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virgiliopoeta -

Does anyone know if any of the character-simplification schemes ever contemplated a reduction in
the number of the characters so that each of the 1100 or so syllables in Mandarin would correspond
to one character only (instead of the 3 or 4 currently)?

It occurs to me that this might be a viable way of making literacy much more attainable, without
disturbing the strong attachment of Chinese people to the characters. There would be no problems
with homophony, because by definition each of the four tones of a given syllable would have its
own character (provided the tone-syllable were in actual use). Of course, this would not permit
the use of much semi-classical language, because quite different concepts would share the same
character, but it would very accurately reproduce the spoken language, and would avoid the trauma
of the literati in abandoning the commonest 1100 characters. I suspect that such a system would
not be much more difficult than learning English spelling, for example, whereas learning 3000 or
4000 characters may forever preclude achieving even Japanese standards of literacy, much less the
German or Scandinavian levels..

This is just a pet theory of mine, and I'm interested if anyone else has thought of it recently. I
presume the Chinese reformers of the last century thought of this possibility, but perhaps the
forces of conservatism were too strong to permit this? The number of characters WERE reduced, but
only from 6000 to 3500 or so, which still leaves Chinese with an ideographic system much more
complicated than ancient Sumerian, Akkadian or Egyptian. In those societies, like China, literacy
was monopolized by a closed caste of priests or scholars or bureaucrats.

Those archaic societies were finally conquered by the first people to have a true alphabet (both
consonants and vowels), viz the Greeks. The Greeks became the first people most of whose men could
read. We in the West are still basically Greeks, culturally, whereas the Far East remains
fascinated by China, of course.

English and French are in need of their own orthographic reforms, you know. Many of their
spellings are so aphonetic as to resemble ideographs, and the percentage of Frenchmen or Americans
that habitually read is noticeably lower than in Germany, where the writing system is highly
phonetic. I noticed that in Germany, even day laborers read a newspaper during their breaks, which
rarely occurs in America or France.

This may be another topic, but how much do Chinese workers read, and on what level? In Japan
certain experts have observed a very limited literacy among the masses, where the kanji are
concerned. And while Japan is now a very advanced nation technologically, the variety and range of
their technology remains distinctly inferior to the Germans.

How expensive are books in China? In Japan they are much more expensive than in Germany, and also
fewer in number, which suggests again that Japan has fewer habitual readers, due probably to their
difficult writing system..



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芳芳 -

Bigre!

This is a world wide rehandling of all writing systems that you want...
Your intentions seem good but i'm not sure that homonyms are really a problem for chinese people.
Maybe it will be easier for learners, but this shouldn't be a reason to change a language. As for
english and french orthographic reforms, please, get rid of the idea. I'm too frightened to see
one day everybody writing like teens write their SMS...










wushijiao -

There’s simply no way that China will change away from characters. Reforms in spelling seem to
only occur at times of national crisis or during passionate revolutionary times.

Of educated Han Chinese people over, say, 14 years old or so, almost all (say 90-95%) can read a
newspaper, I’d estimate. Moreover, illiterate people are completely powerless, politically
speaking. So their opinions really don’t matter, nor do the opinion of us learners of Chinese!

Most words are bisyllabic, with characters serving as prefixes and suffixes to give you a general
idea of what the word means. So, once you get to an intermediate level, I think the character
system makes learning words a bit easier to remember compared to some European languages.

Anyway, I still find talk about proposed reforms to be interesting. Here’s a thread you might be
interested in. This thread was started by David Moser, a fairly famous person in the learning
Chinese community:

http://www. /showth...ese+characters










anonymoose -

If the aim is only to simplify the written language, then surely reducing the number of characters
from the 4000 or so in common use to 1100, as you say, is a fairly arbitrary step. I mean, it's
still going to be complicated for learners, so I don't think the benefit would make the change
worthwhile. 'If' characters were to be reformed, then why not just move to pinyin? I mean, then it
really would be easy for most learners, since virtually everyone worldwide recognises latin
characters even if they are not used in their native language. In spite of some people arguing
that written chinese would be too ambiguous, given the number of homophones, my personal opinion
is that it would be feasible. And if latin script is too alien to the Chinese, then how about a
system like Korean? Those characters look similar enough to Chinese characters, yet are
constructed from an 'alphabet' of just 24 elements. Each chinese syllable could easily be
represented in such a way by combining elements for 'initials', 'finals' and tones into a single
character.
Having said that, I've just been playing the devil's advocate here. I'm in no favour of abolishing
or reducing the number of characters. In fact, it was this interesting writing system that
attracted me to Chinese in the first place.

Now, with regard to your point about the number of habitual readers in China, Japan and Europe, I
don't agree. Books may be expensive in Japan, but guess what, everything in Japan is expensive. On
the other hand, books are ridiculously cheap in China, at least by European standards. I don't
think the price of books and the number of readers is related to the complexity of the language.
(The number of readers may be related to the price of books, but that is a separate issue.)
Assuming your supposition that Japan has less habitual readers than Germany is true, I'd say a
more likely explanation would be that Japanese people simply don't have as much spare time to
devote to activites such as reading as do Europeans.
I think the number of habitual readers of a particular language are much more influenced by
factors such as culture and education than the inherent complexity of the language.










virgiliopoeta -

Actually, I strongly agree that pinyin is a much better vehicle for a Chinese writing system than
mere character reduction. It is true that there is a certain limited problem with homophones if
the tones are not indicated, but on the other hand, if polysyllabic words are written as one word
and not as a succession of isolated syllables, this provides MUCH MORE contextual sense clues than
the spoken language. So, what is lost through not indicating the tones is gained by combining
syllables into words. Also, as many have pointed out here before, the Chinese already use pinyin
constantly in typing.

I think it is a great irony that so many traditionalists - people who literally worship the
characters - end up using English, a foreign language to communicate, when Chinese would really
serve their needs better, and would doubtless be learnt by many more people throughout the world,
if it only used an alphabet. It is pointless to lament that an alphabet would cut Chinese off from
their cultural roots - which are indeed very precious to all humanity - for they are ALREADY cut
off, by abandoning the classical literary language. But this abandonment was as inevitable as that
Europe would abandon Latin.

I strongly disagree that 90% or more of Chinese can read a newspaper or novel with no problem.
Among the Chinese I know this is not true. Even those that do, continually guess at the exact
meaning in a way that would be unimaginable in the West.

I agree that it is most unlikely that any serious reform of the Chinese writing system will likely
be attempted by the authorities in the near future. In China the educated minority exerts a
tremendous pressure to keep things the way they are, or to INCREASE the complexity, because this
gives them a great socio-economic advantage that alphabet-using elites do not have. This is an old
theory, but no one has ever seriously challenged it. Communism struggled against this regrettable
tendency, but appears to be losing the battle.

I would like to make it clear that I am not on a crusade to tell others how to write any language.
It is however very interesting to think about such questions.

My interest in this subject has been intensified because of my translation of the Aeneid into
English verse, where I have had to devise a phonetic alphabet to indicate the correct
pronunciation of the proper nouns such as Anchemolus or Euander.

There is a fascinating story about the role that the Japanese kanji played in their defeat in the
last world war. I don't know if it's true. Supposedly, the American and British code-breakers
broke the Japanese code because Tokyo didn't change them very often - it was simply too
inconvenient to change thousands of signs every few days, and the authorities assumed that
Westerners could not understand them. Indeed, one would think that the code of a complicated
writing system would be more, not less difficult to break, but apparently that is not how it
turned out. Everyone knows of course, that the Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk at Midway
because the Americans knew exactly where they were, from reading the Japanese codes.

In retrospect it is amazing that the Japanese could have made such progress by the 40s, with whole
villages full of illiterates - illiterate because of the kanji. But even as they were invading
China, they were still blinded by their respect for the Chinese characters.

Finally, I would observe that there is no NECESSARY connection between the use of a highly
phonetic alphabet and national power. Latin America uses two languages with highly phonetic
writing systems, but remains weak and disorganized, because in most of these countries a few rich
landowners monopolize all power. The whole area is a revolution waiting to happen, and has been
for two centuries.

On the other hand, the use of a clumsy, archaic writing system definitely does place very real
limits on what a people can achieve, or so history would seem to teach us. Even today neither
Japan nor China have anything like the military power that America and Russia have. Japan has
indeed achieved great technological prowess, but largely by copying European science, and their
system seems now to have ossified, with most of their companies bankrupt. Japan is now further
behind Germany in the sciences (and in export markets) than she was 30 years ago.

Meanwhile, outside of Latin America, the countries in the West with the most phonetic writing
systems are also the most dynamic economically: Germany, Scandinavia, Holland, Italy and Spain.
France, with a less phonetic orthography, is less dynamic, and least dynamic of all are Britain
and America, where the writng system is so unphonetic as to be of almost Chinese complexity, at
least so far as the vowels are concerned.

Having said all this, I personally find the Chinese characters very interesting to learn, partly
because I like most Chinese people I have met, and can well understand how many Chinese would
value their writing system so much. Alas, they will pay dearly one day for giving so much time to
the mere mechanics of writing.










liuzhou -

One question virgiliopoeta, if you don't mind.

Do you actually know Chinese?










ange9s -

The Germans lost the second world war without Kanji, and I'm with Liuzhou, i've heard plenty of
beginning Chinese students wondering why they had to learn hanzi instead of just pinyin. If your
ideas were more specific, you might differentiate yourself from them.. Try reading a Tang poem in
pinyin (or hanzi for that matter, as a foreigner) and deciphering any meaning out of it.










ange9s -

I'd also be interested in finding out where these statistics come from (such as how many day
laborers are reading and what), as I suspect it's just conjecture on your part. Does having a
higher population of habitual readers make a country stronger? I'd suggest that if those habitual
readers are habitually reading The DaVinci Code, a country would be better off with a bunch of TV
watchers. If you think Germany's destined to return as a world power based on its propensity for
reading, I'd have to disagree (I have been impressed by their showing at the World Cup, though).










ange9s -

Sorry to post again, but I'd also point out that, despite what the one book you read that caused
you to garner this whole opinion has told you, Latin America is a continent, not just a single
country. And they speak other languages, not just Spanish and Portuguese.










Shadowdh -

It never ceases to amaze me when an incredibly ethno centric view point is offered at how the x
can do better if only they followed y...

I have heard that there are about 1600 syllables in 汉语... is this not correct...??

Each language has their foibles... deal with it...












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