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> Like treating Latin as literary language That comparison is a stretch, as Latin and English are both written alphabetically, while classic and the various mo
by SECProto 4y ago
> Like treating Latin as literary language
That comparison is a stretch, as Latin and English are both written alphabetically, while classic and the various modern chinese dialects/languages are written logographically.
It's a delightfully complex topic! The headline is a bit misleading, as wikipedia has an entire article on written Hokkien - as you note, it isn't standardized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Hokkien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Hokkien
- davidjohnstone 4y agoThe comparison between Latin in Europe in the early modern period and literary Chinese in the Sinosphere for much of history is pretty good (and often made). Latin and literary Chinese are very different languages, but had similar roles in society by being the standard written language in a world where everybody spoke different languages (that were heavily influenced by, or even derived from, but different to the written form).
- SECProto 4y agoFair enough, there are similarities. However, alphabetically written languages are the same as their spoken - learn how to pronounce a hundred letter combinations and exceptions, and as long as you know the spoken language you're good. However with latin, pronouncing it wouldn't help with comprehension. With logographically represented languages, the characters have more to do with meaning than with pronunciation. It's part of why Chinese characters were used for completely different spoken languages (Korean, Japanese)