4 ms·

One of the amusing 20th century historical anecdotes which I am constantly pointing out to mainland Chinese is that the lauded literary figure Lu Xun of Shaoxin

One of the amusing 20th century historical anecdotes which I am constantly pointing out to mainland Chinese is that the lauded literary figure Lu Xun of Shaoxing actually advocated for the replacement of written Chinese with an alphabetic/romanized writing system based on phonetic transposition. China then invented pinyin, which is a relatively well conceived and elegant system, but refused to support the replacement of characters and instead advocated for "simplified" characters (which are approximately as hard as the originals, but provide a convenient cultural gap). While Lu Xun is now taught in all mainland Chinese schools, they conveniently leave out the part where he advocated for leaving characters in the past. His primary argument was the years wasted on rote learning that Chinese students require as a precondition to literacy.

kmeisthax 4y ago
Japanese tried the same thing - dropping kanji[0] and kana[1] entirely in favor of romaji[2]. It failed primarily for the same reason that English spelling reform fails, which is that we the horrifically mangled and confusing orthography to distinguish words spelled the same way. [0] Characters derived from Chinese. Each character has both an embedded meaning and one or more readings. They look like this: 漢字 [1] Characters that spell out whole syllables. The glyphs are typographically derived from kanji, but very simplified and without meanings. Due to medieval Japanese gender politics, there are two of them. They look like this: ひらがな and カタカナ. [2] The characters you are using right now.
- contingencies 4y ago
  Japan is the only culture I know of with three or four concurrent systems in use. China could be said to have two. Taiwan could be said to have three, if you could bopomofo.
  - samus 4y ago
    Japanese could get rid of either Hiragana or Katakana if they really wanted, since both of them are fully functional syllabaries. But in Taiwan, the choice between Bopomofo, Pinyin, and their local variant of Pinyin has political significance because it is taken to be reflective of their stance to the Mainland.
dwohnitmok 4y ago
> China then invented pinyin, which is a relatively well conceived and elegant system, but refused to support the replacement of characters and instead advocated for "simplified" characters (which are approximately as hard as the originals, but provide a convenient cultural gap). This is only because the plan for simplified characters died midway through. There was a second round of simplifications that would have gone even further with talks of full phoneticization if that succeeded. However, the second round of simplification was simply too unpopular. > While Lu Xun is now taught in all mainland Chinese schools, they conveniently leave out the part where he advocated for leaving characters in the past. They definitely don't. His arguments and polemics about this are pretty well known in China. There are a variety of secondary and undergraduate courses that cover his collected works, with that specific quote showing up all the time. This is also a hot topic that repeatedly shows up in all sorts of Chinese online forums. Lu Xun, like the other scholars of his time, was extreme in the other direction. He believed that it was fundamentally impossible for China to advance without a phonetic script and that China was doomed and it was impossible for the Chinese citizenry to achieve literacy. His arguments are generally discarded today because he said things that have been soundly disproved. It is worth noting that many early 20th century scholars had a fanatical devotion to anything Western. They contorted Chinese to make it as close to Western languages, especially English, as much as possible, adding new pronouns, following Western grammar patterns, etc. Indeed, some early 20th century Chinese articles are quite awkward to read without an English background. Leaving aside whether characters are "good" or "bad," there is an oft-raised, but mistaken, view that using a phonetic script for Chinese would not change the language. After all it is but a different medium for the same information. But that's not true. There remains a level of diglossia in modern Mandarin that makes some modern works difficult to decipher when read out loud (yes this is true even if we leave out Classical Chinese). Using a phonetic script to write Chinese would necessarily involve a change to the language, not just its transmission. Whether that's worth it is a separate question, but it is a change.
- contingencies 4y ago
  They definitely don't. OK, {{citation-needed}}. FWIW, my source is two decades talking to locals. I am yet to meet anyone aware of these aspects of his position save academics, therefore I am genuinely interested in why you claim this is "definitely" false. I agree with the rest of your points.

kmeisthax 4y ago

Japanese tried the same thing - dropping kanji[0] and kana[1] entirely in favor of romaji[2]. It failed primarily for the same reason that English spelling reform fails, which is that we the horrifically mangled and confusing orthography to distinguish words spelled the same way. [0] Characters derived from Chinese. Each character has both an embedded meaning and one or more readings. They look like this: 漢字 [1] Characters that spell out whole syllables. The glyphs are typographically derived from kanji, but very simplified and without meanings. Due to medieval Japanese gender politics, there are two of them. They look like this: ひらがな and カタカナ. [2] The characters you are using right now.

contingencies 4y ago
Japan is the only culture I know of with three or four concurrent systems in use. China could be said to have two. Taiwan could be said to have three, if you could bopomofo.
- samus 4y ago
  Japanese could get rid of either Hiragana or Katakana if they really wanted, since both of them are fully functional syllabaries. But in Taiwan, the choice between Bopomofo, Pinyin, and their local variant of Pinyin has political significance because it is taken to be reflective of their stance to the Mainland.

dwohnitmok 4y ago

> China then invented pinyin, which is a relatively well conceived and elegant system, but refused to support the replacement of characters and instead advocated for "simplified" characters (which are approximately as hard as the originals, but provide a convenient cultural gap). This is only because the plan for simplified characters died midway through. There was a second round of simplifications that would have gone even further with talks of full phoneticization if that succeeded. However, the second round of simplification was simply too unpopular. > While Lu Xun is now taught in all mainland Chinese schools, they conveniently leave out the part where he advocated for leaving characters in the past. They definitely don't. His arguments and polemics about this are pretty well known in China. There are a variety of secondary and undergraduate courses that cover his collected works, with that specific quote showing up all the time. This is also a hot topic that repeatedly shows up in all sorts of Chinese online forums. Lu Xun, like the other scholars of his time, was extreme in the other direction. He believed that it was fundamentally impossible for China to advance without a phonetic script and that China was doomed and it was impossible for the Chinese citizenry to achieve literacy. His arguments are generally discarded today because he said things that have been soundly disproved. It is worth noting that many early 20th century scholars had a fanatical devotion to anything Western. They contorted Chinese to make it as close to Western languages, especially English, as much as possible, adding new pronouns, following Western grammar patterns, etc. Indeed, some early 20th century Chinese articles are quite awkward to read without an English background. Leaving aside whether characters are "good" or "bad," there is an oft-raised, but mistaken, view that using a phonetic script for Chinese would not change the language. After all it is but a different medium for the same information. But that's not true. There remains a level of diglossia in modern Mandarin that makes some modern works difficult to decipher when read out loud (yes this is true even if we leave out Classical Chinese). Using a phonetic script to write Chinese would necessarily involve a change to the language, not just its transmission. Whether that's worth it is a separate question, but it is a change.

contingencies 4y ago
They definitely don't. OK, {{citation-needed}}. FWIW, my source is two decades talking to locals. I am yet to meet anyone aware of these aspects of his position save academics, therefore I am genuinely interested in why you claim this is "definitely" false. I agree with the rest of your points.