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munkala
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Joined 5558 days ago
10 posts - 9 votes

 
 Message 41 of 80
15 September 2009 at 9:48pm | IP Logged 
minus273 wrote:
Besides, Shiga Naoya claimed that Japanese (the language) should be abolished for French. Does this tarnish Shiga's name as a novelist in Japanese language? Most probably not.

No language should abolished for another language. Only archaic logographic systems of writing should be replaced. Sure Hanzi is the most beautiful written script in the world, but not very practical for learning or eradicating illiteracy.
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minus273
Triglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5772 days ago
288 posts - 346 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan

 
 Message 42 of 80
16 September 2009 at 12:06am | IP Logged 
munkala wrote:
Characters slows down the pace at which you can pick up the written language. And it's virtually impossible to eradicate illiteracy with characters. You can teach an illiterate Spanish speaker to read and never forget how to read in just a few weeks. Most of us cannot learn 3500 characters within a few weeks. I've been learning Mandarin now for about 6 months now and I can only read about 1500+ characters. My biggest problem is learning a character and then a few weeks down the road, recognize it but then forget the phonetic pronunciation. And even if I do learn the 3500+ needed to read a newspaper, it doesn't necessarily mean I know how to read because the characters are only syllables and not necessarily words. And it's not easy to use Chinese newspapers to pick up the language. If you come across 5 characters you don't know, you don't know if it's 2 words or 5 words, etc. And forget about the time it takes you to look it up.
I think PinYin would be adequate to replace the written language.

Even one of our greatest American scholars of Chinese John DeFrancis was very much in favor of abolishing the Hanzi script. In fact he is one of the very few scholars who was very angry the communists never replaced the character script.

As I had explained earlier in another thread, abolishing Hanzi script (except if we use an etymological orthography like French and Tibetan), virtually requires abolishing much of the current high register written language, and the current way to coin new words.

This may well be a hard price to pay.
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OneEye
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 6857 days ago
518 posts - 784 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French

 
 Message 43 of 80
16 September 2009 at 12:07am | IP Logged 
munkala wrote:
Characters slows down the pace at which you can pick up the written language. And it's virtually impossible to eradicate illiteracy with characters.


Please explain the high literacy rate in Japan (99%, equivalent to the US), Taiwan (96.1%), and Hong Kong (94.6%) compared to that in China (90.9). Literacy is a result of the educational system, not absence of characters. Note that Taiwan and Hong Kong still use traditional characters and the simplifications in Japanese were nowhere near as extensive as in mainland China.

Quote:
You can teach an illiterate Spanish speaker to read and never forget how to read in just a few weeks. Most of us cannot learn 3500 characters within a few weeks. I've been learning Mandarin now for about 6 months now and I can only read about 1500+ characters. My biggest problem is learning a character and then a few weeks down the road, recognize it but then forget the phonetic pronunciation. And even if I do learn the 3500+ needed to read a newspaper, it doesn't necessarily mean I know how to read because the characters are only syllables and not necessarily words. And it's not easy to use Chinese newspapers to pick up the language. If you come across 5 characters you don't know, you don't know if it's 2 words or 5 words, etc. And forget about the time it takes you to look it up.


So your argument is that they should drastically change the language to make it easier for foreigners to learn? Really?

"Wow, French is hard to learn. I wish they'd change it to make it easier for English speakers."

Quote:
I think PinYin would be adequate to replace the written language.


Sure, IF you change the written language drastically. You'd have to mandate the removal of Classical Chinese from all written language, and people would have to significantly change the way they write in order for it to make sense when written phonetically. The language becomes increasingly monosyllabic and more closely resembles Classical Chinese/文言文 in higher, more formal, and academic registers. This would have to change immensely. So you're proposing that they do all this change just so you can learn the language faster. Forget about the 1.3 billion Chinese who would have to relearn their own language, it would be easier for some foreign learners.

Quote:
Even one of our greatest American scholars of Chinese John DeFrancis was very much in favor of abolishing the Hanzi script. In fact he is one of the very few scholars who was very angry the communists never replaced the character script.


The fact that he is a well-respected scholar does not make his opinion correct. Academic work must be subject to criticism and review, no matter who the scholar is. I respect the hell out of his contributions, but on this point, I believe he is wrong. However, if I remember correctly he did admit that the switch to a phonetic writing system would require significant changes to the language itself.
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munkala
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Joined 5558 days ago
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 Message 44 of 80
16 September 2009 at 12:56am | IP Logged 
It's not about making it easier for foreigners to learn. It's about making it easier for everyone to learn in general. Korea and Vietnam have long abolished their characters for phonetic scripts. Should both of them have retained their old ways of writing as well?

Change is brought on gradually. The old script and the new script would be in use in parallel. You don't just replace it overnight because the older generation will never accept a new script, but younger schoolchildren will be eager to adopt the new script.

At one time Vietnam had 3 scripts. WenYan, Chu Nom, and the modern day Romanized script in parallel.And it wasn't until after the Korean War did the Chinese script completely fade away in Korea. Before that, the nobles were still using the Hanja Chinese script in parallel with the modern Hangul script.   

And the 90.9% literacy rate in China will only get worse as the government no longer offers free education. And if I recall correctly, it was only 30% during the 1930's.


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OneEye
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
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518 posts - 784 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French

 
 Message 45 of 80
16 September 2009 at 1:07am | IP Logged 
munkala wrote:
It's not about making it easier for foreigners to learn. It's about making it easier for everyone to learn in general. Korea and Vietnam have long abolished their characters for phonetic scripts. Should both of them have retained their old ways of writing as well?


Are you suggesting that one country should change just because another did? On what grounds?

It should be remembered that Vietnam switched to using quốc ngữ under French rule.

Besides, Korean and Vietnamese are not Chinese. They are different languages that borrowed the characters from Chinese. The characters were designed to write Chinese.

Quote:
Change is brought on gradually. The old script and the new script would be in use in parallel. You don't just replace it overnight because the older generation will never accept a new script, but younger schoolchildren will be eager to adopt the new script.


The question is not whether it can happen. The question is "why should it?" You have not answered that.

Quote:
And the 90.9% literacy rate in China will only get worse as the government no longer offers free education. And if I recall correctly, it was only 30% during the 1930's.


So you're agreeing with me that literacy is a result of the education system.

Again, I'll ask: Why? What compelling reason can you offer for mandating such sweeping changes to a language? Improve the educational system and literacy will improve. That is much easier to implement, more practical, and less likely to piss off 1.3 billion people than forcing such a big change on a language.


Edit: Vietnam was a poor choice for an example, since the literacy rate is even lower than mainland China (90.3%).

Edited by OneEye on 16 September 2009 at 1:10am
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munkala
Newbie
Joined 5558 days ago
10 posts - 9 votes

 
 Message 46 of 80
16 September 2009 at 1:27am | IP Logged 
Also when you are writing an email in 汉字, do you not use pinyin first and then select your character?

Yes, WenYan can never be represented in PinYin as it's too monosyllabic and would not make any sense if you translated old works of WenYan to PinYin. But who converses in WenYan? Nobody. PinYin is perfectly suitable to represent modern colloquial speech.
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OneEye
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 6857 days ago
518 posts - 784 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French

 
 Message 47 of 80
16 September 2009 at 1:54am | IP Logged 
munkala wrote:
Also when you are writing an email in 汉字, do you not use pinyin first and then select your character?


And? That has nothing to do with reading, it has to do with typing.

Quote:
Yes, WenYan can never be represented in PinYin as it's too monosyllabic and would not make any sense if you translated old works of WenYan to PinYin. But who converses in WenYan? Nobody. PinYin is perfectly suitable to represent modern colloquial speech.


You're making the gross assumption that all written material is conversational and colloquial. If that were the case, then perhaps pinyin would work. But that is not the case. In Standard Chinese, the more formal the material, the more it resembles 文言, and the more pinyin breaks down as an appropriate writing system.

Like I said, it won't work without widespread change to the language.
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tofutofu
Tetraglot
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United States
Joined 5615 days ago
3 posts - 3 votes
Speaks: Dutch*, Mandarin, English, German
Studies: French, Russian

 
 Message 48 of 80
16 September 2009 at 2:17am | IP Logged 
There are some reasons to abolish hanzi, and there are reasons to stick to them. Ultimately the Chinese people, or
whoever is in control of the media and the educational systems, decides what happens. I am sure glad that a
drastic spelling reform is no longer on the agenda; I think that such a reform would be a cultural disaster. It would
cut off the current script completely from all classic Chinese literature, all writing up to the 20th century. A script is
not just a utility to represent whatever is the current language, but is also a tool to transmit culture and a way to
preserve a sense of cultural continuity (or identity).







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