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China’s tyranny of characters

economist.com

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Re: China’s tyranny of characters

#31

Post by talideon »

jacobolus wrote: post #29
legulere wrote: post #16

> But central authorities are also now worried about any regional languages (which it insists on calling dialects) among the Han majority It's not as clear cut that variations of Chinese are languages and not dialects as the economist makes it out. This is very similar to arabic. Wikipedia for instance also calls them dialects. This is very different from Uighur and Tibetan which are pretty clear cut separate languag…

Wikipedia calls them “varieties” because to call them “languages” would result in a giant political flamewar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese , also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Varieties_of_Chinese That doesn’t mean they aren’t distinct languages (and not mere “dialects”) by any definition a modern linguist would typically use. Calling them “dialects” would be similar to calling English,…

A better, more neutral term would be 'topolect'. It's a better translation of the term 'fāngyán' (which is typically translated as 'dialect'), and blurs the line between the English terms 'dialect' and 'language'.

Re: China’s tyranny of characters

#32

Post by tokenadult »

Here is a written example of differences between the Cantonese language and the Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) language when written in Chinese characters. I've seen many examples of signs or other written language in public places in Hong Kong that are incomprehensible to literate speakers of Mandarin, and some examples of written Taiwanese in Taiwan that are incomprehensible to people from anywhere else. How you might write the conversation

"Does he know how to speak Mandarin?

"No, he doesn't."

他會說普通話嗎？

他不會。

in Modern Standard Chinese characters contrasts with how you would write

"Does he know how to speak Cantonese?

"No, he doesn't."

佢識唔識講廣東話？

佢唔識。

in the Chinese characters used to write Cantonese. If you can see the Chinese characters at all as this is displayed on your screen, you should easily be able to see that many more words than "Mandarin" and "Cantonese" differ between those sentences in Chinese characters.

Re: China’s tyranny of characters

#33

Post by gbog »

"the boxy prison of Chinese characters"

What does it even mean? We are all "prisoners" of our language, because we can't easily think and express anything that cannot be molded in this language. But Chinese characters may actually give more "freedom" to their users, in that they convey directly their meaning, without the necessity of a sound. See 凹 and 凸, they mean concave and convex. Avoiding the articulation over the pronounciation is a blessing in many respects. It allows more people from distant cultures to converge with the writen language, and share much more.

Re: China’s tyranny of characters

#34

Post by mahranch »

> gaining so much regional identity and independence that they want to do a Brexit of their own.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they've wanted their own Brexit from day 1. At least Hong Kong does, and even Taiwan probably too. Especially Taiwan. I feel sorry for Taiwan, watching stuff like this (http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/30/hong-kong-student-begs-for...) from Hong Kong and knowing that's a real possibility for them. At least the pro-China people in Taiwan (yes, they exist) will have to reevaluate their opinions after seeing how China has handled the Hong Kong return...

Re: China’s tyranny of characters

#35

Post by pipio21 »

It is important to note that China had alphabetic systems, like Mongolian, since a long time ago. It was a conscious decision not to use them.

Learning to write and read is much easier in alphabetic so the elite opposed it from the start as they viewed it as a menace to their status.

They were right, when people in Europe could read Calvino's printed Bible and own one themselves it changed the status quo radically, creating lots of problems to the people on top. Before printing it took three years of a worker salary to copy a book.

The same process happened in Korea and Japan, with equivalent systems to alphabetic, the difference is that in China elites won, because it was central planned. It was not easy though, specially at first it faced very strong opposition in these small countries.

"as though Europe had thrown away Latin and decided to enforce French across the continent."

That is exactly what happened with Napoleon. Then the fashion language to speak became German, then after WWII it was English, because of the Americans new world hegemony.

Re: China’s tyranny of characters

#36

Post by auganov »

tokenadult wrote: post #32

Here is a written example of differences between the Cantonese language and the Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) language when written in Chinese characters. I've seen many examples of signs or other written language in public places in Hong Kong that are incomprehensible to literate speakers of Mandarin, and some examples of written Taiwanese in Taiwan that are incomprehensible to people from anywhere else. How yo…

Well that example is rather radical. As long as you know (or can guess) traditional characters you can read a HK newspaper just fine with a stutter here and there.

Re: China’s tyranny of characters

#37

Post by ralfd »

gbog wrote: post #33

"the boxy prison of Chinese characters" What does it even mean? We are all "prisoners" of our language, because we can't easily think and express anything that cannot be molded in this language. But Chinese characters may actually give more "freedom" to their users, in that they convey directly their meaning, without the necessity of a sound. See 凹 and 凸, they mean concave and convex. Avoiding the articulation over t…

I guess it relates to this: "It is one of many slang or dialect words and phrases that you can say but not write using Chinese characters."

Re: China’s tyranny of characters

#38

Post by yoo1I »

gbog wrote: post #33

"the boxy prison of Chinese characters" What does it even mean? We are all "prisoners" of our language, because we can't easily think and express anything that cannot be molded in this language. But Chinese characters may actually give more "freedom" to their users, in that they convey directly their meaning, without the necessity of a sound. See 凹 and 凸, they mean concave and convex. Avoiding the articulation over t…

Except that's not what "concave" and "convex" look like.

It also means that you need to agree with everyone, what the meaning of every symbol is. For instance symbol of "convex" you give, might also be a street intersection, so you can't really just rely on the shape of a character, and you need to spend many years memorizing each one of them. If you look at reality, your assertion that

> people from distant cultures [...] converge with the writen language

is really not true. Chinese writing systems aren't universal in a way that makes them easy to pick up to express yourself in. Quite the contrary.

Re: China’s tyranny of characters

#39

Post by bitwize »

eonwe wrote: post #24

This is only partially related, but I remember watching the news in the nineties and being dumbstruck on how Académie française policed the usage of language in public life. It was probably about use of Anglicisms in television or by politicians. I forgot about it for years until I learned from Wikipedia that that wasn't just a reaaction against Internet, but a policy that has been going on for centuries: https://en.…

I learned about the Académie Française in French class (1990 or so). I thought they were guarding against anglicisms creeping in through teen slang -- "c'est too much" and that.

Re: China’s tyranny of characters

#40

Post by Chathamization »

gbog wrote: post #33

"the boxy prison of Chinese characters" What does it even mean? We are all "prisoners" of our language, because we can't easily think and express anything that cannot be molded in this language. But Chinese characters may actually give more "freedom" to their users, in that they convey directly their meaning, without the necessity of a sound. See 凹 and 凸, they mean concave and convex. Avoiding the articulation over t…

Only a tiny minority of Chinese characters are pictographic, and most characters have a phonetic element. You'll have a better chance guessing the pronunciation of a random Chinese character than guessing the meaning of a random Chinese character.
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