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The efficiency of Chinese characters | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Nguyen Senior Member Vietnam Joined 5093 days ago 109 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: Vietnamese | Message 57 of 81 04 September 2011 at 6:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Ok, there is some partial truth to some of this; however, I think the aforementioned publications have taken some liberties with historical fact, in addition to eliminating about 300 years worth of history. I will try to give a few more references and links a bit later (my cousin and I are going fishing today). While this doesn't really directly discuss Chinese characters it may not be completely off target since we used to use them, I hope this post is in line with the topic. Quốc ngữ the written language used today was implemented by the Portugese and de Rhodes perfected it, his main contribution was a Portugese, Latin, Vietnamese Dictionary (note: Portugese). The French presence in VietNam at that time was limited to a handful of missionaries. As it turns out, de Rhodes did not make alot of friends here. He was expelled once, returned and eventually he was sentenced to death by Lord Nguyễn Phúc Lan. This was around 1630 or so. Lucky for him his sentence was reduced to him being exciled. After that Vietnamese Catholics and others continued to use Quốc ngữ. It became more popular especially since Chữ Nôm the Vietnemese adaptation of Chinese was beyond the means of the average person to learn. Chữ Nôm itself (created sometime in the 14th century)was actually Vietnams own answer to "Breaking the Grip of Chinese culture", you see our previous occupiers were not thought of very highly. The idea of maintaining a Chinese cultural identity would have been considered an effrontery to a Vietnamese in those days. Needless to say Bathrobes missed the mark with this one. By the time the French arrived in force many Vietnamese Revolutionaries were ready to oppose them. These revolutionaries were the first to embark on literacy campaigns using quốc ngữ as the medium of communication due to it being relativly easy to learn. Phan Đình Phùng was quite possibly the most influential. For that reason quốc ngữ was already firmly in place by the time the French imposed it on the Vietnamese in 1910, a little bit of a moot point. From what I understand, in those days French language study was compulsary in schools and all government coorespondence was also in French so why even bother with quốc ngữ? At any rate, the change took awhile but everything worked out in the end. To this day there is not a single McDonalds or Starbucks coffee in Vietnam... Edited by Nguyen on 04 September 2011 at 6:33am 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 58 of 81 04 September 2011 at 11:45am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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«At any rate, the change took awhile but everything worked out in the end. To this day there is not a single
McDonalds or Starbucks coffee in Vietnam…» I think you’re drifting into politics now, which is a subject that I believe where suppose to stay away from on this board. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6262 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 59 of 81 04 September 2011 at 12:30pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I usually don't have these kind of problems but... I don't get what should this mean To "this day there is not a single McDonalds or Starbucks coffee in Vietnam..."
Edited by Fazla on 04 September 2011 at 12:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Nguyen Senior Member Vietnam Joined 5093 days ago 109 posts - 195 votes Speaks: Vietnamese | Message 61 of 81 04 September 2011 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I was a joke referencing the fact that although we have adopted the Latin alphabet we still have our own culture. Nothing political intended. Sorry if it came across as political. We do have Pizza Hut and KFC though...
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| KimG Diglot Groupie Norway Joined 4977 days ago 88 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Portuguese, Swahili | Message 62 of 81 04 September 2011 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hm, an interesting discussion. I don't know Chinese, so I do not know if it would be eficient or ineficient for it to use an alphabet(it would need to be a CHINESE one though, not just an european sound symbol set), but it's a problem:
There isn't just a matter of efficiency versus culture. Wrecking the current written chinese, would make the current literature into an obscure foregin literature without any relevant connection to their language for future Chinese. They would loose every single shred of cultural heritage in it's written form, and create a situation similiar to Ataturk's language reforms in Turkey, where the people of today actually can't read anything their grandfathers were writing. They did something similiar to this thread's topic: remaking the written language to fit the spoken language, and thereby loosing older literature. And the chinese reform would make a bigger gulf between old versus new literature. What is the efficiency in loosing every book in china, one of the world's biggest languages? Nguyen: We in Norway too lack Starbucks, we got too many small gourmet coffee shops here, who just make people not actually born or living in USA feeling Starbucks is a bit over rated. And, we are one of their closer allies and trade partners :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| learnvietnamese Diglot Groupie Singapore yourvietnamese.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4949 days ago 98 posts - 132 votes Speaks: Vietnamese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 63 of 81 04 September 2011 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I want to share some of my thoughts below:
1. I agree with many people posted above that language is one of the most important features of a culture. And change is therefore not welcome. 2. It may be the case that Chinese is 'less efficient' but at the end of the day, it doesn't seem to matter much in practice to Chinese people. Everywhere takes more or less 12 years to finish high-school, and the Chinese don't take much longer to learn the same things using their character system. It might take Chinese more time and energy during the process, but I think it's a helpful linguistic and mental training. 3. There are still possibilities that it would change to a Latin-based alphabet or an alphabet that are in favor at some point in the future. Anything can happen. 4. Last but not least, I completely think the question is a fair one from the perspective of a non-Chinese. I think I'd have felt good if I myself had raised this question :D 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5094 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 64 of 81 04 September 2011 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That is true enough...my opinion is biased because I do appreciate kanji, and on some level, maybe that makes learning them a little bit easier (for me). My personal opinion is that kanji enhance Japanese writing, and even if they do take a bit more time and effort, they would be worth it, if you were to ask me. I'm not suggesting that they are easy for westerners, or that they don't take effort. But as someone else noted, native speakers have the advantage of immersion and learning characters over a period of years throughout their childhood. So, no, I don't think that they are that difficult for native speakers. They are certainly alien to us as foreigners, since we are accustomed to an alphabet. But that's a cultural divide that you just have to cross if you want to learn one of these languages. But back to my point that it is really no different than learning ~2,000 words. I mean that literally. Characters and compounds literally represent words and compound words. They are not an alphabet, in the sense that we think of it, so it is best not to try and superimpose the logic behind an alphabet onto it. They are apples and oranges, and this is why so many misconceptions exist and westerners dread having to learn them. They aren't 2,000 "extra symbols"-- they are 2,000 words. And as such, they can be learned gradually over time, as part of your vocabulary. So it becomes really no different than learning a new word along with it's pronunciation and spelling. You really do not have to sit there and cram thousands of random characters out of context, before you've even learned the words they are used for. And yet a lot of people do decide to learn them this way, and it can indeed be grueling... Also I'd like to point out that learning your 1,000th character is not as difficult as learning your first 100... many people seem to be under the impression that each one is just as difficult and complex as the last. But in fact, this is not the case and you get used to them. The more characters you learn, the easier and faster they get. At first, we are not accustomed to using our visual memory in this manner to remember written words (an alphabet trains us to rely on our auditory memory). But the more you see these shapes over and over again, your brain adapts and they become internalized quicker when you encounter new ones.
Right. When you encounter an unknown word written in an alphabet, you are typically given the pronunciation first (assuming the word is pronounced they way it is spelled). Unless you have some sort of cognate to go on, you are not given any hints as to actual meaning of the word. You have to either a) look it up in a dictionary or, b) guess based on context. In some cases you might be able to compare the word to some other words you already know and figure out the meaning based on a shared cognate, or some other pattern. Well, characters do the opposite, and they have patterns too that allow you to make educated guesses. Stroke orders are not random, and characters are made up of smaller elements that appear over and over. Characters give you the raw meaning first, but not necessarily the pronunciation. Now, the advantage to such a system, as has already been pointed out, is that speakers of various dialects can still use the same character set to represent the same words and same meanings, despite having different pronunciations. This is quite a powerful thing indeed. Now what of the examples given in this thread that suggest character meanings are too vague and open for interpretation to be very helpful? How would you know that 動物 means animal? And not some other moving thing. Well, you wouldn't. If these were the only two characters you knew and you were just seeing this word in isolation for the first time, you wouldn't know. But once you have been told that it means animal (something that is animate), that particular character compound becomes easy to remember from now on. Now imagine that you know hundreds of characters and words, and have context and known patterns to draw from.... your guesses would start to become better and more accurate. This is something that is really hard to explain or appreciate until you start to learn the language for yourself and see it in action.
A reform is still different from doing a complete overhaul, though. Reforming English spelling would be more comparable to standardizing or simplifying a character set... which has already been done before. Getting rid of characters would be akin to dumping the whole Latin alphabet....
Well I don't think it's that efficiency isn't a consideration (Japan has entertained the idea before but decided against it), I just don't think that there is significant difference enough to motivate native speakers to want to make this change...or else kanji are seen as a worthwhile investment, rather than a burden. Edited by starrye on 04 September 2011 at 10:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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