It all started with an entry over at Languagehat's blog. Judging by the churn in the commentary, you'd think there was more at stake than a writing system. I don't think anybody believes that the han4zi4 (漢字 the Chinese writing system) is going to be replaced anytime soon. Just like I find it hard to believe that the current English orthography will either. Eric Lien also has some cogent cons against any proposed romanization schemes. Setting aside the vast cultural importance that Chinese characters have, I still don't see why Chinese couldn't be written well in an alphabetic script. The Koreans and the Vietnamese have both made the leap from logographs to alphabets and syllabaries.
[Addendum 10/07/03: Hanji na thak e-bat chhui-chhiu to phah si-kat (You cannot understand all the Han characters even if you studied until you could tie your beard into a knot.) Old Taiwanese saying courtesy of Wi-vun Taiffalo Chiung's paper that Kerim linked to in the commentary.]
[Addendum 10/09/03: Eric Lien has a new entry on Chinese romanization with an interesting link to a Chinese braille page. Upshot is it doesn't usually indicate tone.]
Posted by jim at October 6, 2003 05:44 PM | TrackBackI still don't see why Chinese couldn't be written well in an alphabetic script. The Koreans and the Vietnamese have both made the leap from logographs to alphabets and syllabaries.
(1) Korean is a very different language, without the tonal structure of Chinese. Chinese characters were used for historical and political reasons, as with Japanese.
(2) My understanding is that many educated Koreans still must learn Chinese characters, creating a diaglossic situation. Thus basic literacy is easier to achieve, but then there is more of a gap between those who can read many historical documents and those who cannot. Can anyone confirm this?
(3) Vietnamese is much more like Chinese, with tones, and so this is a better example. It shows that it could be done. But it is important to ask why it was done. Here is an excelent paper which describes the history of Vietnamese orthographic reform. (Link is a PDF file.)
(4) But I think it is important to note that the Vietnamese movement was a rejection of the Classical Chinese literacy, and might not have worked if there had been a successful vernacular language movement using Chinese characters as had happened in the mainland. Also, as I discussed in my comments on Language Hat's blog, I think that Chinese characters are simply not that great an impedement to literacy, as is shown by the high rate of literacy in China compared to India. In that comment I argued that providing decent basic education is more important for ensuring literacy than linguistic reform.
Posted by: Kerim Friedman on October 7, 2003 08:07 AMSorry, I wrote "mainland" instead of "China" there as I should have.
Posted by: Kerim Friedman on October 7, 2003 08:56 AMThe problem I have with the Chinese system is the same that I have with the English system: its largely ad hoc nature due to historical accident. The xie2sheng1zi4 characters that use phonemic and semantic information in the composition are based on pronunciations and associations that are more than 2000 years old, leading to all kinds of irregularities. I was very careful not to say that it should be replaced, I just don't buy folks telling me that it can't be. I think there are all kinds of other non-linguistic factors coming into play. Spoken Chinese words are abitrary mappings of phonemic sequences to meanings, just like any other language, and nobody seems to have difficulty, as a child, learning those. It's more like learning two languages that are closely related.
Posted by: jim on October 7, 2003 10:16 AM