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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

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.

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.