Should mainland China return to the usage of traditional characters? (kids, cons)
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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
Did you read my post? I already told you why it won't work well.
Also, all Chinese people learn pinyin in school now, but nobody likes to use it to write.. Too hard to read.
I heard Chinese are the fastest readers in the world. Not sure if it is true, but it makes some sense.
Did you read my post? I already told you why it won't work well.
Also, all Chinese people learn pinyin in school now, but nobody likes to use it to write.. Too hard to read.
I heard Chinese are the fastest readers in the world. Not sure if it is true, but it makes some sense.
Why won't it work well? Introduce spacing between words, and accent marks to signify exactly how a word is supposed to be pronounced, and you already know the meaning of it once your eyes scan it. You already know pinyin and it has the tone marks on the words to distinguish them from another word. You can add more marks if necessary. Or, what's wrong with using Zhuyin?
If the argument is why use a foreign alphabet to transcribe Chinese, then use one the Chinese created themselves! Seems simple enough, and it accurately transcribes ALL sounds in Mandarin. I mean, why wouldn't it? You guys made it. Or, if that takes up too much space like another argument I read on here, then get some inspiration from 한글 (hangeul) which takes up the same amount of space that Chinese characters (漢字/한자 in Korean) do, and you can combine several sounds into one space. There are options available.
As for lost meaning because the unique characters are gone, Korean doesn't have that problem. 일 can mean day, work, or one (Sino-Korean). The word next to it tells you which meaning it is. 일년 doesn't mean one work or one day, it means one year. You don't need 一年 to tell you that, since 년 already means year, it can't mean anything else. 一年生 is 일격학생. 학생 means student, and only student. 학 school, 생 thinker, student! It's not hard....you just need the will. The Koreans recognized this 600 years ago, but elitism kept hangeul for the poor masses, and Chinese characters for the upper class of society/
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Originally Posted by botticelli
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.
What I mean by modernize is stop writing in a system that is based on, literally, ancient history. Chinese characters are literally modern, simplified versions of hieroglyphic drawings that became more and more simple over thousands of years. Logically following it's conclusion, Chinese characters will, one day, be abandoned. I can predict that the first stages of that will be after the Cultural Revolution generation completely dies off. The extreme simplification proposed in the 1970s was opposed because of the fallout of the Cultural Revolution. I have no doubt in my mind the CCP will push this again after the "old guard" is no longer politically relevant
Last edited by theunbrainwashed; 02-12-2015 at 03:35 PM..
Why won't it work well? Introduce spacing between words, and accent marks to signify exactly how a word is supposed to be pronounced, and you already know the meaning of it once your eyes scan it. You already know pinyin and it has the tone marks on the words to distinguish them from another word. You can add more marks if necessary. Or, what's wrong with using Zhuyin?
If the argument is why use a foreign alphabet to transcribe Chinese, then use one the Chinese created themselves! Seems simple enough, and it accurately transcribes ALL sounds in Mandarin. I mean, why wouldn't it? You guys made it. Or, if that takes up too much space like another argument I read on here, then get some inspiration from 한글 (hangeul) which takes up the same amount of space that Chinese characters (漢字/한자 in Korean) do, and you can combine several sounds into one space. There are options available.
How do you know Korean script works better than Japanese or Chinese? Yes, it is easier to learn, but is it really more efficient for adults to read and write?
What's wrong to make the children work a little harder but benefit from it later in their life?
As you may have known from Chinese words in Korean, there is no clear definition for "words" in Chinese. People won't always agree where the word boundary is.
How do you know Korean script works better than Japanese or Chinese? Yes, it is easier to learn, but is it really more efficient for adults to read and write?
What's wrong to make the children work a little harder but benefit from it later in their life?
As you may have known from Chinese words in Korean, there is no clear definition for "words" in Chinese. People won't always agree where the word boundary is.
It is more efficient. 한글 is said to be the only only alphabet in the world that is scientific based, rather than arbitrary symbols like Latin letters. With Hangul, it is possible to transcribe more than 20,000 sounds based on the arrangement of each jamo. 유 칸 이벤 라잍 인그리씨 왿 잇 (yu kan eben rait Ingulish wit it/you can even write English with it). What's more efficient? Spending hundreds of hours learning how to write every word in your language, or spending a couple hours learning an alphabet? It took me 8 hours total to learn the Korean script and the sounds that go with it. I can read Korean webpages, even if I don't understand everything, and I can figure out the meaning of words I don't know by what's around it. You can't do that in Chinese or Japanese. Even if you can, you still don't know how to read it. That's my personal experience. I know about 2 dozen characters, I know their meaning, but I don't know how to read them. If I don't know how to read them, how can I input them on a computer efficiently?
There isn't. But, Korean had those growing pains too when Hangul was first introduced. How do they space out words that have been written all in a straight line with Chinese characters for centuries or thousands of years? It's not that difficult. If I can picture in my head something like 中国人 I can write it down as zhongguo ren. Combine similar ideas into one word, and space out the ones that don't always go together, like ren. A convening of the leading Chinese language scholars will have to happen, and only then will new conventions be written. That's what happened with Korean, that's what happened with Vietnamese. If anything, Vietnamese is probably the best representative of what can be done, since Vietnamese was influenced more by Chinese than Korean was; also add the fact that Vietnamese is a very tonal language unlike Korean (I believe there are 6 tones in Vietnamese, as opposed to 4 in Chinese). Vietnamese went from the 2000 Chinese character writing system to the Latin alphabet and created special marks that denote tone, stress, and pitch. No word looks exactly the same, and each word is spelled out exactly how it's pronounced.
Of course I'm just arguing semantics. Chinese and Japanese can do whatever is more expedient for themselves, but I really doubt that Chinese characters will last another 100 years. All the dominoes have fallen, only Japanese and Chinese remain as the last holdouts of a writing system that began thousands of years ago. Vietnam phased them out more than 100 years ago, Korea has had a dual system since the mid 1400s, but is almost completely phased out in the ROK, and completely phased out in the DPRK. In the ROK, the only places you'll find hanja are in some people's names on their birth certificate (with Hangul , but only Hangul is used in all other instances) and in certain periodicals where maybe 1 or 2 hanja are used, at most, and it's always in parenthesis. The South Korean government, by law, publishes government documents in Hangul only.
From Wikipedia's Hangul page:
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Because of the clustering of syllables, words are shorter on the page than their linear counterparts would be, and the boundaries between syllables are easily visible (which may aid reading, if segmenting words into syllables is more natural for the reader than dividing them up into phonemes).[35] Because the component parts of the syllable are relatively simple phonemic characters, the number of strokes per character on average is lower than in Chinese characters. Unlike syllabaries, such as Japanese kana, or Chinese logographs, none of which encode the constituent phonemes within a syllable, the graphic complexity of Korean syllabic blocks varies in direct proportion with the phonemic complexity of the syllable.[36] Unlike linear alphabets such as Latin-derived ones, the Korean orthography allows the reader to "utilize both the horizontal and vertical visual fields";[37] finally, since Hangul syllables are represented both as collections of phonemes and as unique-looking graphs, they may allow for both visual and aural retrieval of words from the lexicon.
I don't see any reason why China (or other countries using the Chinese language as their lingua franca for that matter) should revert to the use of traditional characters. The entire exercise to simplify the orthography was to eliminate the threshold of difficulty when Chinese people are first introduced to the script. Take note that I said 'Chinese' and not 'foreigners'. There already is a system of thought involved in the Chinese language (like any other languages) and suggesting that it should even attempt to use the Latin alphabet is just ludicrous.
Every culture views the world differently and this is reflected, in part, via their language. I don't see why Chinese should change its writing/grammar/pronunciation simply because it seems to be the right way according to another culture's interpretation.
"(Korean) is more efficient...based on the arrangement of each jamo. 유 칸 이벤 라잍 인그리씨 왿 잇 (yu kan eben rait Ingulish wit it/you can even write English with it)"
This. Replicating the phonetics of a target language can be done with almost any other languages, even Chinese: 由肯一奔来特英各力思微一特。 (You ken yi ben lai te ying ge li si wei yi te). Alright, it sounds ridiculous and doesn't make any sense but the point is just to show that phonetic replication of any language doesn't mean efficiency. What's so efficient about it? Okay, so you can stack 'sounds' on top or beside each other like 한글 to create a myriad of words; it's sort of like Lego but that's only as efficient as you perceive it to be, again, from an outsider's point of view.
"If anything, Vietnamese is probably the best representative of what can be done...created special marks that denote tone, stress, and pitch. No word looks exactly the same."
Yikes. Vietnamese, where do I begin? From a purely orthographical and aesthetic point of view, I think this could be the worst script in existence, what with its over-zealous placement of diacritic marks over pre-existing ones: Hệ thống chữ viết là một trong những thảm họa lớn và một nỗi đau để nhìn và o trong một thời gian dà i.. Okay, it's just a personal preference and everyone has differing standards of beauty but for this orthography, no way.
Experiments have shown Chinese children learned to read and write faster when using a phonetic alphabet to write Chinese than when using characters. Moreover, they also made more progress learning other subjects.
A few dozen symbols to learn versus a few thousand? It should seem likely that it would be easier to learn the first than the latter even if it hadn't been tested.
Experiments have shown Chinese children learned to read and write faster when using a phonetic alphabet to write Chinese than when using characters. Moreover, they also made more progress learning other subjects.
A few dozen symbols to learn versus a few thousand? It should seem likely that it would be easier to learn the first than the latter even if it hadn't been tested.
Where are the experiments done?
No children in China (or any where Chinese is taught) learn to read and write with phonetic alphabet alone. In fact it would be illegal. All Chinese children start to learn characters in grade 1.
There is not doubt that alphabet is easy for children. The real question is, whether it is better for adults to use.
Of course I'm just arguing semantics. Chinese and Japanese can do whatever is more expedient for themselves, but I really doubt that Chinese characters will last another 100 years. All the dominoes have fallen, only Japanese and Chinese remain as the last holdouts of a writing system that began thousands of years ago. Vietnam phased them out more than 100 years ago, Korea has had a dual system since the mid 1400s, but is almost completely phased out in the ROK, and completely phased out in the DPRK. In the ROK, the only places you'll find hanja are in some people's names on their birth certificate (with Hangul , but only Hangul is used in all other instances) and in certain periodicals where maybe 1 or 2 hanja are used, at most, and it's always in parenthesis. The South Korean government, by law, publishes government documents in Hangul only.
In fact, the reason why Koreans stopped using Chinese characters is largely rooted in their nationalism. After WWII, they wanted to get rid of Japanese and Chinese influence as much as possible.
In recent years, Japanese government actually added some Chinese characters in their list of "regularly used hanji", not the opposite. So obviously they find it necessary to keep using Chinese characters. J
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