4 ms·

This is the reason Chinese characters are not going away. It is essential to comprehending written documents, because the Chinese language (and similars) have t

This is the reason Chinese characters are not going away. It is essential to comprehending written documents, because the Chinese language (and similars) have too many sounds that are the same or very similar for different words. So, if they abolish the characters and use something purely phonetic they'll have to reinvent the whole language to be understandable, especially for anything that is not colloquial.

jimmaswell 2y ago
> they'll have to reinvent the whole language to be understandable Frankly, the whole language seems like such a mess that maybe they should?
- coliveira 2y ago
  Good luck convincing 1.5 billion people that they need to reinvent a language they have used for thousands of years in order to satisfy somebody else...
  - James_K 2y ago
    In the Chinese style of government, people don't necessarily need to be convinced of something for it to be implemented.
James_K 2y ago
This is not a problem in other languages. The word "set" in English has 7 different meanings, yet you rarely struggle to tell which is intended. If the language can be understood when spoken, it can be understood when written phonetically.
- coliveira 2y ago
  Other languages are not Chinese. In Chinese a lot of the meaning in the spoken language is conveyed through tones and other conversational cues.
  - James_K 2y ago
    Can you quantify this? From what I understand, Chinese speakers can understand Pinyin text even without the tone marks.
    - sparkie 2y ago
      nd nglsh spkrs cn ndrstnd nglsh wtht wrttn vwls. Easy to understand for a fluent speaker, but a learner might struggle. We saw back when we had keypad phones, the youth would write "txt" speak because it was faster to type with 10 digits. I'm pretty sure there was a decline in literacy rate around this time, the youth struggled with spelling because they wrote rarely, but texted frequently. Smartphones fixed that problem, because they provide the full keyboard and auto-correct. My guess is, if you took the tones out of pinyin, then a generation or two later there would be less literacy. Children would struggle to add the tones even though they know how to speak the word. Writing already contains far less information than speech. Over several more generations, the speech could even change because the written word has lost the tonal information. Compared to the past, we read far more, speak less, and write even less, and most writing has been replaced by typing.
      - iforgotpassword 2y ago
        Most importantly, you can always pick a simple, predictable sentence, or one with enough redundancy to "prove" that point. Some everyday simple sentences might work in pinyin even without the accents for tones. Try an excerpt from a patent application and I'm sure even with tones you'll fail. > mchncl lmt xsts t th wdth f sngl xhst prt, t bt 62% f th br dmtr fr rsnbl pstn rng lf. > Th rd vlv s smpl bt ffctv frm f chck vlv That's just from a Wikipedia page I have open from earlier. Already quite a bit harder to decipher.
      - Suppafly 2y ago
        > the youth struggled with spelling because they wrote rarely, but texted frequently I wonder if there is any evidence of that other than boomers complaining about it. >Over several more generations, the speech could even change because the written word has lost the tonal information. That happens automatically with every language already. It's not like a race to the bottom where suddenly no one knows how to communicate though. >Compared to the past, we read far more, speak less, and write even less, and most writing has been replaced by typing. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >This is not a problem in other languages. I don't have a dog in this fight one way or the other, but it really is surprising that all these pro-kanji comments seem to ignore the concept of context altogether. It's very circular reasoning being used to try and explain why kanji are necessary.

jimmaswell 2y ago

> they'll have to reinvent the whole language to be understandable Frankly, the whole language seems like such a mess that maybe they should?

coliveira 2y ago
Good luck convincing 1.5 billion people that they need to reinvent a language they have used for thousands of years in order to satisfy somebody else...
- James_K 2y ago
  In the Chinese style of government, people don't necessarily need to be convinced of something for it to be implemented.

James_K 2y ago

This is not a problem in other languages. The word "set" in English has 7 different meanings, yet you rarely struggle to tell which is intended. If the language can be understood when spoken, it can be understood when written phonetically.

coliveira 2y ago
Other languages are not Chinese. In Chinese a lot of the meaning in the spoken language is conveyed through tones and other conversational cues.
- James_K 2y ago
  Can you quantify this? From what I understand, Chinese speakers can understand Pinyin text even without the tone marks.
  - sparkie 2y ago
    nd nglsh spkrs cn ndrstnd nglsh wtht wrttn vwls. Easy to understand for a fluent speaker, but a learner might struggle. We saw back when we had keypad phones, the youth would write "txt" speak because it was faster to type with 10 digits. I'm pretty sure there was a decline in literacy rate around this time, the youth struggled with spelling because they wrote rarely, but texted frequently. Smartphones fixed that problem, because they provide the full keyboard and auto-correct. My guess is, if you took the tones out of pinyin, then a generation or two later there would be less literacy. Children would struggle to add the tones even though they know how to speak the word. Writing already contains far less information than speech. Over several more generations, the speech could even change because the written word has lost the tonal information. Compared to the past, we read far more, speak less, and write even less, and most writing has been replaced by typing.
    - iforgotpassword 2y ago
      Most importantly, you can always pick a simple, predictable sentence, or one with enough redundancy to "prove" that point. Some everyday simple sentences might work in pinyin even without the accents for tones. Try an excerpt from a patent application and I'm sure even with tones you'll fail. > mchncl lmt xsts t th wdth f sngl xhst prt, t bt 62% f th br dmtr fr rsnbl pstn rng lf. > Th rd vlv s smpl bt ffctv frm f chck vlv That's just from a Wikipedia page I have open from earlier. Already quite a bit harder to decipher.
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      > the youth struggled with spelling because they wrote rarely, but texted frequently I wonder if there is any evidence of that other than boomers complaining about it. >Over several more generations, the speech could even change because the written word has lost the tonal information. That happens automatically with every language already. It's not like a race to the bottom where suddenly no one knows how to communicate though. >Compared to the past, we read far more, speak less, and write even less, and most writing has been replaced by typing. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Suppafly 2y ago
>This is not a problem in other languages. I don't have a dog in this fight one way or the other, but it really is surprising that all these pro-kanji comments seem to ignore the concept of context altogether. It's very circular reasoning being used to try and explain why kanji are necessary.