Do alphabets need to be so complicated? (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Do alphabets need to be so complicated?
Tags: Alphabets \| Writing System \| Difficulty
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

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zamie
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Message 1 of 115

14 October 2010 at 1:36pm | IP Logged

When one compares the Hebrew writing system to the Japanese ones, it's clear that the
Japanese way of writing things down is a lot more time consuming and tiresome. However,
both methods produce the same results, or do they? What is the benefit of having such a
complicated writing system? Can it hinder learning in children, or does it have other
negatives or even perhaps benefits?

Edited by zamie on 14 October 2010 at 1:37pm
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fireflies
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Message 2 of 115

14 October 2010 at 6:26pm | IP Logged

I heard that the Chinese characters can be read across dialects even if they cannot understand each others speech.

I suppose it feels natural for them but to someone used to 26 simple letters it seems like way too much.

Is it true they used such a complex system to decrease literacy in the past? My guess would be that a complicated writing system in any language can be used to restrict literacy. They are possibly used for aesthetic reasons too (I don't think the Roman alphabet looks as neat as some other writing systems do even though it has the advantage of being user-friendly ).

I know the op was about the Japanese alphabet and the Chinese have no alphabet but Chinese is what came to mind when I thought of complicated writing.

Edited by fireflies on 14 October 2010 at 7:21pm
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BiaHuda
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Message 3 of 115

14 October 2010 at 7:21pm | IP Logged

Tradition plays a big part in it...
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Bao
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Message 4 of 115

14 October 2010 at 9:11pm | IP Logged

Fireflies, judging by the low literacy rate in medieval europe and in many areas where nowadays alphabet scripts are in usage I would doubt that there was much conscious effort to restrict literacy in China.

I think this topic has been discussed ad nauseam. Maybe somebody can find a link?

Edited by Bao on 14 October 2010 at 9:12pm
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fireflies
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Message 5 of 115

14 October 2010 at 9:30pm | IP Logged

I think I remember hearing that it was useful to restrict literacy to a ruling elite. Perhaps restricting literacy was not the reason for the writing system coming into being but it discouraged reforms of the system until recent times. When the Chinese govt. wanted to increase literacy they simplified the script.

I just found this article on Chinese literacy which mentions 'restricted literacy'.

Quote:

Education in this discourse was not an attempt to promote the general ability to read; on the contrary, it was intended to draw a clear line between the elite and the populace and to increase the social distance between the ruling and the ruled. It excluded the participation of the majority and allowed the usage of an educated discourse only to the cultural elite. Thus, the concept of literacy consolidated the monopoly of knowledge.

Quote:

Through the control over text, the emperor and the ruling elite monopolized knowledge production for the maintenance of social stability.

Quote:

As written language signified a special relationship with supernatural powers, people worshipped written words and subsequently the persons who knew the words. The idiocratic characters looked like mystic charms. They embodied profound meanings, but only experts could interpret them in the same way that only religious practitioners could interpret charms proper to their beliefs. For instance, the word "one" (i), with only one horizontal stroke, carried a variety of meanings: a number, a sequence, the thoroughness, the uniformity, the original air when the world was first created, the concept of dialectics, the other, a musical note, etc. Consequently, to learn a character was more than knowing which oral pronunciation it represented. It meant a whole body of semantic meanings embedded in the written character. As each word had different meanings defined by different sociocultural contexts, the acquisition of characters was a socialization process. The expert of characters had an understanding of all the semantic meanings associated with the words and thus he was culturally superior to those who could not read them.

The mystic power of characters made the concept of literacy vastly different from our understanding today. Functional literacy, for example, the ability to do bookkeeping or to read a letter, was not regarded as real literacy. Literacy meant being able to read and write in classical style.

Quote:

With such a political and cultural orientation, writing and printing technologies created social limitations. They were not intended for communications in a general sense, but for restricted communications through particular social channels. They were not designed to promote the thinking ability of people in general, but to widen the sociocultural difference between people in dominant positions and those in subordinate positions. Innis points out the bias of Chinese printing:

http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewArtic le/894/800

Anyway it was just a guess on my part based on something I thought i had heard somewhere before :)

Edited by fireflies on 14 October 2010 at 10:01pm
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Cainntear
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Message 6 of 115

14 October 2010 at 10:25pm | IP Logged

Illiteracy was used as a means of control in Europe too. Lower classes were discouraged from learning to read. I hear Castro and Guevara set up schools as they went through Cuba.

The evolution of language (very roughly):

1. Pictographs. A bulls head = Bull
2. Ideographs. Symbols represent words that they don't visually depict.
3. Syllabaries. Pictographs or ideographs representing monosyllabic words start to be used as phonetic representation of syllables.
4. Alphabets. Syllables broken down into phonemes.

Chinese only got as far as 2.

Japanese mixes 2 and 3, at least in part because the Chinese ideographs weren't enough to describe their language. Case particles probably were partly responsible.

Why did Chinese get stuck at 2?

Prevailing theory is that it's simply because they didn't have books. Working with fragile and cumbersome scrolls, efficiency called for smaller writing.

The codex, invented on the mediterranean, is massively more efficient in terms of storage space vs writing area and is a lot easier to search through quickly, and this may have been the catalyst that allowed alphabets to evolve.

Alphabets are the most efficient for the mind to process, but the least efficient in terms of information presented in a given area.
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fireflies
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Message 7 of 115

14 October 2010 at 10:44pm | IP Logged

I heard they used to give church services in Latin knowing no one could understand it. I guess Latin was used to restrict literacy too.

Edited by fireflies on 14 October 2010 at 10:49pm
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lichtrausch
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Message 8 of 115

14 October 2010 at 10:50pm | IP Logged

Cainntear wrote:

Japanese mixes 2 and 3, at least in part because the Chinese ideographs weren't enough to
describe their language. Case particles probably were partly responsible.

Back in the day, Japanese was written using only Chinese characters with a script called
Manyogana.

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