4 ms·

>due to political pressures from the elites As a Chinese, I can't think of ANY Chinese people would prefer to reform Hanzi to Pinyin and I'm surely not within

>due to political pressures from the elites As a Chinese, I can't think of ANY Chinese people would prefer to reform Hanzi to Pinyin and I'm surely not within "elites". >whose family's positions are secured by the higher barrier to entry to becoming an intellectual Holy shit, it's 2019 not 1950. China has a literacy rate of 96.4% [1]. What exact barrier are "elites" trying to set with that? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_...

meesles 8y ago
> China has a literacy rate of 96.4% So what? Literacy raises the average but doesn't prevent huge class gaps in populations. OP's point is valid in the same way that the 1% in the USA can pay for their kids to attend elite schools, be hired be elite firms regardless of ability, and continue the elite family tree often at the expense of the poor. China is no different.
- knolax 8y ago
  So both China and the US should adopt newspeak?
  - sanxiyn 8y ago
    Yes, it is ridiculous "more good" is spelt "better". I am unsure whether the exact form of "doubleplusgood" is optimal, but something like that makes perfect sense. Given that China successfully adopted simplified Chinese characters, English-speaking world is perfectly capable of adopting Newspeak, and it will bring long term benefit, just as simplified Chinese characters did. But like many long term beneficial things it won't happen due to short term cost.
    - knolax 8y ago
      >Yes That's a myopic view of language. Changes like "better" --> "more good" don't last for long as irregularities will naturally form, making your "optimal" language yet another legacy constraint. Besides, the vast majority of complexity of language exists because they carry semantic meaning. For example, the redundancy in the terms "Pig" and "Pork" might have initially been due to a need to signal sophistication, but they survive in modern usage because it's a concise way to differentiate the animal from the meat. >Given that China successfully adopted simplified Chinese characters Simplified characters are more on par with spelling changes than newspeak. It only reduces the stroke count of certain radicals, it doesn't make any changes to the underlying vocabulary or grammar, whereas both newspeak and phonetic writing would.
      - sanxiyn 8y ago
        Standardizing or simplifying the language adopted as lingua franca is a common practice. English is actually an exception in this respect. For example, see Bahasa Indonesia, which can be considered Malay newspeak, and very successful.
        knolax 8y ago
        Yes, and that standardized lingua franca invariably splinters off and becomes less regular. Compare medieval Latin to the modern Romance languages.
        FabHK 8y ago
        > invariably Well, we do have more TV and travel today than in prior millennia. Languages are dying out, while there are more people than ever. Let's see where the development goes.

meesles 8y ago

> China has a literacy rate of 96.4% So what? Literacy raises the average but doesn't prevent huge class gaps in populations. OP's point is valid in the same way that the 1% in the USA can pay for their kids to attend elite schools, be hired be elite firms regardless of ability, and continue the elite family tree often at the expense of the poor. China is no different.

knolax 8y ago
So both China and the US should adopt newspeak?
- sanxiyn 8y ago
  Yes, it is ridiculous "more good" is spelt "better". I am unsure whether the exact form of "doubleplusgood" is optimal, but something like that makes perfect sense. Given that China successfully adopted simplified Chinese characters, English-speaking world is perfectly capable of adopting Newspeak, and it will bring long term benefit, just as simplified Chinese characters did. But like many long term beneficial things it won't happen due to short term cost.
  - knolax 8y ago
    >Yes That's a myopic view of language. Changes like "better" --> "more good" don't last for long as irregularities will naturally form, making your "optimal" language yet another legacy constraint. Besides, the vast majority of complexity of language exists because they carry semantic meaning. For example, the redundancy in the terms "Pig" and "Pork" might have initially been due to a need to signal sophistication, but they survive in modern usage because it's a concise way to differentiate the animal from the meat. >Given that China successfully adopted simplified Chinese characters Simplified characters are more on par with spelling changes than newspeak. It only reduces the stroke count of certain radicals, it doesn't make any changes to the underlying vocabulary or grammar, whereas both newspeak and phonetic writing would.
    - sanxiyn 8y ago
      Standardizing or simplifying the language adopted as lingua franca is a common practice. English is actually an exception in this respect. For example, see Bahasa Indonesia, which can be considered Malay newspeak, and very successful.
      - knolax 8y ago
        Yes, and that standardized lingua franca invariably splinters off and becomes less regular. Compare medieval Latin to the modern Romance languages.
        FabHK 8y ago
        > invariably Well, we do have more TV and travel today than in prior millennia. Languages are dying out, while there are more people than ever. Let's see where the development goes.