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Why would these people change to a phonetic writing system when most of the world's isn't? English for example is a morpho-phonemic one. The Chinese writing is
by titanix2 9y ago
Why would these people change to a phonetic writing system when most of the world's isn't? English for example is a morpho-phonemic one.
The Chinese writing is also more resilient to language change, and given proper education, texts from millenia can still be read.
If you look at the PISA scores[1] for example, the top 10 includes Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Macao and Honk-Kong. So the Chinese script and its derivatives is clearly not impairing its users to learn maths.
On the foreign language side, it's even a boon because someone knowing a CJK language wanting to learn another one can rely on a lot of words with shared roots to learn it faster. But as the phonology of these language is different, the knowledge of the Chinese characters can help connects the dots between words, which aren't obviously related when romanized.
[1] https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf
- thaumasiotes 9y ago> Why would these people change to a phonetic writing system when most of the world's isn't? English for example is a morpho-phonemic one. This isn't some binary category where you have or haven't achieved holiness. Compared to Chinese, English is indistinguishable from a purely phonetic script.
- titanix2 9y agoThis is still wrong. First, because English taken for itself is nowhere near a phonetic script. It uses a lot of graphemes to represent the phonemes of the language and there is no bijection between the two sets (as expected for a phonetic system). In the end, the number of combinations to memorize for reading perfectly is probably in the hundred or multiple hundreds. French has the same problem. It takes years to train natives to write to perfection; and the non-phonetic nature of the script bites hard the foreign learners. Second, at its core the Chinese writing evolved from a limited set of symbols to represent syllabes. The current system is still mainly based on it and the knowledge of around 400 components can help read and memorize of lot more characters. The phonetic nature of the Chinese script is not apparent to people who doesn't studied it, but it exists.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoThe phonetic nature of the Chinese script is so weak that in the foreword to https://www.amazon.com/Xunzi-Complete-Text/dp/0691169314/ https://www.amazon.com/Xunzi-Complete-Text/dp/0691169314/ , the author observes that while he uses his own translations, he is forced to defer to existing scholarship as to what parts of the text rhyme, not being qualified to determine that for himself.