Should Chinese Characters be Abolished?

[Marco]

@the_bear

But why did the Chinese create so many homophones? There’s certain sounds that are barely used in Chinese. Why put all your eggs in so few baskets? 籍及幾機即及集雞吉極基

It just seemed to evolve that way.

[OrangeOrganics]

Jin - Learn Chinese

[Marco]

@kurupted

Yeah it is. A short of bisexual, but common enough to call it its own word. I was googling and saw many examples of 3 and 4 words. Three is pretty damn common

Common is relative.

English has tens of thousands of syllables.

Chinese has 400.

Relatively speaking. It’s rare in English.

[Liam_Og]

@Marco

Zhuyin and Pinyin are literally the same. They’re letters describing the sounds. Your point doesn’t matter whether we use Pinyin or Zhuyin because they’re 1:1 convertible and equally inappropriate for reading Chinese

I think zhuyin is a little better because it can be written beside the character. So you see both the zhuyin and the character at the same time. Usually pinyin is written on another line. So you wind up looking back and forth.

Another plus of zhuyin, as a learner, is it allows you to focus on Chinese sounds using new symbols that eliminate existing ideas of what ‘b’ for example sounds like.

An additional thing that I think makes zhuyin better is one letter per sound, pinyin has two letters for some sounds.

I’d far prefer pinyin for typing though

[Explant]

Make zhuyin the written form like the roman styles and be done with it.

[Liam_Og]

@the_bear

But why did the Chinese create so many homophones? There’s certain sounds that are barely used in Chinese. Why put all your eggs in so few baskets?

If you say ‘cat’ ‘car’ ‘can’ etc in English you might notice that the a is slightly different in each one.

I read once that was one of the ways tonal languages evolve. If you say ca, ca, ca, for cat car can, and the meaning is already there in the way you said ‘ca’ now you got tones

[nz]

@Marco

Taiwanese often complain English is hard, but I’ve never heard anyone from Taiwan or China suggest turning the language upside down to accomodate them.

I agree with everything you said except this: How many Taiwanese do you hear that try to speak English using only Chinese sounds? “Ai wan-tah tu lear-nuh Yingalishuh. Will-uh you-wa beya-my frienduh?”.

But everything else you say about Chinese characters, you are correct. I remember when I first started learning Chinese, we did only pinyin until we were solidly using those words in listening/spoken language, then we would be introduced to the characters for those words (about a month later). At first, I thought characters were fun to write and a pain in the butt the read. By the end of the first semester, I couldn’t even understand the pinyin-only versions of the text because the characters provide too much meaning that pinyin lacks.

[Liam_Og]

@Explant

Make zhuyin the written form like the roman styles and be done with it.

I don’t know if that would work, because although zhuyin is an excellent pronunciation guide, reading it I imagine requires more brain operations than reading characters

[Marco]

@nz

I agree with everything you said except this: How many Taiwanese do you hear that try to speak English using only Chinese sounds? “Ai wan-tah tu lear-nuh Yingalishuh. Will-uh you-wa beya-my frienduh?”.

I think you might be missing my point. I’m saying they aren’t demanding us to change the entire language to accommodate them.

[nz]

@Marco

@nz

I agree with everything you said except this: How many Taiwanese do you hear that try to speak English using only Chinese sounds? “Ai wan-tah tu lear-nuh Yingalishuh. Will-uh you-wa beya-my frienduh?”.

I think you might be missing my point. I’m saying they aren’t demanding us to change the entire language to accommodate them.

This is true. Not learning the correct pronunciation is not the same as not wanting to learn to write. Though I’ve had plenty of students over the years use Zhuyin next to their English vocab to “help them with” pronunciation. It’s either that or KK. If only they had a teacher to teach them how to SOUND OUT ENGLISH WORDS. (caps is because of my frustration fighting the system in TW that enforces the idea that English is not totally phonetic and therefore not phonetic at all)

[nz]

@Liam_Og

@Explant

Make zhuyin the written form like the roman styles and be done with it.

I don’t know if that would work, because although zhuyin is an excellent pronunciation guide, reading it I imagine requires more brain operations than reading characters

It does not matter if you use zhuyin or pinyin. They are both exactly the same thing when it comes to their function – they tell you how to pronounce a character. One uses Chinese character looking script and the other uses the Roman alphabet. Other than that, their function is exactly the same, pronunciation. They do not, however, carry meaning because there are too many homophones in Chinese. This has already been said above.

[Liam_Og]

Yes, I know, I don’t think you read my post. That is not the point I was making

[nz]

I was responding more to @Explant

[Explant]

@Liam_Og

@Explant

Make zhuyin the written form like the roman styles and be done with it.

I don’t know if that would work, because although zhuyin is an excellent pronunciation guide, reading it I imagine requires more brain operations than reading characters

Why are you saying that as if it is a negative?

Its already learned (or at least taught), calculate time spent memorizing then put it into another asepct.

Reading should be considered basic literacy (it often is…but sill isnt: eg. See my typos here)

Learning to sound things out inadvertently also promotes other problem solving abilities that are SO desperately needed

The copy culture of relying on mainly memory hasnt exactly fared well when it comes to things like driving, innovation, efficiency etc.

[Liam_Og]

Thai seems to have an effective way of representing a tonal language alphabetically, I know nothing about it, but yeah, just piping in

I agree though that zhuyin and pinyin would both be inadequate as writing systems for chinese

[Liam_Og]

@Explant

Why are you saying that as if it is a negative?

Its already learned (or at least taught), calculate time spent memorizing then put it into another asepct.

Reading should be considered basic literacy (it often is…but sill isnt: eg. See my typos here)

Learning to sound things out inadvertently also promotes other problem solving abilities that are SO desperately needed

The copy culture of relying on mainly memory hasnt exactly fared well when it comes to things like driving, innovation, efficiency etc.

I see what you are saying and agree.

I wouldn’t throw the system out though, I’d set goals and let it evolve. If I was God

Obviously the handwriting challenge seems like missplaced burden on young children.

[Explant]

@nz

@Liam_Og

@Explant

Make zhuyin the written form like the roman styles and be done with it.

I don’t know if that would work, because although zhuyin is an excellent pronunciation guide, reading it I imagine requires more brain operations than reading characters

It does not matter if you use zhuyin or pinyin. They are both exactly the same thing when it comes to their function – they tell you how to pronounce a character. One uses Chinese character looking script and the other uses the Roman alphabet. Other than that, their function is exactly the same, pronunciation. They do not, however, carry meaning because there are too many homophones in Chinese. This has already been said above.

The advantage of zhuyin over say the english alphabet is that zhuyin has more sounds (letters/symbols/characters or however w want to call these shapes we asign sounds to…thats not te important bit) and extrapolates in tones. I suppose there are arguments for gettin rid of tones in this sense as well though.

I think the biggest issue with mandarin characters is we have an alphabet that sounds out pronouncoation. Then we magically make up a character with zero logic based on the symbols othe alphabet and thus we just create more work than is necessary. Its a memory thing. Not so unlike making petroglyphs a written modern norm…

Mandain is a beautiful historical reality, but its as efficient as square wheels.

[Liam_Og]

@Explant

Mandain is a beautiful historical reality, but its as efficient as square wheels

I think if I am not mistaken that alphabets in the Middle East and Europe evolved from ‘radicals’ from ‘characters’ too.

Factoid of the day.

Some of the earliest writing systems were not full languages, more like a code that could only represent some things. Then the first complete writing systems emerged later. And then alphabets emerged by expressing that phonetically using motifs borrowed from the earlier pictorial system.

Google is calling

[nz]

@Explant

The advantage of zhuyin over say the english alphabet is that zhuyin has more sounds (letters/symbols/characters or however w want to call these shapes we asign sounds to…thats not te important bit) and extrapolates in tones. I suppose there are arguments for gettin rid of tones in this sense as well though.

Three things:

1. Pinyin and zhuyin are the same. They have exactly the same amount of sound combinations because they are phonetic representation of the same language. There is NOTHING better about zhuyin except that is makes Taiwan different from China. You can use symbols derived from Chinese characters to show sounds (zhuyin) or you can put roman letters together to show sounds (pinyin). They serve the same function. The only reason foreign people in Taiwan are obsessed with zhuyin is that it sets them apart from people who properly learned pinyin in China or elsewhere.
2. Characters are not just made up. They have a lot of reasons for their structures. A quick history of written language in the West: you had hieroglyphics, some of which had symbolic representations and some of which had sound representations. Then the Phoenicians came and said “let’s just use the phonetic representations” and the Greeks said “cool, we’ll take that and make it ours” and then the Romans said “that’s nice, we’ll change it a bit and make a written language that lasts for a few thousand years and it is used pretty much everywhere on Earth”. Meanwhile, in China, characters were pictographic and evolved in a similar way to the Egyptians, only they didn’t make it confusing for even scholars and now there’s modern Chinese characters.
3. You can’t get rid of tones. Chinese is a tonal language. Meaning is carried in the tones.

[Liam_Og]

@nz

The only reason foreign people in Taiwan are obsessed with zhuyin is that it sets them apart from people who properly learned pinyin in China or elsewhere.

Just bear in mind that zhuyin is from China.

It was formulated in Beijing