you try justify why you think it's wrong and listen to the opinions of those that know more than you. And can you really read my posts and accuse me of not having tried to justify myself or having sought clarification? And that's if I was really trying to change anything. Which I'm not.
Why is calling the genders unnecessary ridiculous? If this is so ridiculous then you surely can give me an example of their utility? You need to learn how to separate matters. Criticism to one part of language doesn't immediate spread to the whole concept and means I hate it. I love German! Yet, can you give me any situation in which attributing a gender to say, a table, has ever come in handy? What does it tell you about the table? Nothing. You could argue that a word's gender associates that object more with men than with women but even that is highly debatable, as counter-examples abound. The word unnecessary means just that, the opposite of necessary and not sent by the devil or ugly. And no, clearly not everything that is unnecessary is removed by users. In fact that's the entire motivation of this thread. Speakers still want to match the standard of spoken language. Sure they might drop words or sounds here and there without anybody thinking twice about it but deviating from this standard of assigning gender to nouns is an entirely different thing. I don't think you understood my points about runes. All I wanted to say is that beauty in can be achieved even despite using only a reduced number of characters and that the runes were a good example of that. I didn't comment on the fact that runes disappeared or the reasons for that.
Yeah, that's it, keep reading what you want to read on my posts. I never said that the Chinese didn't know alphabets or their benefits. Reread my opening post and you'll see that the reason I thought was keeping them from doing it was the nature of Mandarin. In fact, I thought precisely that the Chinese were very smart but simply knew that there was something about their language that made characters a more efficient solution. I later learned, though, that, unless I misunderstood Vlad or OneEye, there's no linguistic impediment per se. No changes to the way the language is spoken would have to be made even though making the written standard resemble the spoken on more closely would be necessary. Yet, as was emphasized many times in this topic, Culture is an impediment and more so than I had anticipated.I simply give efficiency more weight than culture and thus disagree with them. More than that. I agree to disagree with them. How is this saying they're not smart enough? Do you always think you're smarter than people that disagree with you? Edited by MarcoLeal on 03 September 2011 at 8:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6850 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 55 of 81 03 September 2011 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I can't change your opinions on culture vs. efficiency, and I feel that I have articulated my point of view well enough. I can only urge you to find out more about it for yourself before you allow your opinions to become too firmly entrenched. Read some cultural anthropology books, maybe. Learn the language (seriously, allegations of the writing system being extremely difficult to learn are overblown IMO – it's not that bad) and move to China or Taiwan to experience and learn about the culture for yourself before you form any opinions. Language does not exist in a vacuum, and your notions of efficiency need to be weighed against all the other factors that come into play.
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| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5178 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 56 of 81 03 September 2011 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Answering the question
女孩很高兴 nvhai hen gaoxing v stands for u umlaut. but if you type just the first letters Google transliterate will show this sentence anyway. 你好很高兴 = nhhgx turns into :hello! very happy. so I had to type nvhhgx. It doesn't always work。 so you have to be more careful 韩国选手一个女孩 I wanted to type "very happy is a girl" but it turned into: A Korean player is a girl :S Not all sentences go right. but the above one can be like this due to the fact that I have mistaken Chinese grammar. You have to check it if the things you wanted to say are same as the ones on the google transliterate temporary toolbar with the characters. 还高兴的是一个概念 now it turns into still the thing that is happy is an concept. wyygnpy turns into: 我有一个女朋友 Modern technics :) It was not possible few years ago. Only google and sougou support it. Edited by clumsy on 03 September 2011 at 6:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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