5 ms·

It's not a claim I'm making, because it's an irrational comparison. My son knew the alphabet by the time he was three years old. Did it give him a 6000 word voc

by beat 8y ago

It's not a claim I'm making, because it's an irrational comparison. My son knew the alphabet by the time he was three years old. Did it give him a 6000 word vocabulary? No. Standalone Roman letters are meaningless, unlike Chinese characters. And there are other tradeoffs. Chinese writing is much more compact and easier to read, relative to alphabetic writing. A layer of translation has been removed. I'm not convinced that learning to write Chinese with a "literate" vocabulary is substantially harder than achieving equivalent literacy in a language with alphabetic writing. It might look easier to you if you've never learned both. But proof is in the pudding - China's literacy rate is on par with Western literacy rates, for similar educational effort.

FabHK 8y ago
> China's literacy rate is on par with Western literacy rates, for similar educational effort. Well, that's precisely the claim that is under dispute. For example, DeFrancis [1] aims to dispel what he calls "The Successfulness Myth: Chinese characters are responsible for a high level of literacy in East Asian countries. (A weaker version of this myth is simply that despite the flaws of Chinese characters, East Asian countries still have a high level of literacy.)" He makes the opposite claim that (from the Wikipedia summary) "The Chinese script, with its huge number of characters, its complexity and its irregularities, is harmful to the literacy improvement efforts of the Chinese society, and needs to be replaced by a more efficient writing system if China is to achieve the benefits of modernization." There is, in other words, serious scholarly dispute about the success of the Chinese script. > Chinese writing is much more compact and easier to read, relative to alphabetic writing Agreed on the first part, it's more compact (not surprising if you have ten thousands of choices per character, say 14 bits, instead of 26, or 5 bits). But I don't think it's easier to read (let alone write), and I'd want to see evidence for that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Language%3A_Fact_and_Fantasy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Language%3A_Fact_a...
- beat 8y ago
  Couldn't the same thing be said for the horrendous spelling and grammar issues of English? For what it's worth, my spouse has a Master's degree in Chinese pedagogy. I've not heard such arguments from her. A single book, weighed against observation, isn't proof.
  - FabHK 8y ago
    > horrendous spelling and grammar issues of English? Sure, English has pretty horrible orthography, arguably the worst among alphabetic languages (though it's not that easy to reform, either, see eg. [1]). But it's still more phonetic than Chinese. Spanish has a beautiful orthography, and pretty close correspondence between written and spoken word. "Chinese characters are so difficult to learn that even the best system of rudimentary characters, or simplified teaching, does not equip the people with a really rich and efficient vocabulary. Sooner or later, we believe, we will have to abandon characters altogether if we are to create a new social culture in which the masses fully participate." "We believe Latinization is a good instrument with which to overcome illiteracy." This was said by Mao Zedong (oh, dang, that's so ambiguous, I mean 毛泽东) in 1936, see [2]. "This has led many Chinese in the past to advocate the abolition of characters in favor of an alphabetic system, but such programs have met with little success." [3] So, the idea that the Chinese writing system is too cumbersome is by no means new, or "Western", for what it's worth. > A single book, weighed against observation, isn't proof Well, no. But there is more than a single book, there are decades of discussion and scholarship on this. It's conceivable to me that China could benefit from a move to alphabetic writing, and translations of Classical Chinese into vernacular (and anyone who wants can go study characters and Classical Chinese texts in the original, just like anyone in the West can go learn Latin and ancient Greek and Hebrew and read the classics in the original, or the Bible, for that matter). [1] https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/accents_spellingreform.htm https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/accents_spellingreform... [2] http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp171_chinese_writing_reform.pdf http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp171_chinese_writing... [3] http://sites.asiasociety.org/education/VISIBLE_TRACES/curriculum/pdf/CIAessay1.pdf http://sites.asiasociety.org/education/VISIBLE_TRACES/curric...
    - tivert 8y ago
      > Sure, English has pretty horrible orthography, arguably the worst among alphabetic languages (though it's not that easy to reform, either, see eg. [1]). English orthography, summed up, is: all the orthographies from all the languages from all the time periods cobbled together into a monster.
- knolax 8y ago
  The book you keep citing was published in 1984. A lot has happened in China, especially in regards to education reform between 1984 and 2018. Aside from that book, I see no other signs of "serious scholarly dispute about the success of the Chinese script.".
- ssnistfajen 8y ago
  The Internet and Pinyin input methods has rendered these calls of reform largely irrelevant. Handwriting skills outside the education system are on the decline due to digitization, but the positive side is that any literate individual can utilize Chinese characters in online communication with trivial effort. For non-trivial ones there are always online dictionaries which can be accessed via online search in seconds. An opinion on the Chinese language from 1984 is not applicable in 2018, pretending that it does is disingenuous.
  - FabHK 8y ago
    Good point. Particularly with text-to-speech (and vice versa!) also being available now. I'm still sorry for all those kids having to spend years of their childhood on characters, but maybe one can see it as a character forming exercise.

by beat 8y ago

FabHK 8y ago

> China's literacy rate is on par with Western literacy rates, for similar educational effort. Well, that's precisely the claim that is under dispute. For example, DeFrancis [1] aims to dispel what he calls "The Successfulness Myth: Chinese characters are responsible for a high level of literacy in East Asian countries. (A weaker version of this myth is simply that despite the flaws of Chinese characters, East Asian countries still have a high level of literacy.)" He makes the opposite claim that (from the Wikipedia summary) "The Chinese script, with its huge number of characters, its complexity and its irregularities, is harmful to the literacy improvement efforts of the Chinese society, and needs to be replaced by a more efficient writing system if China is to achieve the benefits of modernization." There is, in other words, serious scholarly dispute about the success of the Chinese script. > Chinese writing is much more compact and easier to read, relative to alphabetic writing Agreed on the first part, it's more compact (not surprising if you have ten thousands of choices per character, say 14 bits, instead of 26, or 5 bits). But I don't think it's easier to read (let alone write), and I'd want to see evidence for that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Language%3A_Fact_and_Fantasy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Language%3A_Fact_a...

beat 8y ago
Couldn't the same thing be said for the horrendous spelling and grammar issues of English? For what it's worth, my spouse has a Master's degree in Chinese pedagogy. I've not heard such arguments from her. A single book, weighed against observation, isn't proof.
- FabHK 8y ago
  > horrendous spelling and grammar issues of English? Sure, English has pretty horrible orthography, arguably the worst among alphabetic languages (though it's not that easy to reform, either, see eg. [1]). But it's still more phonetic than Chinese. Spanish has a beautiful orthography, and pretty close correspondence between written and spoken word. "Chinese characters are so difficult to learn that even the best system of rudimentary characters, or simplified teaching, does not equip the people with a really rich and efficient vocabulary. Sooner or later, we believe, we will have to abandon characters altogether if we are to create a new social culture in which the masses fully participate." "We believe Latinization is a good instrument with which to overcome illiteracy." This was said by Mao Zedong (oh, dang, that's so ambiguous, I mean 毛泽东) in 1936, see [2]. "This has led many Chinese in the past to advocate the abolition of characters in favor of an alphabetic system, but such programs have met with little success." [3] So, the idea that the Chinese writing system is too cumbersome is by no means new, or "Western", for what it's worth. > A single book, weighed against observation, isn't proof Well, no. But there is more than a single book, there are decades of discussion and scholarship on this. It's conceivable to me that China could benefit from a move to alphabetic writing, and translations of Classical Chinese into vernacular (and anyone who wants can go study characters and Classical Chinese texts in the original, just like anyone in the West can go learn Latin and ancient Greek and Hebrew and read the classics in the original, or the Bible, for that matter). [1] https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/accents_spellingreform.htm https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/accents_spellingreform... [2] http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp171_chinese_writing_reform.pdf http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp171_chinese_writing... [3] http://sites.asiasociety.org/education/VISIBLE_TRACES/curriculum/pdf/CIAessay1.pdf http://sites.asiasociety.org/education/VISIBLE_TRACES/curric...
  - tivert 8y ago
    > Sure, English has pretty horrible orthography, arguably the worst among alphabetic languages (though it's not that easy to reform, either, see eg. [1]). English orthography, summed up, is: all the orthographies from all the languages from all the time periods cobbled together into a monster.
knolax 8y ago
The book you keep citing was published in 1984. A lot has happened in China, especially in regards to education reform between 1984 and 2018. Aside from that book, I see no other signs of "serious scholarly dispute about the success of the Chinese script.".
ssnistfajen 8y ago
The Internet and Pinyin input methods has rendered these calls of reform largely irrelevant. Handwriting skills outside the education system are on the decline due to digitization, but the positive side is that any literate individual can utilize Chinese characters in online communication with trivial effort. For non-trivial ones there are always online dictionaries which can be accessed via online search in seconds. An opinion on the Chinese language from 1984 is not applicable in 2018, pretending that it does is disingenuous.
- FabHK 8y ago
  Good point. Particularly with text-to-speech (and vice versa!) also being available now. I'm still sorry for all those kids having to spend years of their childhood on characters, but maybe one can see it as a character forming exercise.