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It was the attempt to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs into Phoenician which led to all of today's alphabetic languages. Archaeologists recently found a temple in

It was the attempt to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs into Phoenician which led to all of today's alphabetic languages. Archaeologists recently found a temple in the Jordan area in which the earliest known attempt at an alphabetic language was written; it was a translation between Egyptian and Phoenician. Alphabetic, non pictographic languages are an order of magnitude easier to learn and express than pictographic languages, which require rote memorization of hundreds to thousands of pictographs and their modifiers. In contrast, the language you're reading this post in allows you to guess the sound of the words by the spelling, which is simply impossible in, say, Mandarin.

alasarmas 3y ago
I agree with your point in general, that alphabetic systems are easier to pick up. However, it’s not true that you can’t guess the sound of a Chinese character. From Wikipedia [0]: Radical–phonetic compounds, in which one component (the radical) indicates the general meaning of the character, and the other (the phonetic) hints at the pronunciation. An example is 樑 (liáng), where the phonetic 梁 liáng indicates the pronunciation of the character and the radical 木 ('wood') indicates its meaning of 'supporting beam'. Characters of this type constitute around 90% of Chinese logograms. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logogram https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logogram
- akavi 3y ago
  Note that the "phonetic" component can become incredibly strained in modern Chinese languages. Eg, take the character "俞"; in Mandarin, it's pronounced "yú". However, it's used as a phonetic component in: 1) 输: pronounced "shū" 2) 偷: pronounced "tōu" (There are even worse examples which I can't think of in the moment)
- cyberax 3y ago
  Phonetics don't really tell you the tone. Also, there are tons and tons of exceptions.
  - lIl-IIIl 3y ago
    Similar to English and other less-than-perfect phonetic languages? Or worse?
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
      That brongs up the question? Are there actually alphabet based languages which are worse than English at pronunciation - transcription correspondence? The few I know are all better.
- garfieldnate 3y ago
  I loved learning to read Japanese through the second volume of Heisig's _Learning the Kanji_. Volume 1, which teaches only meanings, is a slog, but volume 2, which teaches the Sino-Japanese readings is a beautiful example of organizing material to minimize entropy and maximize benefit for memorization as soon as possible. Unfortunately he never put together a volume 2 for a Chinese language. I haven't worked on it in a while, but I have a project where I attempt re-create the book for Japanese as well as Mandarin, Korean, and Vietnamese: https://nateglenn.com/uniunihan-db/ https://nateglenn.com/uniunihan-db/ (repo: https://github.com/garfieldnate/uniunihan-db https://github.com/garfieldnate/uniunihan-db). The "pure groups" are the ones where the presence of a specific radical guarantee you a specific pronunciation (within the list of character/pronunciation pairs you're trying to learn). Of the 4800 characters I used for the volume, only 290 are in the chapter on pure groups. The rest are either in semi-regular groups with varying numbers of exceptions, or in completely irregular groups with no discernible patterns. The characters were designed continuously over a period of time starting thousands of years ago, and the phonetic parts were sometimes exact and sometimes just clues, similar sounds or rhymes to give the reader a hint. Ancient Chinese pronunciation has changed beyond recognition, so it makes perfect sense that the pronunciations wouldn't be regular anymore. Mainland China uses a "simplified" character set, which did not affect literacy but in my opinion is a bit more difficult to read; they reduced the number of lines so that more characters look samey and they combined many (Mandarin) homonyms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#Method_of_simplification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#...), removing the meaning portion of characters that would have distinguished them. The simplification did not apply to all characters, so to achieve a high level of literacy you need to know traditional forms, anyway. It would be interesting to see someone try to actually remodel hanzi from scratch for a specific dialect of Chinese, using 100% regular phonetic components and no variants; multiple pronunciations of a character in the current system would be required to be written differently. An interesting example of this would be certain Korean gukja, where they've combined a Chinese character with a phonetic hangeul (example: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%AB%87 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%AB%87). This would be a truly simplified Chinese character set... but all of the culture's history that gets built into spelling over time would be completely lost, which is why I always prefer conservative spelling systems.
yakireev 3y ago
> the language you're reading this post in allows you to guess the sound of the words by the spelling It is "a guess" at best, and that guess won't be correct most of the time, unless you know the word already. And when you don't, you'll be dealing with all kinds of Cansas/Arcansas and although/drought/through/bought/cough/enough most of the time. In e.g. Russian or German, you can read the word from the way it is written and maybe miss the accent. In e.g. Spanish you can read the word correctly with the right accent most of the time. Even Korean is more phonetic than English - in English the best you've got is a guess. Not unlike Mandarin, by the way. Source: non-native speaker of English, also speaker of some other languages.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  It's a necessary evil owing to the large English lexicon filled with homophones. The Japanese stick to their ponderous use of Chinese characters for similar reasons.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > It's a necessary evil owing to the large English lexicon filled with homophones. The Japanese stick to their ponderous use of Chinese characters for similar reasons. This is a common and incredibly stupid argument. Note that it immediately implies that oral communication in English and Japanese is impossible. Early video games didn't have the memory available to render text in kanji and used kana exclusively. This caused zero problems.
    - gggmaster 3y ago
      Why do they use kanji now?
      - thaumasiotes 3y ago
        Because that's what Japanese writing is like. Why do US senators wear suits instead of T-shirts?
    - 3y ago
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
It's not like the Chinese didn't know about alphabetic scripts. Alphabets predate Chinese writing. Chinese is written the way it is for roughly the same reasons why English doesn't use phonetic spelling.
- paulusthe 3y ago
  Alphabets do not predate Chinese writing. L
  - otabdeveloper4 3y ago
    "Chinese writing" is clerical script and later. That's like a full 1000 years after the first Semitic scripts.
2Gkashmiri 3y ago
You are right. When years ago apple was said to introduce "emoji", the arstechnica article I was reading was explaining what the hell emojis are. They were like " it is a pictographical language like Chinese or hieroglyphic where each "idea" is represented by a single picture" and I simply could not wrap my head around it... Do I have to learn a new language altogether? How ? Will it fit on a keyboard? How many ideas can there be? What if I have to say something longer? What if I have to say a difficult concept? This was "before" emoji came out on iOS. Rest is history
shard 3y ago
Languages have different dimensions, including spelling, pronunciation, conjugation, grammar. English is moderately easy in spelling and pronunciation, but with exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions, it is harder than say Korean. Mandarin has more difficult spelling and pronunciation than English, but the low number of conjugations and tenses makes it much easier grammatically than English.
dontlaugh 3y ago
Mandarin actually has a great deal of pronunciation hints. It’s barely worse than English at this, which isn’t saying much.

alasarmas 3y ago

I agree with your point in general, that alphabetic systems are easier to pick up. However, it’s not true that you can’t guess the sound of a Chinese character. From Wikipedia [0]: Radical–phonetic compounds, in which one component (the radical) indicates the general meaning of the character, and the other (the phonetic) hints at the pronunciation. An example is 樑 (liáng), where the phonetic 梁 liáng indicates the pronunciation of the character and the radical 木 ('wood') indicates its meaning of 'supporting beam'. Characters of this type constitute around 90% of Chinese logograms. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logogram https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logogram

akavi 3y ago
Note that the "phonetic" component can become incredibly strained in modern Chinese languages. Eg, take the character "俞"; in Mandarin, it's pronounced "yú". However, it's used as a phonetic component in: 1) 输: pronounced "shū" 2) 偷: pronounced "tōu" (There are even worse examples which I can't think of in the moment)
cyberax 3y ago
Phonetics don't really tell you the tone. Also, there are tons and tons of exceptions.
- lIl-IIIl 3y ago
  Similar to English and other less-than-perfect phonetic languages? Or worse?
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    That brongs up the question? Are there actually alphabet based languages which are worse than English at pronunciation - transcription correspondence? The few I know are all better.
garfieldnate 3y ago
I loved learning to read Japanese through the second volume of Heisig's _Learning the Kanji_. Volume 1, which teaches only meanings, is a slog, but volume 2, which teaches the Sino-Japanese readings is a beautiful example of organizing material to minimize entropy and maximize benefit for memorization as soon as possible. Unfortunately he never put together a volume 2 for a Chinese language. I haven't worked on it in a while, but I have a project where I attempt re-create the book for Japanese as well as Mandarin, Korean, and Vietnamese: https://nateglenn.com/uniunihan-db/ https://nateglenn.com/uniunihan-db/ (repo: https://github.com/garfieldnate/uniunihan-db https://github.com/garfieldnate/uniunihan-db). The "pure groups" are the ones where the presence of a specific radical guarantee you a specific pronunciation (within the list of character/pronunciation pairs you're trying to learn). Of the 4800 characters I used for the volume, only 290 are in the chapter on pure groups. The rest are either in semi-regular groups with varying numbers of exceptions, or in completely irregular groups with no discernible patterns. The characters were designed continuously over a period of time starting thousands of years ago, and the phonetic parts were sometimes exact and sometimes just clues, similar sounds or rhymes to give the reader a hint. Ancient Chinese pronunciation has changed beyond recognition, so it makes perfect sense that the pronunciations wouldn't be regular anymore. Mainland China uses a "simplified" character set, which did not affect literacy but in my opinion is a bit more difficult to read; they reduced the number of lines so that more characters look samey and they combined many (Mandarin) homonyms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#Method_of_simplification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#...), removing the meaning portion of characters that would have distinguished them. The simplification did not apply to all characters, so to achieve a high level of literacy you need to know traditional forms, anyway. It would be interesting to see someone try to actually remodel hanzi from scratch for a specific dialect of Chinese, using 100% regular phonetic components and no variants; multiple pronunciations of a character in the current system would be required to be written differently. An interesting example of this would be certain Korean gukja, where they've combined a Chinese character with a phonetic hangeul (example: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%AB%87 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%AB%87). This would be a truly simplified Chinese character set... but all of the culture's history that gets built into spelling over time would be completely lost, which is why I always prefer conservative spelling systems.

yakireev 3y ago

> the language you're reading this post in allows you to guess the sound of the words by the spelling It is "a guess" at best, and that guess won't be correct most of the time, unless you know the word already. And when you don't, you'll be dealing with all kinds of Cansas/Arcansas and although/drought/through/bought/cough/enough most of the time. In e.g. Russian or German, you can read the word from the way it is written and maybe miss the accent. In e.g. Spanish you can read the word correctly with the right accent most of the time. Even Korean is more phonetic than English - in English the best you've got is a guess. Not unlike Mandarin, by the way. Source: non-native speaker of English, also speaker of some other languages.

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
It's a necessary evil owing to the large English lexicon filled with homophones. The Japanese stick to their ponderous use of Chinese characters for similar reasons.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > It's a necessary evil owing to the large English lexicon filled with homophones. The Japanese stick to their ponderous use of Chinese characters for similar reasons. This is a common and incredibly stupid argument. Note that it immediately implies that oral communication in English and Japanese is impossible. Early video games didn't have the memory available to render text in kanji and used kana exclusively. This caused zero problems.
  - gggmaster 3y ago
    Why do they use kanji now?
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      Because that's what Japanese writing is like. Why do US senators wear suits instead of T-shirts?
  - 3y ago

otabdeveloper4 3y ago

It's not like the Chinese didn't know about alphabetic scripts. Alphabets predate Chinese writing. Chinese is written the way it is for roughly the same reasons why English doesn't use phonetic spelling.

paulusthe 3y ago
Alphabets do not predate Chinese writing. L
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  "Chinese writing" is clerical script and later. That's like a full 1000 years after the first Semitic scripts.

2Gkashmiri 3y ago

You are right. When years ago apple was said to introduce "emoji", the arstechnica article I was reading was explaining what the hell emojis are. They were like " it is a pictographical language like Chinese or hieroglyphic where each "idea" is represented by a single picture" and I simply could not wrap my head around it... Do I have to learn a new language altogether? How ? Will it fit on a keyboard? How many ideas can there be? What if I have to say something longer? What if I have to say a difficult concept? This was "before" emoji came out on iOS. Rest is history

shard 3y ago

Languages have different dimensions, including spelling, pronunciation, conjugation, grammar. English is moderately easy in spelling and pronunciation, but with exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions, it is harder than say Korean. Mandarin has more difficult spelling and pronunciation than English, but the low number of conjugations and tenses makes it much easier grammatically than English.

dontlaugh 3y ago

Mandarin actually has a great deal of pronunciation hints. It’s barely worse than English at this, which isn’t saying much.