5 ms·

I also find the Chinese writing system fascinating in that it's the only one that didn't evolve from representing concepts to representing sounds. Maybe there i

I also find the Chinese writing system fascinating in that it's the only one that didn't evolve from representing concepts to representing sounds. Maybe there is a connection there?

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> I also find the Chinese writing system fascinating in that it's the only one that didn't evolve from representing concepts to representing sounds. It did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCshu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCshu China has had enough cultural continuity to maintain its own writing system over time.
- felix318 5y ago
  The same thing happened in Japanese but both countries refrained from taking the next logical step and throw away the ideograms. Much of it has to do with the educated elite wanting to restrict access to knowledge, but it's still curious that the same thing didn't happen in other cultures.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    Seriously, it's about cultural continuity. Its not about wanting to restrict access to knowledge; in general the educated elite wishes the illiterate masses would be more educated, not less. But for example, there is a period in Egyptian history when royal inscriptions start being written exclusively in vernacular Egyptian rather than the (incredibly old) classical form. And that period just happens to be when the Egyptian throne is taken over by Libyans.
    - felix318 5y ago
      I’m not an expert on the matter but, from what I know about Korea and Japan, literacy was a priviledge granted to a small minority. Having a complex script that takes years to learn was a tremendous advantage to them. Maybe it was different in China, and things have certainly changed in modern times, but low literacy has often been beneficial to those in power. Cultural continuity is questionable, even old texts in European languages often need to be adapted for contemporary readers. All that said, Chinese ideograms are incredibly cool so maybe that is a good reason to keep them.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > but, from what I know about Korea and Japan, literacy was a priviledge granted to a small minority. I have heard that a contemporary objection to Hangul was that it would allow anyone to learn to read. I don't know all that much about it either -- in particular, I don't know how much force that objection ended up having compared to other objections -- but it certainly supports your view. There are two conflicting principles here, which we can observe within the Western European tradition: - The elites are interested in keeping the masses under control. - The elites are interested in ensuring that the masses' idea of virtue matches that of the elites. Education promotes that second goal while arguably undermining the first one. So e.g. we see some Christian traditions that perform religious services in Latin and some that perform them in the local vernacular; we see some traditions that perform services in the vernacular but discourage reading the Bible; and so forth. There is a tension that different traditions resolve in different ways. But writing systems are mostly about conservatism. To change the writing system, you need an explicit reform effort to succeed. Otherwise it will just keep going the way it is for no other reason than that that's how you write. > Chinese ideograms As a side note, Japanese kanji are much closer to being ideograms than Chinese characters are. The first and most important thing you can know about a Chinese character is its pronunciation. The semantics are present to a much greater degree than in most other languages, but they are not dominant. In Japanese, a character doesn't really have a pronunciation by itself, only readings that are specific to particular words.
      - yorwba 5y ago
        Cultural continuity isn't just about old texts, but also recent texts in the old style, that people learning to read today want to be able to understand.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      > in general the educated elite wishes the illiterate masses would be more educated, not less Literate masses are more likely to challenge the dominance of the educated elites. In Korea, for example, the yangban pushed back against Hangul primarily for this reason.
  - yongjik 5y ago
    The word "ideogram" has fallen out of fashion because it's a very poor description of Chinese characters. A Chinese character doesn't describe an idea: it describes a concrete word, with a definite pronunciation. It's just that the relation between the shape of the character and its sound is much more obscure than most scripts. An example of an actual ideogram is the exit sign (you know, a green man running out of a door) - it conveys the idea without having a canonical associated word.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > it conveys the idea without having a canonical associated word. You could make a pretty good case that the associated word is "EXIT".
      - yongjik 5y ago
        The case is not that strong: for example, nobody writes "It's hard to find out how to <exit icon> vim." The icon represents the concept of "a door used for emergency exit", not the word "exit".
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        I think we're talking about different things. I found an image of the sign you're talking about by searching for "exit sign", but I wouldn't have called it an exit sign and wouldn't really understand what it's supposed to mean. To me, an exit sign is mounted on the ceiling and just says "EXIT".
mcguire 5y ago
Best not let any linguists hear you say "representing concepts to representing sounds". All languages represent sounds as far as I've ever heard from them, and the idea of "representing concepts" is regarded as a remnant of some very broken ideas. :-) As far as I (a non-linguist, although I've read a bit) know, there are roughly three ways of writing: alphabets, syllabaries, and whatever Chinese is (logosyllabic?). Alphabets have one grapheme per (roughly) phoneme and have(AFAIK) developed once: Proto-Siniatic, which led to Semitic (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.), Phoenician (which developed into Greek, Latin, etc.) and a few others. Every other alphabet is a direct or indirect descendant. They typically have <50 graphemes. Chinese is kinda-sorta syllabic, but the language has a great many one syllable words which have a grapheme mapped directly to that use. On the other hand there's things like "coral" (IIRC) which is two syllables and is written with two characters each of which are not used anywhere else. It, its descendants, and any other similar languages if there are any, has some many thousands of graphemes. Syllabaries have one grapheme per syllable and are the most common form of writing, to the extent that it's pretty clear that they're the normal version of human writing. They typically have a few hundred graphemes. Mayan and cuneiform are a couple of weird cases. They (AFAIK) are mostly syllabic, but with some logographic-ish parts like Chinese. But the number of graphemes are pretty firmly in the syllabary range. Tl;dr: Writing is weird and the writing I'm doing now is very much so.
- felix318 5y ago
  I’m not sure I understand your comment. Granted, I’m not a linguist but there is certainly something unique about the Chinese script. I don’t know a single word of Chinese, but I followed a link in a sibling post and came across this: 女書 - which my meager knowledge of Japanese allowed me to understand that it means “women’s writing”. What is the proper name for the ability to read text without knowing how to pronounce it?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    > What is the proper name for the ability to read text without knowing how to pronounce it? "literate". A person can be literate in a language without being able to speak it or understand the spoken form, it's the ability to read or write.

I also find the Chinese writing system fascinating in that it's the only one that didn't evolve from representing concepts to representing sounds. Maybe there is a connection there?

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> I also find the Chinese writing system fascinating in that it's the only one that didn't evolve from representing concepts to representing sounds. It did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCshu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCshu China has had enough cultural continuity to maintain its own writing system over time.

felix318 5y ago
The same thing happened in Japanese but both countries refrained from taking the next logical step and throw away the ideograms. Much of it has to do with the educated elite wanting to restrict access to knowledge, but it's still curious that the same thing didn't happen in other cultures.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  Seriously, it's about cultural continuity. Its not about wanting to restrict access to knowledge; in general the educated elite wishes the illiterate masses would be more educated, not less. But for example, there is a period in Egyptian history when royal inscriptions start being written exclusively in vernacular Egyptian rather than the (incredibly old) classical form. And that period just happens to be when the Egyptian throne is taken over by Libyans.
  - felix318 5y ago
    I’m not an expert on the matter but, from what I know about Korea and Japan, literacy was a priviledge granted to a small minority. Having a complex script that takes years to learn was a tremendous advantage to them. Maybe it was different in China, and things have certainly changed in modern times, but low literacy has often been beneficial to those in power. Cultural continuity is questionable, even old texts in European languages often need to be adapted for contemporary readers. All that said, Chinese ideograms are incredibly cool so maybe that is a good reason to keep them.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > but, from what I know about Korea and Japan, literacy was a priviledge granted to a small minority. I have heard that a contemporary objection to Hangul was that it would allow anyone to learn to read. I don't know all that much about it either -- in particular, I don't know how much force that objection ended up having compared to other objections -- but it certainly supports your view. There are two conflicting principles here, which we can observe within the Western European tradition: - The elites are interested in keeping the masses under control. - The elites are interested in ensuring that the masses' idea of virtue matches that of the elites. Education promotes that second goal while arguably undermining the first one. So e.g. we see some Christian traditions that perform religious services in Latin and some that perform them in the local vernacular; we see some traditions that perform services in the vernacular but discourage reading the Bible; and so forth. There is a tension that different traditions resolve in different ways. But writing systems are mostly about conservatism. To change the writing system, you need an explicit reform effort to succeed. Otherwise it will just keep going the way it is for no other reason than that that's how you write. > Chinese ideograms As a side note, Japanese kanji are much closer to being ideograms than Chinese characters are. The first and most important thing you can know about a Chinese character is its pronunciation. The semantics are present to a much greater degree than in most other languages, but they are not dominant. In Japanese, a character doesn't really have a pronunciation by itself, only readings that are specific to particular words.
    - yorwba 5y ago
      Cultural continuity isn't just about old texts, but also recent texts in the old style, that people learning to read today want to be able to understand.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    > in general the educated elite wishes the illiterate masses would be more educated, not less Literate masses are more likely to challenge the dominance of the educated elites. In Korea, for example, the yangban pushed back against Hangul primarily for this reason.
- yongjik 5y ago
  The word "ideogram" has fallen out of fashion because it's a very poor description of Chinese characters. A Chinese character doesn't describe an idea: it describes a concrete word, with a definite pronunciation. It's just that the relation between the shape of the character and its sound is much more obscure than most scripts. An example of an actual ideogram is the exit sign (you know, a green man running out of a door) - it conveys the idea without having a canonical associated word.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > it conveys the idea without having a canonical associated word. You could make a pretty good case that the associated word is "EXIT".
    - yongjik 5y ago
      The case is not that strong: for example, nobody writes "It's hard to find out how to <exit icon> vim." The icon represents the concept of "a door used for emergency exit", not the word "exit".
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        I think we're talking about different things. I found an image of the sign you're talking about by searching for "exit sign", but I wouldn't have called it an exit sign and wouldn't really understand what it's supposed to mean. To me, an exit sign is mounted on the ceiling and just says "EXIT".

mcguire 5y ago

Best not let any linguists hear you say "representing concepts to representing sounds". All languages represent sounds as far as I've ever heard from them, and the idea of "representing concepts" is regarded as a remnant of some very broken ideas. :-) As far as I (a non-linguist, although I've read a bit) know, there are roughly three ways of writing: alphabets, syllabaries, and whatever Chinese is (logosyllabic?). Alphabets have one grapheme per (roughly) phoneme and have(AFAIK) developed once: Proto-Siniatic, which led to Semitic (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.), Phoenician (which developed into Greek, Latin, etc.) and a few others. Every other alphabet is a direct or indirect descendant. They typically have <50 graphemes. Chinese is kinda-sorta syllabic, but the language has a great many one syllable words which have a grapheme mapped directly to that use. On the other hand there's things like "coral" (IIRC) which is two syllables and is written with two characters each of which are not used anywhere else. It, its descendants, and any other similar languages if there are any, has some many thousands of graphemes. Syllabaries have one grapheme per syllable and are the most common form of writing, to the extent that it's pretty clear that they're the normal version of human writing. They typically have a few hundred graphemes. Mayan and cuneiform are a couple of weird cases. They (AFAIK) are mostly syllabic, but with some logographic-ish parts like Chinese. But the number of graphemes are pretty firmly in the syllabary range. Tl;dr: Writing is weird and the writing I'm doing now is very much so.

felix318 5y ago
I’m not sure I understand your comment. Granted, I’m not a linguist but there is certainly something unique about the Chinese script. I don’t know a single word of Chinese, but I followed a link in a sibling post and came across this: 女書 - which my meager knowledge of Japanese allowed me to understand that it means “women’s writing”. What is the proper name for the ability to read text without knowing how to pronounce it?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  > What is the proper name for the ability to read text without knowing how to pronounce it? "literate". A person can be literate in a language without being able to speak it or understand the spoken form, it's the ability to read or write.