Well this would be the same with a phonetic alphabet, wouldn’t it? People would just write more two word morphemes. So there won’t be a problem. Pretty much all the problems suggested for a phonetic alphabet are already present in the spoken language, and can be overcome in basically the same way. There’s also a major advantage in the spoken language and the written language actually being in coherent agreement.
Yes, it’s a curious idea. Is it possible to do calculus with Roman numerals?[/quote]
It’s hard enough with Arabic numberals. Roman numerals are only natural numbers, I think. I’m also not sure about higher mathematical operations. Regardless, it would seem like a nightmare.
Sad but true. European languages have moved on. We too had our calligraphy, our beautiful writing, and even the 19th century copperplate is regarded fondly. But people don’t use it anymore. Why not? There’s no point. It’s pretty, but inefficient. We abandoned it, and moved on. The world didn’t end. Our culture didn’t die. These skills are still learned and transmitted. We didn’t lose anything.
I had to take a three hour written exam the other month, and I started writing in cursive just out of habit. But I hadn’t written more than a page in cursive for about eight years. After a single page of cursive which was increasingly messy, my hand was aching. I switched to printing for the rest of the exam, and had no problems. I just don’t use cursive for anything but signing my name these days. It has no use for me, so it is discarded. This is evolution. Natural selection. Optimization. It’s not a bad thing. My university lecturer couldn’t care less if my writing is classically beautiful or not, they just want the facts.[/quote]
Grief! I can’t remember the last time I wrote in cursive script. Actually, I don’t know anyone who does. They still use (their) cursive script a lot in Russia and it’s a mass of squiggles. Far too hard to read. Whenever you encounter some old person’s writing, it takes about twenty minutes just to read the first line.
[quote][quote]If anything, coming to Taiwan has made me far less anal about English. I’d give up all my Commonwealth oddities if we were to completely overhaul the language. I’ve seen that English is a complete pain in the arse to learn and teach, and unnecessarily so. Languages change, and English certainly has a lot, so we’re only clinging to “culture” for the sake of it. Reform it and make it easier on everyone. It’s only because we get all these odd spellings and verb tenses hammered into us that we get through them, but they’re hardly necessary.
Trying to learn Chinese has made me realise how simple it is to actually learn an alphabet based language. The bits of Slavic languages I have studied are distantly related to English, though often not that closely, but the major difference is being able to hit the ground running with an alphabet.[/quote]
I’ve had the same experience. What’s more, living in another culture I’ve developed an increasingly appreciation for a fairly simple point. The purpose of language is communication. Ease of language learning and language use facilitates communication. Language is not a toy, it is not an artwork, it is not a an optional extra or cultural luxury, it’s an essential tool for human communication. Languages shouldn’t be fossilized. They should be regularly reviewed and overhauled. Their capacity to facilitate communication should be the primary metric by which they are judged.[/quote]
Perfectly said. I love to write, because it allows the exchange of ideas. I know for me to ever progress past the level of a four year old in Chinese, I’d have to seriously dedicate a massive amount of my life to the project. To digress back to the original topic this was part of (before it was split off), I have a lot of better things to do than study Chinese like that. It’s not user friendly in the least. I could see myself dipping in and out of other languages at leisure, but learning Chinese is anything but a leisurely pursuit.
Indeed. I used to think of English far too much in these terms until I came to Taiwan.
Compared to what? Compared to rates in post-modern China?
[/quote]
No compared to rates of literacy in pre-modern Europe with its superior orthography. I agree that using phonetic symbols to represent a language is better.
[quote]
Not given your definition of ‘pre-modern’. Clearly we were using the term to refer to two different eras (mine referring to the era before the 20th century).[/quote]
No I didn’t think so. My example of identifying the rise of the modern state with the French revolution is fairly well accepted. Spence’s In Search of Modern China also implicitly take this view. As does Eric Hobsbawm’s history of modernity.
[quote]
No, you’re not comparing like with like. You need to compare pre-simplified rates of literacy in China with post-simplified rates of literacy, in China. You seem to be saying that the simplification of characters produced no increase in literacy in China. Is that what you are saying?[/quote]
I don’t know. Neither do you. The increase in literacy in China corresponds with state’s commitment to universal education. That factor is so much more important than the methods of teaching that it masks the effects that innovations in teaching methods had. Maybe the switch away from brush pens to ball point pens was a technical innovation that improved literacy.
In Taiwan, better education also produced a highly literate society despite the absence of simplified characters.
So are you saying that Zhuyin did not result in any benefits in learning ability or speed, and no increases in literacy either?[/quote]
Again I don’t know, and neither do you. We simply don’t have enough empirical evidence.
[quote]Wait a minute, I’m not disputing that access to education was the main barrier for some time. What I’m disputing is whether or not methods of education were also a barrier. You seem to be arguing that the methods of education were no barrier, and that changes in the methods of education made absolutely no difference to the ease of learning or to levels of literacy. Is that what you’re arguing?
You would disagree with this for example?.. [De Francis] [/quote]
The very language of the passage you cite suggests its close association with the modernizing ideology of the time. “An illiterate nation is a weak nation … the only way out was to use the Phonetic Alphabet and characters together, as in Japan.” Did the peasants really “demand to learn phonetic symbols”? Or was that what they knew they were supposed to say? De Francis made many contributions, but his insistence that China has to romanize to modernize has now been proved wrong by history. In the dark days of the 193os when he first went to China, it may well have seemed that China’s script was holding back its people. Indeed, I think it was very reasonable and attractive hypothesis. But it was wrong.
The main reason people advocated romanization was because they thought it would help make China rich and powerful. That national goal is close to being realized. That has been the goal of modern Chinese society for the last 115 years, not
[quote]
All societies seek an accurate unified system of knowledge which explains the observable phenomena in human experience. The Chinese were no different. They had their natural philosophers, chemists, and scientists like everyone else. They were trying to achieve the same goal as everyone else.[/quote]
Now that China is rich and powerful, the ideological drive to language reform has nearly died out.
Could you describe which two specific eras you’re comparing, and what your sources are? I’m consistently seeing sources refer to a figure of 20% literacy in China during the mid-20th century. Are you comparing mid-20th century Chinese literacy to pre-modern European literacy? Would I find that pre-modern Europe only had 20% literacy?
I’m glad we agree on that.
Well I can understand that. You didn’t give your definition of ‘pre-modern’ previously, so I didn’t know. So I’d say that pre-modern Europe had a number of countries in which universal education was available, that is the availability of education (specifically literacy), to any member of society. The education culture and the university tradition supported by the church was the primary motivator of universal education.
Ok.
Well if I ignore the scholarly literature I’ve read by people who do think they know, yes.
Without evidence, I’m disinclined to believe this.
That’s not in dispute. What’s in dispute is whether or not it is easier to teach people Chinese (and thus improve literacy in a country with poor literacy), using simplified characters.
Ok, I think we do and I think that because of the scholarly literature I’ve read.
[quote]The very language of the passage you cite suggests its close association with the modernizing ideology of the time. “An illiterate nation is a weak nation … the only way out was to use the Phonetic Alphabet and characters together, as in Japan.” Did the peasants really “demand to learn phonetic symbols”? Or was that what they knew they were supposed to say? De Francis made many contributions, but his insistence that China has to romanize to modernize has now been proved wrong by history. In the dark days of the 193os when he first went to China, it may well have seemed that China’s script was holding back its people. Indeed, I think it was very reasonable and attractive hypothesis. But it was wrong.
The main reason people advocated romanization was because they thought it would help make China rich and powerful. That national goal is close to being realized. That has been the goal of modern Chinese society for the last 115 years, not[/quote]
Ok, so putting aside DeFrancis’ propagandizing on the one hand, and China’s propagandizing on the other, you seem to be saying that there’s no empirical evidence with which we can evaluate the effect of phoneticization on literacy. I’m unconvinced by this.
A relevant aside on this thread: one of the great benefits of the character system to those who have already learned the characters is that it allows a person with a reading knowledge of modern Mandarin and its characters to read to a significant degree (or at least glean critical information from) texts written in other Han language (e.g. Cantonese or Taiwanese), as well as Han-borrowing languages such as Japanese, without having formally studied that language. If such a person goes on to actually study another Han language (or classical Chinese for that matter), the characters serve as a very effective mnemonic device for recognizing cognates that would be unrecognizable, or nearly so, purely from their pronunciation or their romanized form.
Would I recommend someone who doesn’t already know the characters learn them solely for this purpose? Not in most circumstances. But once you’ve learned them, this is an enormous benefit, and it is one more important reason that educated Chinese readers are leery of the thought of giving them up.
[quote=“Rotalsnart”]A relevant aside on this thread: one of the great benefits of the character system to those who have already learned the characters is that it allows a person with a reading knowledge of modern Mandarin and its characters to read to a significant degree (or at least glean critical information from) texts written in other Han language (e.g. Cantonese or Taiwanese), as well as Han-borrowing languages such as Japanese, without having formally studied that language. If such a person goes on to actually study another Han language (or classical Chinese for that matter), the characters serve as a very effective mnemonic device for recognizing cognates that would be unrecognizable, or nearly so, purely from their pronunciation or their romanized form.
Would I recommend someone who doesn’t already know the characters learn them solely for this purpose? Not in most circumstances. But once you’ve learned them, this is an enormous benefit, and it is one more important reason that educated Chinese readers are leery of the thought of giving them up.[/quote]
Okay, but having an alphabet (specifically a Roman alphabet) means with a tiny bit of tweeking, I can pronounce everything from Polish to Somali to Turkish to Indonesian. How’s that for versatility?
[quote=“Rotalsnart”]A relevant aside on this thread: one of the great benefits of the character system to those who have already learned the characters is that it allows a person with a reading knowledge of modern Mandarin and its characters to read to a significant degree (or at least glean critical information from) texts written in other Han language (e.g. Cantonese or Taiwanese), as well as Han-borrowing languages such as Japanese, without having formally studied that language. If such a person goes on to actually study another Han language (or classical Chinese for that matter), the characters serve as a very effective mnemonic device for recognizing cognates that would be unrecognizable, or nearly so, purely from their pronunciation or their romanized form.
Would I recommend someone who doesn’t already know the characters learn them solely for this purpose? Not in most circumstances. But once you’ve learned them, this is an enormous benefit, and it is one more important reason that educated Chinese readers are leery of the thought of giving them up.[/quote]
Yes, that is a significant advantage. For people with a working knowledge of at least 3,000 characters.
Well this would be the same with a phonetic alphabet, wouldn’t it? People would just write more two word morphemes. So there won’t be a problem. [/quote]
I’m not sure how that’s comparable. Modern English doesn’t have nearly as many homonyms and 2-word morphemes as Mandarin. The way words are formed in Chinese (and then, as a consequence, the structure of pinyin despite using roman alphabet like English, is similarly limited) is very different from how words are formed ie spelt in English.
Or do u mean phonetic alphabet to spell Pinyin words? (that wsan’t clear). but I submit, pinyin as it exists today, still has problems. English has punctuation and spacing. You know automatically where one word ends and the next begins. A paragraph of just pure pinyin would not be convenient. you would have to have formal spacing.
Still, it would be very inconvenient. having 2-word morphemes helps some, but even 2-word morphemes can have homonyms, so we are back to context… Speaking Mandarin is OK, because you’re there; reading pages of pinyin is not that fun. I still think there’s a lot more guesswork. Even when I go back to look at my old emails written in pinyin (at one time, my computer lacked the MS pinyin program), it takes awhile to comprehend.
So I still maintain, hanyu pinyin is possible, but would need uphaul and modification to be a practical written language. but hey, that’s my opinion.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”][quote=“Rotalsnart”]A relevant aside on this thread: one of the great benefits of the character system to those who have already learned the characters is that it allows a person with a reading knowledge of modern Mandarin and its characters to read to a significant degree (or at least glean critical information from) texts written in other Han language (e.g. Cantonese or Taiwanese), as well as Han-borrowing languages such as Japanese, without having formally studied that language. If such a person goes on to actually study another Han language (or classical Chinese for that matter), the characters serve as a very effective mnemonic device for recognizing cognates that would be unrecognizable, or nearly so, purely from their pronunciation or their romanized form.
Would I recommend someone who doesn’t already know the characters learn them solely for this purpose? Not in most circumstances. But once you’ve learned them, this is an enormous benefit, and it is one more important reason that educated Chinese readers are leery of the thought of giving them up.[/quote]
Okay, but having an alphabet (specifically a Roman alphabet) means with a tiny bit of tweeking, I can pronounce everything from Polish to Somali to Turkish to Indonesian. How’s that for versatility?[/quote]
Okay, but I wasn’t addressing the issue of pronunciation. My point is that there are tradeoffs between an alphabetic/syllabary approach versus a character approach. The former is of great benefit in getting new learners up to speed. The latter provides considerable added value beyond the realm of equating printed with spoken words in Mandarin; but granted, this value only kicks in once you’ve basically mastered Mandarin and learned to recognize a few thousand characters. That’s a key reason why educated Chinese speakers usually take the opposite side of this issue from students of the Chinese language and professors concerned with basic Chinese language pedagogy. Alphabets and characters are tools serving largely separate, though somewhat overlapping (in the case of Chinese characters), functions. Each has utility that the other lacks.
[quote=“Fortigurn”][quote=“Rotalsnart”]A relevant aside on this thread: one of the great benefits of the character system to those who have already learned the characters is that it allows a person with a reading knowledge of modern Mandarin and its characters to read to a significant degree (or at least glean critical information from) texts written in other Han language (e.g. Cantonese or Taiwanese), as well as Han-borrowing languages such as Japanese, without having formally studied that language. If such a person goes on to actually study another Han language (or classical Chinese for that matter), the characters serve as a very effective mnemonic device for recognizing cognates that would be unrecognizable, or nearly so, purely from their pronunciation or their romanized form.
Would I recommend someone who doesn’t already know the characters learn them solely for this purpose? Not in most circumstances. But once you’ve learned them, this is an enormous benefit, and it is one more important reason that educated Chinese readers are leery of the thought of giving them up.[/quote]
Yes, that is a significant advantage. For people with a working knowledge of at least 3,000 characters.[/quote]
Yes, that’s right.
[quote=“Feiren”][quote]
I think that begs the question of how and why traditional states transform into modern, literate states, and as such, your idea does not satisfy a number of questions. Your idea only states that, China did not enter modernity until 1950s. One might want to ask how and why the early modern nations were able to do it first (UK, France), how some latecomers were able to do it well (Germany and Japan), etc.
[/quote]
[quote]
The invention of the modern state occurred very quickly. France was the first one around 1800. By the 1870s Germany and Japan, the latecomers, were well on the way.
When did Zhu X or Wang Yangming ever argue anything in front of the emperor? [/quote][/quote]
OK, i think this deserves a separate thread, because we are heading OT. but I still think you haven’t answered my first statement, which is that you stated merely that China did not enter “modernity” (which you haven’t defined or is this a Max Weber kinda modernity) until the 1950s.
Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming were neo-confucianists.
- I’m not trying to paint a portrait of a static society as in the Han was the same as the Tang and Ming and Qing.
- I’m trying to say that very early on, certain institutions and ideas created a framework and mindset which created limitations on the direction and scope of Chinese thought.
- Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming thought within the framework of Confucianism - they never abandoned it, never challenged it, never looked beyond it, because “other knowledge” was irrelevant. It’s not until the west comes (in force) that Chinese people look outside that framework. they don’t value scientific and technical inquiry, because it’s not valuable to them - that’s what Confucianism did to China. the scientists are few and isolated with no legacy and lost for most of China’s history (see the equivalent of Pascal’s triangle or Mozi’s philosophy, etc., even gunpowder - these were “picked up” or rediscovered or concurrently discovered by the west). Your examples of vernacular, popular literature doesn’t change that value system - they’re peripheral.
can we really separate this out? It’s hard enough keeping track of the main debate. I won’t respond to this again in this thread, but you’re welcome to have the last word.
[quote=“Rotalsnart”][quote=“Fortigurn”][quote=“Rotalsnart”]A relevant aside on this thread: one of the great benefits of the character system to those who have already learned the characters is that it allows a person with a reading knowledge of modern Mandarin and its characters to read to a significant degree (or at least glean critical information from) texts written in other Han language (e.g. Cantonese or Taiwanese), as well as Han-borrowing languages such as Japanese, without having formally studied that language. If such a person goes on to actually study another Han language (or classical Chinese for that matter), the characters serve as a very effective mnemonic device for recognizing cognates that would be unrecognizable, or nearly so, purely from their pronunciation or their romanized form.
Would I recommend someone who doesn’t already know the characters learn them solely for this purpose? Not in most circumstances. But once you’ve learned them, this is an enormous benefit, and it is one more important reason that educated Chinese readers are leery of the thought of giving them up.[/quote]
Yes, that is a significant advantage. For people with a working knowledge of at least 3,000 characters.[/quote]
Yes, that’s right.[/quote]
Sort of like how Chinese is really easy for people who know Chinese really well.
I think Chinese religious thought and superstition had a lot to do with the strangling of Chinese science as well. Like the Greeks, they were crippled by a religious cosmology which just wasn’t right. Early medieval Europe broke through that barrier thanks to the adoption of the Christian cosmology (Basil of Caesarea, John Philoponus), though Western science fought battles with latent pagan superstition and diehard Aristotelian nonsense for another thousand years. Just as the scientific continuum in the West had to be revived from its early death at the hands of the Greeks by the paradigm shift which Christianity brought, so the scientific continuum in the East had to be jumpstarted by a newly imported paradigm. For whatever reason, the Chinese just didn’t get it.
Jack, your comments on the influence of Confucianism are strongly in agreement with those of Kenneth Hsü:
[quote=“Fortigurn”]Sort of like how Chinese is really easy for people who know Chinese really well.
[/quote]
:roflmao:
thanks for the kenneth hsu reference - i’ll have to check it out.
Clever try, but you’ve missed the point. The point is not that Chinese is easy for people who know Chinese well (true as that may be).
The point is that people who know Chinese well, but only in its spoken or romanized form, enjoy considerably less of the benefits of Chinese than people who know it well in its character form also.
Clever try, but you’ve missed the point. The point is not that Chinese is easy for people who know Chinese well (true as that may be).[/quote]
I understood that wasn’t your point.
I understood that was your point. I agreed with it.
Fortigurn, Thanks for clarifying. Interesting thread.
Rotalsnart: That’s like saying an Olympic gymnast could do a lot of chinups. Obviously. The point is getting to that point though. Not an easy task. Likewise for Chinese. It’s a full time endeavour.
GuyInTaiwan, That’s not at all what I’m saying. But if I were to recast my point in the terms in your metaphor, it would be more along the lines of: yes, replacing Mandarin characters with Pinyin would definitely allow a lot of aspiring gymnasts to progress a lot faster and in a sense “level the playing field”; but on the flipside, there are certain cool moves and routines that would no longer be seen because you’ve restricted the kinds of gymnastic equipment allowed to be used.
But this gymnastics metaphor is limiting, because in the issue at hand, it is not just aesthetic value that is being lost overall but actual linguistic utility of certain kinds (as I’ve specified in my earlier posts).
GuyInTaiwan, That’s not at all what I’m saying. But if I were to recast my point in the terms in your metaphor, it would be more along the lines of: yes, replacing Mandarin characters with Pinyin would definitely allow a lot of aspiring gymnasts to progress a lot faster and in a sense “level the playing field”; but on the flipside, there are certain cool moves and routines that would no longer be seen because you’ve restricted the kinds of gymnastic equipment allowed to be used.
But this gymnastics metaphor is limiting, because in the issue at hand, it is not just aesthetic value that is being lost overall but actual linguistic utility of certain kinds (as I’ve specified in my earlier posts).[/quote]
The point I was making was that if you get really good at something, there is indeed a high level of transference to something similar. I’m sure someone who can play piano really well would certainly be at a massive advantage in learning the guitar, especially when we consider reading music. The point was simply that getting to be really good at something is itself a major achievement, and maybe it’s not that necessary to get that good or do something that complicated. To go back to the gymnastics metaphor, it might be well and good to be able to perform a routine on the roman rings, but if all I want is to be able to carry the shopping up a flight of stairs, it’s a bit of overkill and not very good in terms of the return on investment of one’s time.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]
The point I was making was that if you get really good at something, there is indeed a high level of transference to something similar. I’m sure someone who can play piano really well would certainly be at a massive advantage in learning the guitar, especially when we consider reading music. The point was simply that getting to be really good at something is itself a major achievement, and maybe it’s not that necessary to get that good or do something that complicated. To go back to the gymnastics metaphor, it might be well and good to be able to perform a routine on the roman rings, but if all I want is to be able to carry the shopping up a flight of stairs, it’s a bit of overkill and not very good in terms of the return on investment of one’s time.[/quote]
I don’t disagree with anything you are saying here in its own right, but I think we’re kind of talking past each other in relation to the original topic.
I’m looking at the topic from the perspective of two technologies (pinyin versus characters), and saying that these have different, though overlapping, utilities, and that the characters could be replaced with pinyin, but only at the cost of stripping out considerable utility from the overall written language. But this loss of utility would be felt more keenly by advanced language users, whereas newer language users would scarcely notice it and some would consider it a small price to pay for the newly introduced utility of a system that enables them to readily pronounce words at sight. My own (granted, subjective) preference is that both tools be preserved, whether ultimately through a mixed system like Japan’s, or through simply keeping the present system, especially given the increasing availability of language learning aids and computer aids that can readily put the pronunciations of the characters at your fingertips.