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Color me shocked that somehow the author found the alphabet of his native language to be superior. This article takes as a given some assumptions that I don't

by lstyls 10y ago

Color me shocked that somehow the author found the alphabet of his native language to be superior. This article takes as a given some assumptions that I don't understand at all. China being resistant to change? There are few cohesive societies that I can think of that have experienced more change than China since the end of WWII. And it would be an understatement to say that the rise of literacy rates are more strongly correlated with industrialization than adoption of phonetic alphabets. I think it's telling that the author grew up in a Chinese-American community. Expat communities tend to lag their mother cultures in terms of social progress. An experience growing up in a community could explain this "steeped in tradition" characteristic that is attributed to Chinese culture here. Disclaimer: I'm a white American. My wife is Chinese and emigrated herself from China as a young adult; I get a lot of my perspective from her. Would be interested to hear what Chinese members of HN think of the article.

phaed 10y ago
Shocked that a man with a Chinese wife is shocked.
- lstyls 10y ago
  Care to add anything to the conversation, or are you just here to stereotype?
jbooth 10y ago
As far as "change" and "cohesive society", it's possible that the only reason that the Chinese have a 2500-year-old cohesive society is because of initial resistance to change. How else can you have one "society" across a dozen dynasties, from the ancient world through the medieval world to the modern one? It's a lot harder to claim that some old druids or even the anglo-saxons are the same society as modern british-descended english speakers.
- allemagne 10y ago
  Is the reason there hasn't been a comparable continuous European society for 2500 years really because druids/anglo-saxons had a society that was more open to change? I'd argue not. I would also argue that China's "5000 years of uninterrupted continuous society" is less continuous and uninterrupted than might be implied here. The concept of "China" is more or less a modern, retroactive, political invention, somewhat comparable to identifying the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Empire as a continuous entity. There is a shared heritage, writing system, and some overlapping territory -- just like Chinese dynasties. If the Habsbugs did a better job of consolidating and expanding their control of the continent in the sixteenth century then maybe we would talk about the continuous, unbroken Roman society. The metaphor is far from perfect, but I hope my point is clear. The difference between a continuous civilization and whatever the alternative would be called is, in my opinion, just a matter of our perception and a few historical happenstances.
  - jbooth 10y ago
    Well, whether they wanted it to be or not, old celtic and saxon languages were swept aside by history. Old chinese characters weren't, for whatever reason. I wasn't trying to be too prescriptive or racist, like "the nature of this people is this, therefore that". But through accidents of history, that constant of the characters has helped to build the illusion you describe.
    - mcguire 10y ago
      Frequently, by a language based on that of the Roman Empire.
hsitz 10y ago
". . . somehow the author found the alphabet of his native language to be superior." What? First of all, it doesn't appear that Chinese was the author's native language, given that he was "forced to attend Saturday morning Chinese school" as a child, and did poorly. He was born in New York state and currently lives near Seattle. Second, and more importantly, Chiang lists several advantages of phonetic systems over purely-character based systems, which hold equally whether we're talking about Chinese or any other written languages. So even if Chinese were his native language, the differences he notes between phonetic and character-based writing systems are general differences that would exist in any language that had both systems of writing. It's not clear to me, however, that he thinks the differences make phonetic systems "superior". The character-based system has its own advantages it gains from not being tied to pronunciation, e.g., easy readability of classic texts. And Chiang expressly says that "he has no idea if he would be better off in a world" where there had never been a Chinese character-based writing system. Regarding the rate of change in China, you say that there has been rapid change "since World War II". It seems to me that this rapid change has been possible precisely because China was so backward before then, resistant to change for centuries and millenia before WW II. I suspect -- but have no idea myself -- that the recent rapid change has been enabled in large part by heavier reliance on a phonetic writing system, which as Chiang correctly points out is much more suitable for use with computers.
- lstyls 10y ago
  Yep! His native language is English I believe. I read this article as promoting phonetic languages. The entire premise of the article series is things that should never have been invented, so I don't think that's a leap here, even if he does hedge at the end with the "he has no idea if he would be better off in a world" thing.
  - douche 10y ago
    If a phonetic alphabet had taken off in China two thousand years ago, we probably would never have needed to bother ourselves with greater than 2-byte Unicode, as a practical matter.
waqf 10y ago
Here is David Moser also arguing that the Chinese writing system is objectively inferior: http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
- lstyls 10y ago
  Not sure if you're trolling or not, but I'll bite. Did you even read the article you linked to? The author makes so such argument. The point of the article is that it's extremely difficult for non-native speakers to learn written Chinese.
  - bsdetector 10y ago
    "What I mean is that Chinese is not only hard for us (English speakers), but it's also hard in absolute terms. Which means that Chinese is also hard for them, for Chinese people." Author is saying it's unnecessarily hard for everybody.
    - lstyls 10y ago
      Point conceded, but it still doesn't take away from the broader point which is that the parent makes a false assertion: > David Moser also arguing that the Chinese writing system is objectively inferior
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - lstyls 10y ago
        @waqf my point is that being harder to learn the written language does not mean that the language is _objectively_ inferior as a whole. There is no universal set of objective metrics to judge the value of a language, and such an assertion approaches cultural chauvinism.

by lstyls 10y ago

phaed 10y ago

Shocked that a man with a Chinese wife is shocked.

lstyls 10y ago
Care to add anything to the conversation, or are you just here to stereotype?

jbooth 10y ago

As far as "change" and "cohesive society", it's possible that the only reason that the Chinese have a 2500-year-old cohesive society is because of initial resistance to change. How else can you have one "society" across a dozen dynasties, from the ancient world through the medieval world to the modern one? It's a lot harder to claim that some old druids or even the anglo-saxons are the same society as modern british-descended english speakers.

allemagne 10y ago
Is the reason there hasn't been a comparable continuous European society for 2500 years really because druids/anglo-saxons had a society that was more open to change? I'd argue not. I would also argue that China's "5000 years of uninterrupted continuous society" is less continuous and uninterrupted than might be implied here. The concept of "China" is more or less a modern, retroactive, political invention, somewhat comparable to identifying the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Empire as a continuous entity. There is a shared heritage, writing system, and some overlapping territory -- just like Chinese dynasties. If the Habsbugs did a better job of consolidating and expanding their control of the continent in the sixteenth century then maybe we would talk about the continuous, unbroken Roman society. The metaphor is far from perfect, but I hope my point is clear. The difference between a continuous civilization and whatever the alternative would be called is, in my opinion, just a matter of our perception and a few historical happenstances.
- jbooth 10y ago
  Well, whether they wanted it to be or not, old celtic and saxon languages were swept aside by history. Old chinese characters weren't, for whatever reason. I wasn't trying to be too prescriptive or racist, like "the nature of this people is this, therefore that". But through accidents of history, that constant of the characters has helped to build the illusion you describe.
  - mcguire 10y ago
    Frequently, by a language based on that of the Roman Empire.

hsitz 10y ago

". . . somehow the author found the alphabet of his native language to be superior." What? First of all, it doesn't appear that Chinese was the author's native language, given that he was "forced to attend Saturday morning Chinese school" as a child, and did poorly. He was born in New York state and currently lives near Seattle. Second, and more importantly, Chiang lists several advantages of phonetic systems over purely-character based systems, which hold equally whether we're talking about Chinese or any other written languages. So even if Chinese were his native language, the differences he notes between phonetic and character-based writing systems are general differences that would exist in any language that had both systems of writing. It's not clear to me, however, that he thinks the differences make phonetic systems "superior". The character-based system has its own advantages it gains from not being tied to pronunciation, e.g., easy readability of classic texts. And Chiang expressly says that "he has no idea if he would be better off in a world" where there had never been a Chinese character-based writing system. Regarding the rate of change in China, you say that there has been rapid change "since World War II". It seems to me that this rapid change has been possible precisely because China was so backward before then, resistant to change for centuries and millenia before WW II. I suspect -- but have no idea myself -- that the recent rapid change has been enabled in large part by heavier reliance on a phonetic writing system, which as Chiang correctly points out is much more suitable for use with computers.

lstyls 10y ago
Yep! His native language is English I believe. I read this article as promoting phonetic languages. The entire premise of the article series is things that should never have been invented, so I don't think that's a leap here, even if he does hedge at the end with the "he has no idea if he would be better off in a world" thing.
- douche 10y ago
  If a phonetic alphabet had taken off in China two thousand years ago, we probably would never have needed to bother ourselves with greater than 2-byte Unicode, as a practical matter.

waqf 10y ago

Here is David Moser also arguing that the Chinese writing system is objectively inferior: http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

lstyls 10y ago
Not sure if you're trolling or not, but I'll bite. Did you even read the article you linked to? The author makes so such argument. The point of the article is that it's extremely difficult for non-native speakers to learn written Chinese.
- bsdetector 10y ago
  "What I mean is that Chinese is not only hard for us (English speakers), but it's also hard in absolute terms. Which means that Chinese is also hard for them, for Chinese people." Author is saying it's unnecessarily hard for everybody.
  - lstyls 10y ago
    Point conceded, but it still doesn't take away from the broader point which is that the parent makes a false assertion: > David Moser also arguing that the Chinese writing system is objectively inferior
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - lstyls 10y ago
      @waqf my point is that being harder to learn the written language does not mean that the language is _objectively_ inferior as a whole. There is no universal set of objective metrics to judge the value of a language, and such an assertion approaches cultural chauvinism.