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There are still way too many hompohones which can introduce a lot of amibiguity. Even Korean still includes Hanja to clarify technical terms in law/medicine. M

There are still way too many hompohones which can introduce a lot of amibiguity. Even Korean still includes Hanja to clarify technical terms in law/medicine. Modern Standard Mandarin has way fewer syllables than Middle Chinese and Southern Chinese languages which makes homophones a lore more common. Vietnamese didn't really have this problem because the phonology is a lot more complex and it shows through the written word. An example of homophones creating ambiguity: An Jung-geun was a Korean independence activist who assassinated a former Japanese Prime Minister in 1909. He is often called 義士 in Korean textbooks which means "hero, man of honor". However, 義士(의사) is pronounced in the same way as 醫師(의사) which means "doctor". The Hangul spelling is identical thus it has led to many younger Koreans to think An Jung-geun was a doctor and question why would a doctor intentionally kill someone. It's more of a tongue-in-cheek joke but it shows the problem of completely detaching a writing system from a language that does not sufficiently distinguish words without context. In Chinese this is not a problem because by people usually learn this type of stuff on paper first. The additional context helps reduce the ambiguity in spoken conversation. Being able to talk to each other without writing is not sufficient proof that a writing system can be abolished with minimal impact, because it ignores the fact that the writing system is what helped to dispel the ambiguity in the first place.

mac01021 8y ago
> There are still way too many hompohones which can introduce a lot of amibiguity. Is this a problem when speaking? How many times a day do speakers of Chinese have to ask a collaborator which homophone they are using?
- ssnistfajen 8y ago
  Enough times that replacing Chinese characters with a fully phonetic system will introduce more problems than it solves. Did you read the example I wrote? Homophones usually aren't a problem because most people learn things in writing first, and that provides context in speech.
  - mac01021 8y ago
    > In Chinese this is not a problem because by people usually learn this type of stuff on paper first. The additional context helps reduce the ambiguity in spoken conversation. I read that, but I'm having trouble imagining how that works. Do you have an example?
    - ssnistfajen 8y ago
      But I literally gave an example... "Queue" and "cue" which are homophones in English. Now imagine if there is a language reform where IPA replaces the current writing system, and both words are replaced with /kjuː/ as the only written form. "/kjuː/ the crowd" can be either "Queue the crowd" or "Cue the crowd". We are aware these two words are distinct from each other, since we learned these two words in their written form already, and in certain situations we won't have any ambiguity as to which action needs to be taken. If the reform lasts long enough that a new generation of people grows up only learning "/kjuː/" and not "queue/cue", they won't be so sure about which action is to be taken in "/kjuː/ the people" when it is presented as an isolated phrase without context. Think of a hash table that resolves hash collisions via separate chaining. The collision is when words sound the same (have the same index). Abolishing the current writing system is like dumpking the bucket contents and only returning the index. It's not an immediate problem because we still know that the bucket used to contain chained entries ("cached" in our brain memories"). Those who have never accessed the hash table (e.g. younger generations receiving education after the change) won't know what was in there before. They just know the index but not that there used to be two different data entries stored at the same index. The downside of losing information should be evident.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - mac01021 8y ago
        So you're saying that, when conversing via speech, the problems created by ambiguities such as "I heard a wail and I saw a whale" or "The knight was black" are more tractable than the problems arising from "When I lie, I lie on a bed" or "British left waffles on Falklands" Is that right? I'm not so sure. Given that you can only hear but not see, I feel they're probably equally problematic when there is not sufficient context to resolve the ambiguity. The thing that changes if you move to a phonetics-based writing system, is that you're forced to include more context while writing. I don't think anything changes about oral communication. (But I'm happy to be refuted!)
- chillacy 8y ago
  It’s not uncommon for a chinese speaker to say something and for the other speaker to say something like “which X, is it X with Y radical?”, or “is it X as in <word containing X>”. This happens especially with names.
  - mac01021 8y ago
    > especially with names. That makes sense! Since names will always lack disambiguating context. And I've seen that in Chinese movies come to think of it. It happens in English too: Is your name Kerry or Carrie?

mac01021 8y ago

> There are still way too many hompohones which can introduce a lot of amibiguity. Is this a problem when speaking? How many times a day do speakers of Chinese have to ask a collaborator which homophone they are using?

ssnistfajen 8y ago
Enough times that replacing Chinese characters with a fully phonetic system will introduce more problems than it solves. Did you read the example I wrote? Homophones usually aren't a problem because most people learn things in writing first, and that provides context in speech.
- mac01021 8y ago
  > In Chinese this is not a problem because by people usually learn this type of stuff on paper first. The additional context helps reduce the ambiguity in spoken conversation. I read that, but I'm having trouble imagining how that works. Do you have an example?
  - ssnistfajen 8y ago
    But I literally gave an example... "Queue" and "cue" which are homophones in English. Now imagine if there is a language reform where IPA replaces the current writing system, and both words are replaced with /kjuː/ as the only written form. "/kjuː/ the crowd" can be either "Queue the crowd" or "Cue the crowd". We are aware these two words are distinct from each other, since we learned these two words in their written form already, and in certain situations we won't have any ambiguity as to which action needs to be taken. If the reform lasts long enough that a new generation of people grows up only learning "/kjuː/" and not "queue/cue", they won't be so sure about which action is to be taken in "/kjuː/ the people" when it is presented as an isolated phrase without context. Think of a hash table that resolves hash collisions via separate chaining. The collision is when words sound the same (have the same index). Abolishing the current writing system is like dumpking the bucket contents and only returning the index. It's not an immediate problem because we still know that the bucket used to contain chained entries ("cached" in our brain memories"). Those who have never accessed the hash table (e.g. younger generations receiving education after the change) won't know what was in there before. They just know the index but not that there used to be two different data entries stored at the same index. The downside of losing information should be evident.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - mac01021 8y ago
      So you're saying that, when conversing via speech, the problems created by ambiguities such as "I heard a wail and I saw a whale" or "The knight was black" are more tractable than the problems arising from "When I lie, I lie on a bed" or "British left waffles on Falklands" Is that right? I'm not so sure. Given that you can only hear but not see, I feel they're probably equally problematic when there is not sufficient context to resolve the ambiguity. The thing that changes if you move to a phonetics-based writing system, is that you're forced to include more context while writing. I don't think anything changes about oral communication. (But I'm happy to be refuted!)
chillacy 8y ago
It’s not uncommon for a chinese speaker to say something and for the other speaker to say something like “which X, is it X with Y radical?”, or “is it X as in <word containing X>”. This happens especially with names.
- mac01021 8y ago
  > especially with names. That makes sense! Since names will always lack disambiguating context. And I've seen that in Chinese movies come to think of it. It happens in English too: Is your name Kerry or Carrie?