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djwebb2004 -



Quote:

To ignore one's theory and research (despite having specialized knowledge from unique
qualifications) simply because of their race is the essence of racism.

?? Put the argument round the other way. Tell your Chinese friends that an American professor who
is a great Sinologist has built his career on a campaign to abolish Chinese characters. (His ABC
dictionary is brilliant, but the **worse** part of the Wenlin software is the examples in pinyin
without characters, which are often ambiguous.) You're gonna say, if the Chinese object to it,
they're racist. They could say, a foreigner building his career on a desire to eliminate the key
pillar of Chinese culture is more than a little prejudiced. Let me put it another way: show me a
single native speaker who does not think DeFrancis' thesis is prejudiced....

In all this debate: the question of "why" is not addressed. Why abolish the characters? Apparently
one of DeFrancis' books is dedicated to "Old Wang", an illiterate peasant. But: the spread of
urbanisation and 9 years education will eliminate literacy in China (the 2005 1% population survey
showed literacy and semiliteracy together amounted to 11%, 6% among men, 16% among women). And no
one has yet shown me that someone who graduates from the Chinese middle school is illiterate - and
so the whole subject is dancing round on nothingness.

You could read the article in pinyin with tonemarks - yes, I concede it is readable - because of
the style of the language. I could quote passages from Professor Yi Zhongtian in pinyin that would
not be so legible, because he uses about 30 chengyu on a page and uses many classical and
historical allusions. Suggestions for script reform should be independent on an suggestion of a
change in written style. People have the right to write in whatever style they choose, and a
script change should not make writing in a chengyu-laden style difficult.

The Soviet Dungan script: well yes you could explain to an Englishman that "sub" is a Latin prefix
meaning below. But there are 50 or more shi's and yi's etc, and understand Chinese without the
characters becomes more complex. Even in Korean academic work, while Korean is normally written in
all-Hangul, at the higher level there are so many homophones that academic papers have to put the
Hanja in brackets so that everyone knows what word is intended.



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HashiriKata -



Quote:


Originally Posted by self-taught-mba

Imagine this: "I'm sorry Professor Lee you're not American and not white, you have no place to
comment or research about English language issues. I don't care if you have a Phd in English or
whatever"???


self-taught-mba, if you were such a professor and not white, you'd know that this happens. Now, if
you're white, whatever nonsense you spit out, there's a chance that some people will find you
reasonable.










self-taught-mba -



Quote:

You could read the article in pinyin with tonemarks - yes, I concede it is readable - because of
the style of the language.

"because of the style of the language" interesting choice of words especially considering your
next sentence:



Quote:

I could quote passages from Professor Yi Zhongtian in pinyin that would not be so legible, because
he uses about 30 chengyu on a page and uses many classical and historical allusions.

If this is the case, this would indicate if he were to read the page out loud he would not be
discernible orally. Because of the "style of the language" is Chinese more difficult to understand
orally? Is written work easier to be understood? If the professor you name were to want to express
his points orally how would he do that? Are you saying he would not be able to use the same
chengyu? So yes if you want to name obscure words or cheng yu that wouldn't be understood orally,
I'm sure you do need characters. Just as if I were to spout out new words, very complicated words
in English that you had no clue about and with spelling that was not intuitive.

I think the real question is: because Chinese characters do remove the ambiguity (there's no doubt
about that--or is there: you ever try to see someone look up a Chinese character? even the native
Chinese? So it only removes the ambiguity if you are actually already familiar with the character.
And worse yet if you aren't familiar with the character there is no possibility of removing the
ambiguity through such an easy process as a pinyin lookup) have they been used to such an extent
such that the writing style has been fundamentally changed from that of the speaking style?

Moser has speculated about this as well. In other words, because they found a workaround in the
characters to remove ambiguity they started using it as a crutch and thus creating a vicious cycle
of further reliance on the characters to "remove ambiguity" only after the characters allowed them
to use it in such an ambiguous state to begin with.



Quote:

Suggestions for script reform should be independent on an suggestion of a change in written style.

This is obviously your opinion. I'm not necessarily knocking it, but could you explain it a little
more? Most mainstream languages have writing that matches or closely matches the spoken language.



Quote:

and a script change should not make writing in a chengyu-laden style difficult.

Actually if, as I mentioned above, you absolutely need the characters to help explain the cheng
yu, this would indicate that the chengyu aren't able to be understood orally. If this is the case,
what makes you think having the characters will necessarily allow understanding to the uninformed?
Especially in the case when the character is not known, thus necessitating an extensive search.
(As opposed to the ease of pinyin look up-- and don't forget it was this crowd that first pushed
the idea of an alphabetically arranged pinyin dictionary to begin with-- which of course was later
heavily adopted and can be seen used frequently by the Chinese) (I know electronic means are
slowly solving this problem for unknown characters or at least easing the burden)










self-taught-mba -



Quote:

if you were such a professor and not white, you'd know that this happens.

Yes it does happen I know (or at least it is thought or implied). And it is just as wrong. In fact
it is so obviously wrong and not politically correct that I hoped to bring up as a way of
illustrating how ridiculous it would sound. (But somehow it is okay to say it to the white
sinologists openly)



Quote:

Now, if you're white, whatever nonsense you spit out, there's a chance that some people will find
you reasonable.

True again at least to some extent. Whites often are favored. This is not right either.










djwebb2004 -



Quote:

Most mainstream languages have writing that matches or closely matches the spoken language.

Actually, this is not true. It may be so in American English (or may not be, as I don't want to
get off-topic), but in most languages there is distinction in the register of language between
colloquial speech and literary writings. In most languages, to write down colloquial speech and
think that appropriate for academic or formal usage, would be the mark of an uneducated person.

When a Chinese professor writes, he writes for people who are going to see the characters of what
he has written. To read out a page of literary Chinese would often require a brief explanation, a
verbal gloss here and there, as to which character was being employed. And Victor Mair and the
others on the pinyin.info page have admitted in various articles that script reform would require
**changing the style of written Chinese, and moving to a more colloquial register**. So a dumbing
down of the Chinese language is included in the package.

Script reform was very much on the agenda of the early Communists in China - De Francis'
historical explanation of that is quite interesting - and during the "Gang of Four" period, when
they smashing the Four Olds - old culture - they did want to get rid of the characters. They
produced a very radical list of simplified characters that had to be withdrawn within a couple of
years owing to the outcry. Jiang Qing is dead - but the spirit of the Gang of Four lives on in the
University of Hawaii. Language is not just a tool of communication - it is a fundamental part of
culture. There is no particular reason why the Chinese can't be "told" by foreign experts to use
knives and forks, but chopsticks are their culture. That is what independence is all about: a
nation exercising its right to govern itself and make its own decisions about which parts of its
culture are important to them enough to preserve. John DeFrancis just doesn't get it. His claim in
his June 2006 article that the Communist Party will change its mind and promote a script reform
seems baseless, by the way.










atitarev -

Djwebb2004:


Quote:

I know lots of Chinese people who are greatly offended by this sort of thing - foreign professors
who specialize in arguing that the Chinese should abandon their writing system! As Victor someone
or other argues on the pinyin.info site, the Chinese could abandon characters, but would have to
change their writing style. Chengyu that depend for intelligibility on seeing which characters are
used, would be out of the door...

No need to change, see below.
self-taught-mba:


Quote:

I think the real question is: because Chinese characters do remove the ambiguity (there's no doubt
about that--or is there: you ever try to see someone look up a Chinese character? even the native
Chinese? So it only removes the ambiguity if you are actually already familiar with the character.
And worse yet if you aren't familiar with the character there is no possibility of removing the
ambiguity through such an easy process as a pinyin lookup) have they been used to such an extent
such that the writing style has been
fundamentally changed from that of the speaking style?

Moser has speculated about this as well. In other words, because they found a workaround in the
characters to remove ambiguity they started using it as a crutch and thus creating a vicious cycle
of further reliance on the characters to "remove ambiguity" only after the characters allowed them
to use it in such an ambiguous state to begin with.

If Korean borrowed ambiguity from Chinese by borrowing a huge number of homophones and Koreans use
Chinese characters to disambiguate the words, why don't you suggest to borrow the Korean method -
use Chinese characters (in brackets) whenever there is such an ambiguity? That way characters and
letters could coexist for a long time?










xichg -

Chinese people abandoning Chinese Characters? No way. We just won't dumb us down to accomodate
you, got it? If you are really motivated to learn Chinese, the Hanzi won't be a problem.
Otherwise, just shut up. We don't care if Chinese is easy and appealing to foreigners and 30
millions or even 300 million people are learning it as a second langauge. I don't give it a damn
how many foreigners are learning Chinese. Chinese characters are primarily to serve Chiense people
and they are doing a good job. We just won't be like a retarded to painfully read pinyin at a
speed of a snail. YOu enjoy doing that, good for you. But don't ask us to do the same thing.










self-taught-mba -



Quote:

Chinese people abandoning Chinese Characters? No way. We just won't dumb us down to accomodate
you, got it? If you are really motivated to learn Chinese, the Hanzi won't be a problem.
Otherwise, just shut up. We don't care if Chinese is easy and appealing to foreigners and 30
millions or even 300 million people are learning it as a second langauge. I don't give it a damn
how many foreigners are learning Chinese. Chinese characters are primarily to serve Chiense people
and they are doing a good job. We just won't be like a retarded to painfully read pinyin at a
speed of a snail. YOu enjoy doing that, good for you. But don't ask us to do the same thing.

1. Your tone is really nasty. No, I won't "shut up". Be polite or go elsewhere. There's no reason
to be so nasty on the board.

2. With all the Chinese people that I have helped teach English to, a majority of them have
complained about the difficulty of English spelling and grammar. Do I get offended? No. They are
right our grammar and spelling rules are horribly inconsistent, and even if they weren't right
they still have the right to feel that way.

3. On to the only point you mention that was not an emotional diatribe:



Quote:

Chinese characters are primarily to serve Chiense people and they are doing a good job

Let's evaluate how well they have served Chinese people in the past and presently:

1. A system that educated an elite class was established and steadfastly maintained, perpetuating
subsequent generations of an educated elite resting incongruously on a base of mass illiteracy.

2. "Before 1949, the illiteracy rate in China was 80 percent"

3. Historical illiteracy rates as high as 95%, as only the richest people would have the amount of
time required to learn the characters (others had to work)

4. Thousands of hours and years spent learning to memorize the characters, when that time could be
utilized to study other subjects which would make the Chinese people as a whole more competitive
in the world such as math, science, technology. This is an opportunity cost that hurts the
aggregate productivity of the Chinese people and economy immensely.

5. Daily communications unable to be carried out or carried out with much difficulty resulting in
loss of productivity and in some cases information. A great example from native Chinese Ph.D.'s at
Peking University:



Quote:

I have seen highly literate Chinese people forget how to write certain characters in common words
like "tin can", "knee", "screwdriver", "snap" (as in "to snap one's fingers"), "elbow", "ginger",
"cushion", "firecracker", and so on. And when I say "forget", I mean that they often cannot even
put the first stroke down on the paper. Can you imagine a well-educated native English speaker
totally forgetting how to write a word like "knee" or "tin can"? Or even a rarely-seen word like
"scabbard" or "ragamuffin"? I was once at a luncheon with three Ph.D. students in the Chinese
Department at Peking University, all native Chinese (one from Hong Kong). I happened to have a
cold that day, and was trying to write a brief note to a friend canceling an appointment that day.
I found that I couldn't remember how to write the character 嚔, as in da penti 打喷嚔 "to
sneeze". I asked my three friends how to write the character, and to my surprise, all three of
them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the
character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the "Harvard of China". Can you imagine
three Ph.D. students in English at Harvard forgetting how to write the English word "sneeze"?? Yet
this state of affairs is by no means uncommon in China.

From David Moser's article here and here:

6. Loss of productivity. The difficulty in recalling the characters quite frequently in daily life
multiplied by 1.3 billion people equals a huge amount of productive work time that has been lost.
Add to that the billions of hours spent in the educational system that could be applied elsewhere
to further improve the China's competitiveness. Is that serving the Chinese people?


So are the Chinese characters really serving the Chinese people? Or have they historically led to
mass illiteracy and slowed productivity thus hurting your people.










gato -



Quote:

4. Thousands of hours and years spent learning to memorize the characters, when that time could be
utilized to study other subjects which would make the Chinese people as a whole more competitive
in the world such as math, science, technology. This is an opportunity cost that hurts the
aggregate productivity of the Chinese people and economy immensely.

5. Daily communications unable to be carried out or carried out with much difficulty resulting in
loss of productivity and in some cases information. A great example from native Chinese Ph.D.'s at
Peking University:

That's why most Chinese people didn't write until the advent of cell phones and the internet.
Technology has allowed many more Chinese to express themselves in writing (and has allowed many
more foreigners to write Chinese).










roddy -



Quote:

(His ABC dictionary is brilliant, but the **worse** part of the Wenlin software is the examples in
pinyin without characters, which are often ambiguous.)

That's an interesting point, do you have any examples. To be honest I'd be surprised if there were
very many - the ABC's examples tend I think to be in a quite colloquial form and therefore less
likely to be ambiguous in pinyin. I stand (as always) ready to be corrected.


Quote:

Be polite or go elsewhere. There's no reason to be so nasty on the board.

Agreed. If you can't support your point, don't attempt to make it.












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