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Do alphabets need to be so complicated? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5174 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 17 of 115 15 October 2010 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Interestiing discussion. I believe - although I cannot give you any references for this - that people growing up with a pictogrammatic writing system are taught to see the original representation, which was clearer earlier in the history of the written language, so a conversation to a child along the lines of "Can you see the ox and cart? That's why it means..." would be perfectly natural. We can only see the "pictures" in the simplest ones, like the upside down curved V for man, the E on its side with the middle stroke longer for mountain, etc. I think this was certainly the more natural way of trying to communicate by writing - draw a picture. Alphabets certainly came later and were an abstraction from some pictures - a Semitic idea, I think. Some alphabets, particularly Arabic became decorative and almost picture-like, because images were banned, at least in the case of Islam. Edited by Old Chemist on 15 October 2010 at 7:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 18 of 115 15 October 2010 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
That's a flawed argument. If you can define "remember" as 1 stroke, you're only proving that the number of strokes is not a measure of difficulty. So we need to find a new definition of complexity. I was about to suggest "number of changes of direction of pen movement", but I'm not sure where curves would fit into that. How about the number of quarter circles or parts thereof that the curve completes? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5182 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 19 of 115 15 October 2010 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Having to lift your pen off the paper and place it in a new position (especially when arranging objects in 2 dimensions) takes extra time and indicates a greater technical complexity of what is being written. It takes no time at all to write remember in cursive (all the lines involved are very simple curves and as long as you know the 26 letters its not hard to remember). Remember is 8 charcters (out of a mere 26) in a script that is so simple that the 8 characters can be written in a recognizable form in 1 simple stroke. Many chinese character are too complex for this. The amount you can get down without lifting your pen off the paper is the time saver. The whole point of cursive is to save the time it would take to move your pen off the paper. I previously mentioned 我 vs i. Both are simple common words but the chinese script itself requires more effort to write the concept out. Edited by fireflies on 15 October 2010 at 10:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 20 of 115 16 October 2010 at 3:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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How about the fact that an English speaker can correctly read/pronounce any word he knows already when he sees it written for the first time.
Can a person who speaks Chinese recognise any character he comes across if he already knows the word?
What if you don't know "The '回' of '回來' or the '意' from '意思' ???? How does the person describe the characters? It looks like a T.V. with a small box in it. The other one looks like a box with a horizontal line going through it. On top it has a hat. Below it has some lines..... English only has 26 letters!!! Once you know these your done! No need to know the '回' of '回來' or the '意' from '意思'
Edited by John Smith on 16 October 2010 at 3:57am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5182 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 115 16 October 2010 at 4:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Complexity of a writing system could refer to the time spent writing equivalent words (on average). If anyone can write 睡醒 more quickly than an English speaker can write 'wake up' then maybe there would be a case to compare the two in terms of easiness.
I am not so sure my previous argument about cursive writing was flawed. It was inferred that because 'remember' is an 8 letter word and can be written in one cursive line the # of strokes it takes to write something has no bearing on the # of separate pieces in a word (or the complexity of a word). What I said proves low pen strokes #s have less bearing on the complexity of the word in a simple script that can actually be scrawled in such a manner in the first place. With a difficult script this does not hold true because a difficult word of many components cannot be written in 1 loop. You cannot compare the two cases because they are 2 different systems. What is easier? A script that can represent a medium sized word of many pieces by scrawling 1 quick line or a script that will always require a bunch of separate strokes to retain the coherency that is needed for the word to be recognizable? One of my favorite things about Spanish is that I can hear a new word and immediately know how it is spelled. Their spelling system is so efficient. Anyway to summarize what I was saying: you can write English in a quick scrawl but you cannot do this to the same degree in Chinese. The other part of complexity is probably how many component parts are involved in the first place. Edited by fireflies on 16 October 2010 at 5:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 22 of 115 16 October 2010 at 10:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Usually, yes. My sifu only ever reads and writes in Mandarin, but his mother tongue is Cantonese. When I show him some samples of text written in Cantonese, he can usually understand what is written, despite written Cantonese using a number of unique characters that he hasn't seen before.
The first one is a mouth in an enclosure. The second one is a 音 from 聲音 with a heart at the bottom. The point here is that the characters build on each other. You DO know the 回 from 回來 and the 意 from 意思, because these are some of the most common characters used. They'll be some of the first ones you learn and you encounter them all the time. The system is different. Most characters build on other characters, whereas in English the words don't build on each other but rather on the same original letters.
You're not done, you still need to learn the spelling of every word.
Exhibit A: Chinese grass script. It's hella fast to write, and several characters are often combined into a single stroke, just like in cursive English. Of course, it's pretty damned difficult to learn to write and to read, and most Chinese don't understand written grass script. It's a lot faster to write but a lot more difficult to learn. Which sort of contradicts your theory. Exhibit B: Writing with the wubi input method. You can get pretty fast writing in Chinese using input methods like wubi and cangjie on a computer. When watching the video, remember that a comparable English text would be considerably longer.
Exhibit C: Typical Mandarin handwriting. It might not be "to the same degree" but it's certainly a quick scrawl (and you could probably do it a lot scrawlier if the person who's going to read it is the same as the one who wrote it). And do remember that the vast majority of Mandarin words are one or two characters long. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Linc Newbie Macau Joined 5443 days ago 29 posts - 45 votes Studies: English Studies: French | Message 23 of 115 16 October 2010 at 10:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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The discussions about efficiency of Chinese characters come up once in a while and sometimes even lead to politics ... :)
So far, i feel most people's logic about this is correct. However, some important facts that based might be neglected: 1. Before native speaker learn the characters, they already speak the language. When kids learn what they need to do is find out the corresponding characters to the sounds. The difficulty is not on the level of non-native learner who start from a scratch. 2. Very few people in mainland China write by hand except for their names. 3. Typing chinese characters is faster then English ("What ??!!" This may shock some people.. ). Some input methods much faster, slowest input methods may be on the level of English or slightly slower. Beginner of Chinese learner usually complain the complexity of the characters, but after they get them under their belt then everything seems to be quite clear. This is the darkness before the dawn. Basically, I agree with Ari's points of view. But I think the efficency of a script have little to do with the number of strokes.
Well, I feel a little hard to answer this question. But the answer is in the question. It is not an aphabet system. Native speakers have several other ways to explain the characters based on the asker's knowledge on charaters. "What if you don't know '回' or '意 ????How does the person describe the characters? " In most cases, the person will answer "The '回' of '回來' or the '意' from '意思' . If not understood, he might try the '回' of a small month in a big month. or The '意' has a heart at the bottom. Chinese national tend to be quite comfortable with the characters. No one talk about latiniztion present days which people see it as a nonsense. However, the re-use of traditional characters is under debate in recent years. Last year there was a debate in the Chinese congress and public TV. People in mainland use more trad characters these days. Some AD are in trad (even though banned by the law. but people dont care, govt doesnt care). And some young people post it on internet forum... This could be a trend. Edited by Linc on 16 October 2010 at 11:03am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 24 of 115 16 October 2010 at 10:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Well, alphabets are certainly simpler than ideograms, whether cursive or not. As I've previously said, the advantage of ideograms is really just in terms of written space.
But...
Wrong. If you'd said Spanish, or German, or Russian, you would have been right. English is a mess. Superlative is stressed on the second syllable of the prefix, which goes against the norm. People can never agree how to pronounce some words that were traditionally most encountered in the written form. (Controversy -- commonly first vs second syllable.) In fact, I can't remember the word now, but there was one word that me and my brothers and sisters said consistently wrong for years because it was used in some of the children's novels we had in the house, and when I was about 9 I heard the correct pronunciation on TV finally. Though, through, bough, cough. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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