Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
A system based on alphabet is simply superior to hieroglyphs, and its not like people who invented the alphabet system didn't know any better... Sumerian Cuneiform is an even older language than Old Chinese, so the people using alpha-beta were very familiar with the hieroglyphic way of writing a language.
what kind of BS is that. Superior in terms of what, easier for westerners to learn, for Christ's sake? Chinese characters hold so much history and culture in them, and many of them provides an insight on how the ancient people understood the world which is extremely intriguing. Alphabet-based languages are easier to learn, but the meaning is completely random. Laugh can mean "cry" or whatever, but if you know Chinese, "laugh" resembles a laughing face with smiley eyes while "cry" is a sad face with kind of swollen eyes with even a drop of tear - not something alphabet based language is good at creating. "home" is essentially a pig under a roof, indicating ancient people's understanding of an agricultural based family, what exactly does "H-O-M-E" indicate? nothing.
Additionally, Chinese words often makes reference to each other among words with similar meanings, so leopard, Cheetah, and jaguar in Chinese use the same root because they are known to belong to the same animal family as cat, in English, all these random words with completely random spelling have absolutely nothing with each other. One would have no idea what a cheetah is although he knows the word "cat" or "leopard". You just have to remember each words very mechanically.
In the same way, a shirt, a blouse, a sweater, a jacket, a coat in English have absolutely nothing with each other. You just have to remember each word and knowing one doesn't help with another whatsoever. In Chinese, as long as you know the word "clothes" in the general form, you can more or less guess all these correlated words.
Yes, Chinese characters might be hard to learn than a simple arrangement of 26 letters, but in many ways they are very efficient and are actually easier to learn. I am saying it is "efficient" based on scientific facts: that given any content, a text written in Chinese is always much shorter than the English version, most likely taking 50% or 30% of the space. And in speaking, linguists found that in conveying the same idea, an English speakers have to speak much faster than a Chinese speaker assuming the time to finish the sentence is the same. It takes even longer for a Japanese or Spanish speaker. The reason? Chinese is very content-heavy, meaning each syllable conveys far more information than a syllable in alphabet-based languages. The flip side is it is difficult to learn.
I am not saying the Chinese language is superior, but to say alphabet-based languages are simply superior is laughable and only shows the fact you know nothing about languages. Each language system has its own strength, and the Chinese language along with its written system is one of the richest in the world. To dismiss its written characters as inferior is simply an atrocious display of ignorance.
Few Chinese children suffer dyslexia, also because their cognitive system is trained to rely on both sound and form, unlike children in the west.
This is very likely true.
When I learn any foreign language, I find that I have trouble learning just by pure listening. I always need to know (sometimes imagine in my mind) how it is actually written, which proves that when Chinese children learn languages, they rely on both sound and form from a very young age because just by recognizing the sound, it often doesn't help much.
if they really want to do it, of course it is possible, but what I am saying is that it is impossible that this will happen. It serves no purpose but results in a humongous waste of money printing everything again, and all the teachers have to be re-educated in order to be able to write the traditional form.
You talk as if kids growing up learning simplified characters can't read traditional literature. It is not true. I grew up under the new "education system" learning all the simplified version, and I can read (but not write) 98% of the traditional Chinese characters without a problem.
Traditional characters are part of the culture, but they are not hardly "erased". They are well preserved, people still can read them, but it doesn't mean they all have to use it. Latin is an essential part of western culture, how many westerners know it?
I am impartial between the two forms, and if put back in time, I wouldn't want to change to the simplified version, but it has happened, and it makes no sense to return at a huge cost while achieving little.
I'm not even sure why the PRC government undertook massive efforts, three large campaigns (1956, 1964, and 1977) to simplify our writing system. Yes, literacy was part of the goal. However, one would think that the simplest way to improve literacy is to actually INVEST IN EDUCATION, rather than changing our writing system that's been intact for thousands of years, just to satisfy some economic and ideological goal? This is the one of those ingenious shortcuts that only Mao and his radical leftists could dream up of.
The timing of these simplification campaigns is also noteworthy, because they all occurred around same period with corresponding political campaigns, anti-tradition/anti-rightest purges, and the cultural revolution. In fact, the 1964 simplification campaign was led by none other than Madam Mao (Jiang Qing), who wanted to completely purify and "cleanse" Chinese culture of any "outdated" elements, and used the character simplification campaign as one of the catalysts to start the cultural revolution in 1966. In fact, the 1977 simplification campaign was so radical that most Party officials and intellectuals resisted the change due to the aftershock of cultural revolution, and the plan was forced to be shelved until a later date after the cultural revolution.
When I learn any foreign language, I find that I have trouble learning just by pure listening. I always need to know (sometimes imagine in my mind) how it is actually written, which proves that when Chinese children learn languages, they rely on both sound and form from a very young age because just by recognizing the sound, it often doesn't help much.
Yes I had the some experience when I learned German.
I used to live in Switzerland and attended an evening German class. Most other students were European, and I was the only Chinese. I found the other students could remember words after listening to them, but I really needed to see how they were written to memorize. The teacher also said Chinese are visual learners.
what kind of BS is that. Superior in terms of what, easier for westerners to learn, for Christ's sake?
No. The primary role of a language is to transfer ideas from one human to another as easy and efficient as possible. One of the advantages of an alphabet-like system is the fact that you can write down a word or a concept that is unfamiliar. For example, if two Chinese farmers meet, can they write down a word that they heard about in common speech but never saw written down? The answer is no, in hieroglyphic systems you can't do that. You have to either see that word written down before, or know the instructions of how that specific character is made in advance. In fact, this is not just the problem of farmers. If I go around asking people who are fluent in traditional Chinese to write down a word like "snuffle" I might get 2 or 3 different variations. The more educated Chinese philologists would probably use 齉 , but I bet a regular person fluent in traditional Chinese wouldn't use this character, but perhaps just use 鼻塞 or something, which is technically incorrect. But again, since the word is not that common, most people simply don't know the proper way to write it since they don't see it in common use and never saw it written down before. (This might not be the best example, but there are many more examples like this, thousands in fact). To use a metaphor, it is all fine and dandy until you ask a person who never seen a bird to draw a bird. This is actually a big problem, and alphabet system is one of the solutions for it. It limits the number of letters in use (the alphabet), and it establishes a system of universal rules that restricts the combination of those letters (grammar). Thus, you cannot make up your own symbol, but still can write down a different concept. And you do not have to make some unique letters for the word "bird" even if you never seen a "bird".
Not gonna reply to the rest of your drivel about how Chinese culture NUMBER ONE !1!!!!1 I am discussing it from purely technical point, not sentimental or cultural point.
As I thought, the main opposition to modernizing the Chinese writing system can be summed up into 3 categories: cultural pride, tradition, and xenophobia. Chinese characters will be phased out in the future, just like Arabic numerals were adopted into Chinese and Japanese. When something works better, people will adopt it sooner or later. As for culture or tradition, who cares? It's not like China still uses traditional measurements anymore do they? No, I didn't think so. We're talking from a purely logical perspective, not from some romanticized mindset.
Regarding Spanish, as a native speaker myself, I find that view intriguing. Yes it's true I need more words and space to convey the same ideas. That doesn't hamper communication more than Chinese characters do, and Spanish has more homophones than English does, but we still get by just fine with Latin letters, we added modifications to it to suit our needs. Just like Japanese, in Spanish how you stress certain words also changes the meaning.
Talking about Korean, actually 60% of Korean has Chinese influence, not 30%. Those words are still written down in the native Hangul and nobody has trouble distinguishing meaning. 일 can mean one, work, or day. But the meaning is not difficult at all to figure out in a sentence. It is extremely easy. Korean proves that Chinese characters are not necessary, even Vietnamese. Vietnamese is a tonal language like Chinese, but uses Latin letters. If Korean and Vietnamese can do it, why not Chinese and Japanese? You don't even have to use a foreign alphabet like Vietnam did, Chinese already has a made for Chinese indigenous simple script called Bopomofo or Zhuyin. Or use pinyin which every mainland Chinese is familiar with already. It'd be nice to hear arguments for and against without such arguments having roots in romanticism, xenophobia, or elitism
No. The primary role of a language is to transfer ideas from one human to another as easy and efficient as possible. One of the advantages of an alphabet-like system is the fact that you can write down a word or a concept that is unfamiliar. For example, if two Chinese farmers meet, can they write down a word that they heard about in common speech but never saw written down? The answer is no, in hieroglyphic systems you can't do that. You have to either see that word written down before, or know the instructions of how that specific character is made in advance. In fact, this is not just the problem of farmers. If I go around asking people who are fluent in traditional Chinese to write down a word like "snuffle" I might get 2 or 3 different variations. The more educated Chinese philologists would probably use 齉 , but I bet a regular person fluent in traditional Chinese wouldn't use this character, but perhaps just use 鼻塞 or something, which is technically incorrect. But again, since the word is not that common, most people simply don't know the proper way to write it since they don't see it in common use and never saw it written down before. (This might not be the best example, but there are many more examples like this, thousands in fact). To use a metaphor, it is all fine and dandy until you ask a person who never seen a bird to draw a bird. This is actually a big problem, and alphabet system is one of the solutions for it. It limits the number of letters in use (the alphabet), and it establishes a system of universal rules that restricts the combination of those letters (grammar). Thus, you cannot make up your own symbol, but still can write down a different concept. And you do not have to make a unique letters for the word "bird" without ever seeing a "bird".
Not gonna reply to the rest of your drivel about how Chinese culture NUMBER ONE !1!!!!1 I am discussing it from purely technical point, not sentimental or cultural point.
without recognizing language is an essential part of the culture, there is no point in discussing with you. You probably would prefer a computer language which is 100% scientific with no exceptions and absolutely no historical and cultural content. That's probably your ideal language, or Esperanto.
You example is silly because the word you used are extremely bookish language from classical Chinese, instead of modern spoken language. So what's the point? Back in the days, those are actually what people would say. It is like saying English words are stupid because nobody calls water "hydrogen dioxide". Every language has its history and most have evolved substantially. I really have no idea what your point is, except to show your utter ignorance about language and culture.
Did I claim Chinese culture is no 1? In disputing against your random uneducated rant about Chinese written system inferior, I am suddenly saying Chinese culture is better than everything else? Don't put words into my mouth.
Why is "limiting the number of letters" good? You talk as if it is a great achievement, and why is it superior? Other languages like Chinese doesn't want to be bound by 20 something letter and repeat them over and over again, so that's "bad"? How? It obviously didn't prevent Chinese people to communicate with each other, or creating world class poems and literary works, did it? I fail to see how by using a lot more word parts create a problem. 1.3 Chinese people are using it just fine, or it is bad just because it is hard to master for foreigners? What exactly is your argument?
without recognizing language is an essential part of the culture, there is no point in discussing with you. You probably would prefer a computer language which is 100% scientific with no exceptions and absolutely no historical and cultural content. That's probably your ideal language, or Esperanto.
Ok, you are not interested in discussing the actual merits of different writing systems, but rather engage in demagoguery with a dash of chauvinism.
Thank you, have a good day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by theunbrainwashed
. It'd be nice to hear arguments for and against without such arguments having roots in romanticism, xenophobia, or elitism
I am afraid this thread quickly devolved into CD version of city vs city.
As I thought, the main opposition to modernizing the Chinese writing system can be summed up into 3 categories: cultural pride, tradition, and xenophobia. Chinese characters will be phased out in the future, just like Arabic numerals were adopted into Chinese and Japanese. When something works better, people will adopt it sooner or later. As for culture or tradition, who cares? It's not like China still uses traditional measurements anymore do they? No, I didn't think so. We're talking from a purely logical perspective, not from some romanticized mindset.
What do you mean "modernize"? Are you saying not using alphabets itself is backwards? I can't wrap my head around this idea. Maybe you think so precisely because you are used to alphabet-based language and don't realize other systems work just fine? Give me some solid reasons why the current Chinese written will eventually be abandoned?
And when you say "modernized", you mean how? People will give up Chinese characters and write in pinyin - the alphabets? That will be shocking. And exactly why would they do that? For you it sounds so much easier, but not for them. For me to look at an article in Chinese pinyin, it will be crazy - it may take 5 times the time the read just trying to figure out what each word means, and how does that "work better"?
You are saying if it is more convenient, then people will gradually shift toward it. But is that true? For example, in English, people say "I am", "You are" - why not say "I is", "you is" - for someone who doesn't speak a conjugated language, that sounds a lot easier and more convenient! Do you think that will happen? From you "purely logical perspective", does all the conjugation and irregular spelling in English make perfect sense? Why hasn't it been "modernized"?
The Chinese are still using the current Chinese, and will do so for the next 3000 years, not because of some vague national pride or out of culture preservation. They use it because that works just fine and there is no need to "modernize". Tell me, what kind of modernization measures western languages such as English, French, Spanish has taken in the past 500 years? Or you think it is just an issue for Asian countries? Even with the invention of personal computers, the Chinese are adapting just fine - my 70 year mother who hasn't learned the pinyin system can write words into her smart phones perfectly fine, and in a varieties of ways - if you think just because it is somehow more complicated to type Chinese characters into a computer, a billion Chinese will abandon their language and start using Latin letters, you are grossly mistaken.
Ok, you are not interested in discussing the actual merits of different writing systems.
OK, tell me, what makes the current Chinese written system not work and requires change? Enlighten me. So far, I haven't figured it out what kind of obstacles I have in writing Chinese characters vis-Ã -vis western languages.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
