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Ruling on Chinese Characters | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| 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 17 of 44 21 October 2010 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Mao tried to eradicate the Chinese characters and romanize the language, but he failed. So I don't think it's an issue of the government being unwilling. Rather the people is. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5182 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 18 of 44 21 October 2010 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
I know nothing about Mali but I'd suspect that there are a ton of issues behind why the bulk of people there don't read French. These could include native languages, resistance to French, social stability, bad government, a short life expectancy, abject poverty and a lack of government interest in boosting the literacy rates (no schools, few schools or bad ones). None of this means that learning to read and write in French is as hard as the same task in Chinese. China is stable is it not? China wants to boost literacy as well and has a better educational system than Mali. I doubt those 2 countries can be closely compared . Edited by fireflies on 21 October 2010 at 7:52pm 2 persons have 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 19 of 44 21 October 2010 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
You'll want to learn both. Not learning simplified will hamper you a lot since China is so huge, and not learning traditional will limit you to material that's passed the censors in China. Most people start with one and then go over to the other, which I think is a lot easier. Associating one more character to a word you already know is pretty easy. Many recommend starting with the trads and there are good arguments for this, but I did it the other way round, so it both works. Most people learning Mandarin learn only to read and not to write (except using pinyin input on computers and cell phones). If you're going to live in China then learning to write with a pen should not be much of a problem, but if you don't use the language often, maintenance will be an issue. And if you want to learn to write with a pen you'll need to pick up some materials on handwriting. Nobody writes out all the strokes when writing by hand, but you'll need to study a bit to know which ones you can omit and simplify. 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 20 of 44 21 October 2010 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
China has boosted literacy by incredible amounts. You don't go from 10% to 99% overnight. Do remember that most Chinese are incredibly poor. The living standard is far, far below places like Japan and Korea. The country is rich, but very little of those riches find their way to the bulk of the population. And, as others have pointed out, any claim that China's illiteracy is due to the writing system needs to be accompanied by an explanation as to why it's not a problem in Hong Kong and Taiwan, with their even more complicated writing system. Heck, in Hong Kong people even write in a different language from what they speak and still their literacy rates are pretty damn good. EDIT: Also, I'd hesitate to call China "stable". It's in fact a very unstable country. The amount of mass protests increase every year. I'm reading China: Fragile Superpower by Susan L. Shirk at the moment and it quotes the number of mass protests as 200 a day, and that was written in 2007. Edited by Ari on 21 October 2010 at 4:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 21 of 44 21 October 2010 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Mandarin: What do you think of making it official to write small pinyin on top of characters, like how furigana is used in Japanese?
I can't speak for Japanese, but as for Korean, get rid of the characters completely (it's happening anyways, but not fast enough). Edited by chucknorrisman on 21 October 2010 at 9:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zyz Newbie United States Joined 5337 days ago 19 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit | Message 22 of 44 21 October 2010 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm of two minds, so I'd flip a coin. Heads, reinstate traditional and push use of older script styles; tails, bring back second-round simplication and try going further. No pinyin though, romanization is an agent of evil western imperialism. Generally keep the fully developed logographic character of the written language.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luhmann Senior Member Brazil Joined 5334 days ago 156 posts - 271 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Mandarin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 23 of 44 21 October 2010 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would probably not really want to reinstate traditional characters, but I'd would want to undo most of the character mergers. I cry everytime I see the word 'queen' instead of behind, or 'barrel' instead of fight...
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