If the Chinese weren’t open to to reforming their language, bopomofo, Hanyu Pinyin, and simplified characters wouldn’t exist and the PRC/ROC governments would still be writing with classical Chinese. It’s not as if a serious undertaking to impose romanization wasn’t taken. The Chinese communists tried a phased-in approach using stages of simplified characters with the end goal of romanization. It failed.
Romanization had its best chance for widespread success in the two to three decades following the fall of the Qing had the government tried to impose such a system then. That window of opportunity has passed although it may yet come again, who knows.
No one here has suggested that the Chinese are completely closed to reforming their own language. I’ve actually pointed out that they’re a lot more open to reforming their language than a number of foreigners are.
It didn’t fail, it was prematurely abandoned because of cultural and political opposition. It’s not as if the fault lay with the romanization system.
If the Chinese aren’t closed to the idea of reforming their language, then the window of opportunity is still right there.
But when do the Chinese throw off the alphabet in favour of characters? Do they continue to use it in their advance writings? Into adulthood? If not, why not? If modern Chinese writings can be understood by using an alphabet, I challenge you to take a Jin Yong novel, romanize (or bopomofo) the first page, and have a native speaker understand it with the same ease (or even half the ease) as characters.
To put it simply, I remain unconvinced of your claim that the Chinese have been learning how to write “properly” using an alphabet. Unless you define “properly” to be the writing level of a grade schooler.
I didn’t say they did. I’ve simply been making the point that contrary to popular opinion it is not impossible to learn and communicate in written Chinese using an alphabet.
Why not? Culture! Tradition! Social pressure! They’re taught that Zhuyin is a kiddy’s tool for learning ‘grownup language’. Certainly no rational pedagogic reason.
Are you saying that modern Chinese writings can’t be understood by using an alphabet? Just so I understand.
So I understand you, are you claiming that it’s impossible to write Chinese above the level of a grade schooler if you’re not using traditional characters?
Chinese characters have a very long history of being changed, simplified, made more complicated, simplified again, replaced, tossed out, and alphabetized. It’s nothing new, and nor is the opposition to it. I’m sure the oldtimers back in the ‘oracle bones’ era were saying things like ‘Ar, this newfangled bronze script be only good for puling churls’, ‘Ee, canst write nowt but a tottering fen-sucked hedge-born scrawl in’t!’, and ‘B’gods, ye modern turtles are a common poor lot, the puny bladderwracked puttocks render shells not one demi-john so good as yesteryore!’.
I don’t think he meant ‘completely’.
No, it was abandoned. There’s a difference between something failing after being implemented correctly, and being abandoned before it is fully implemented. It was abandoned due to the same cultural pressure we see today. The same arguments my Taiwanese friends use when they claim that Chinese cannot be written in simplified characters, or all the meaning will be lost.
But the Chinese are; thus, the window is not.[/quote]
Sorry, are you now saying that the Chinese are closed to the idea of reforming the language?
A phonetic written system would convey information in the same way as spoken Chinese, and would work. Anything that can be spoken and understood can be transcribed phonetically. If you walk up to someone and say “shi4,” no one will understand you.
The same is not true for the written Chinese of today, which maintains classical conventions. A literary heritage would be lost if characters were abandoned.
There would be major cultural barriers to giving up characters. Family names come to mind, just as an example. A cultural heritage would be lost. It’s hard to imagine the Chinese the same way without their characters.
A duel system trying to gain the advantages of both could be interesting, but probably more effort than it would be worth? I guess it would lead to the usage of characters fading away over time.
Why not? Culture! Tradition! Social pressure! They’re taught that Zhuyin is a kiddy’s tool for learning ‘grownup language’. Certainly no rational pedagogic reason.[/quote]
Just out of curiosity, can you read modern advanced Chinese literature?
Are you saying that modern Chinese writings can’t be understood by using an alphabet? Just so I understand.[/quote]
Modern Chinese writing, especially advanced literature, contain many classical elements that cannot be understood with an alphabet or without prior knowledge of the underlying characters.
But the Chinese are; thus, the window is not.[/quote]
Sorry, are you now saying that the Chinese are closed to the idea of reforming the language?[/quote]
Zhuyin, Hanyu Pinyin, and character simplification were all done at a time when the idea of romanization was still thought of by many as something desirable and achievable. The pendulum has swung the other way for now. It may swing back in the future.
If I wanted to implement an evolutionary way to remove characters from writing, a dual writing system is definitely the way to go. It’ll end up something like Japanese with a slow degradation of character use over time, although it’ll be hard to say if characters will ever go away. At the very least, I think names will still be written using characters. It will take a long long time but is a much more practical approach than switching completely over to a phonetic system right away.
occhimarroni: I think you’re missing the point Fortigurn and I are making. Essentially, a large number of people are saying Chinese can’t (and won’t) be reformed. Instead, Chinese learners will grind on wasting what must amount to tens of thousands of hours. In so doing, this completely hobbles both the culture and the language from being those of scientific innovation and international commerce.
As to the point about high literature being unreadable, that seems like a fairly big trade off for efficiency. How often does your average Taiwanese person, especially of the bin lang chewing variety, ever read such stuff? Yet he has this huge millstone around his neck just to learn how to fill out a withdrawal slip at the bank. It’s like encumbering English speakers with labouring through any pre-modern English, Ancient Greek or Latin, just so we could read our classics or high literature. Most of us exist quite fine without such abilities, or if we must, we use a secondary text. Actually, take high literature in any language (including modern English) and half the subtleties – injokes and obscure cultural references – will be lost on a large part of the population. So what? This whole thing is like cramming music notation down the throat of some guy who just wants to find a tab to play a three chord Bob Dylan song.
Guys. It’s a total non-debate. It’s completely bizarre on so many levels. If this is truly the best thing for the language and the Chinese speaking diaspora, it will happen organically. If it isn’t, or what’s more likely, isn’t important enough to spend time and money on, it won’t.
I’m not sure where you get the idea that having a simple, easy to learn, non-complex language is a marker of ‘success’ for a group of people.
High litereature is not the only place where classical elements are used although you’ll find that’s where it occurs the most. Take a children’s story book aimed at junior high students or upper grade elementary students and you’ll find plenty of classical elements that are ill suited for romanization. Even newspapers, editorials, and your average online netizen tend to indulge in classical structures every so often.
Phonetic systems have higher efficiency for writing in general as well as language learning during early to intermediate stages. Characters have higher efficiency when reading especially past the intermediate level, as indicated by Buttercup many pages ago. I read a whole lot more than I write and that is true for all the languages that I use. Thus, I prefer characters. YMMV.
This is totally a oui-debate, a never ending one like the never ending TI/Uni debate with the same talking points being regurgitated over and over again. This current debate isn’t any different.
What ‘literary heritage’ would be lost? The kind of ‘literary heritage’ we ‘lost’ when we stopped writing in Anglo Saxon? Languages change. It’s natural and inevitable. There is no real ‘loss’, only change.
Ah, this is really it, isn’t it? Culture. Tradition.
Yes it would, because people would find them more useful.
No. I can hardly read any Chinese literature at all, in Chinese characters.
When you say ‘many classical elements’, do you mean ‘folk etymologies’, ‘ideas associated with individual strokes’, or something? What are these 'classical elements which cannot be understood without an alphabet or prior knowledge of the underlying characters?
That aside, let’s return to the point. Can the meaning be understood if it’s expressed phonetically, and not in characters?
So once again, it’s just cultural resistance.
Excellent points.
Clearly it isn’t, because it’s a centuries old debate in Chinese history, and in the last 100 years it has become particularly important.
Not necessarily. Some of the greatest benefits in language development happen as a matter of chance or enforcement. English benefited immensely through developments which were the product of brutal conquest or historical accidents. Chinese has certainly had the same experiences, a number of influential changes taking place not ‘organically’ but as the result of royal decrees and political expediency.
I’m not sure who suggested this. It wasn’t me. What has been suggested is that simple, easy to learn, non-complex language has profound social benefits over complicated, difficult to learn, and complex language. The empirical evidence for the advantages of simplified Chinese over traditional Chinese, and alphabetization over characters, have been well documented in the Chinese experience over the last century. I’m not sure it would be possible to convince them that they’ve all been doing it wrong, and that really they’re making things worse for themselves now that millions more people find it easier to learn how to read and write.
That’s good to know!
Exactly why are they ‘ill suited for romanization’? What is it that gets ‘lost’? Is it the meaning of the words?
That’s why the Chinese adopted them specifically for that purpose. That’s why Mesopotamia adopted them around 4,000 years ago.
Certainly. I’ve made mention of this myself. But the language learning process is crippled with inefficiency at least up to the intermediate level. That’s why they don’t throw traditional characters at kindy kids here, they use Zhuyin.
When you say ‘many classical elements’, do you mean ‘folk etymologies’, ‘ideas associated with individual strokes’, or something? What are these 'classical elements which cannot be understood without an alphabet or prior knowledge of the underlying characters?[/quote]
Classical elements means akin to classical Chinese, where single character words are used over multicharacter words, chengyu are used, four character constructs are used. No one speaks that way because homophones get in the way and the grammar, while perfectly natural on the written page, is very unnatural when spoken.
No.
Here’s a simple example. A short story that I read many moons ago ended with this sentence: Wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2, wo3 mang2. What’s the author trying to say?
That’s taken from flob blah somewhere. It’s an in-joke, no? I’m cool?
All I will say guys, is that if I had a way to collect, I’d bet a high sum on the miniscule chances of Chinese being alphabetically spelled within a thousand years. If anything, the amount of characters is going to increase.
Ok, so explain again what’s missing when classical Chinese is written phonetically? Chinese characters need to be preserved because of some classical written style which typically no one uses anymore and which is very unnatural when spoken?
I have no idea. I wouldn’t have any more idea if you showed me the characters. Are you trying to tell me that no one else would have any idea either, no matter how much Chinese they knew?
No one uses anymore? I think this shows your ignorance of how modern Chinese is written.
I have no idea. I wouldn’t have any more idea if you showed me the characters. Are you trying to tell me that no one else would have any idea either, no matter how much Chinese they knew?[/quote]
That’s correct. Go ahead, ask around. Some may guess at it and may even get it right, but none of them will be absolutely sure that they are interpreting the sentence correctly, even if they know every single last Chinese character, word, and phrase that was ever invented.
I actually said ‘typically no one uses anymore’, which I gathered from your posts. I’m sorry if I misunderstood you. Is it true then that modern Chinese is typically written in the same classical style to which you’re referring? I’ll read the newspaper and see classical Chinese? Full of Chengyu is it?
It’s no surprise that I’m ignorant of how modern Chinese is written, given that I barely know 500 characters. So explain again what’s missing when classical Chinese is written phonetically?
How is this any different if characters are used? I don’t see the issue. As I’ve already pointed out, if you show me the characters I still won’t have any idea what it means, so how are the characters supposed to be helping?
