4 ms·

Why couldn’t Chinese characters accurately represent English? Japanese and Korean aren’t related to Chinese and still were written with Chinese characters (stil

Why couldn’t Chinese characters accurately represent English? Japanese and Korean aren’t related to Chinese and still were written with Chinese characters (still are in the case of Japanese). If England had been in the Chinese sphere of influence rather than the Roman one, English would presumably be written with Chinese characters too. The fact that it used an alphabet instead is a historical accident, not due to any grammatical property of the language.

stickfigure 2y ago
If I read you correctly, you're saying "the fact that the residents of England speak English instead of Chinese is a historical accident" and maybe you're right. But the residents of England do in fact speak English, and English is a phonetic language, so there's an inherent impedance mismatch between Chinese characters and English language. I can make up words in English and write them down which don't necessarily have Chinese written equivalents (and probably, vice-versa?).
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  > If I read you correctly, you're saying "the fact that the residents of England speak English instead of Chinese is a historical accident" and maybe you're right. That’s not what I mean at all. I mean even if spoken English were exactly the same as it is now, it could have been written with Chinese characters, and indeed would have been if England had been in the Chinese sphere of cultural influence when literacy developed there. > English is a phonetic language What does it mean to be a “phonetic language”? In what sense is English “more phonetic” than the Chinese languages? > I can make up words in English and write them down which don’t necessarily have Chinese written equivalents Of course. But if English were written with Chinese characters people would eventually agree on characters to write those words with, just like they did with all the native Japanese words that didn’t have Chinese equivalents but are nevertheless written with kanji. Here is a famous article about how a Chinese-like writing system would work for English: https://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm https://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm
  - stickfigure 2y ago
    > In what sense is English “more phonetic” than the Chinese languages? Written English vs written Chinese. How would you write, in Chinese, the words thingamajibber, gizmosity, or half the things that come out of AvE's mouth? These words have subtle, humorous, and entertaining meanings by way of twisting the sounds of other existing words. Shakespeare was a master of this kind of wordplay and invented a surprising number of words we use today. I'm not saying you can't have the same phenomenon in spoken Chinese. But how do you write it down without a phonetic alphabet? And if you can't write it down, how do you share it to a wide audience?
    - School-Cotton 2y ago
      > How would you write, in Chinese, the words thingamajibber, gizmosity, or half the things that come out of AvE's mouth? With Chinese characters, of course. Why wouldn’t you be able to? In English “thing”, “a”, and “ma” are already words, and “jibber” would presumably be the first character in “gibberish”. So you could write that made-up word by combining those four characters. > But how do you write it down without a phonetic alphabet? In general to write a newly coined word you would repurpose characters that sound the same as the newly coined word. Every syllable that can possibly be uttered according to mandarin phonology is represented by some character (usually many), so this is always possible. --- Regardless, to reiterate the original point: I'm not claiming Chinese characters are better or more flexible than alphabetic writing. They're not. I'm simply claiming that there's no inherent property of Japanese that makes it more amenable to representation with Chinese characters than English is (other than the fact that a lot of its vocabulary comes from Chinese, but that's not a real counterpoint given that there is lots of native, non-Chinese-derived vocabulary that's still written with kanji). It would be possible to write Japanese entirely in the Latin alphabet, or English entirely with some system similar to Chinese characters, with minimal to no change to the structure of the language.
      - numpad0 2y ago
        > I'm simply claiming that there's no inherent property of Japanese that makes it more amenable to representation with Chinese characters than English is what? No, anything but IPA(only technically) and that language's native writings work for pronunciations. Hiragana, Hangul, or Chữ Quốc Ngữ, would not exist otherwise. e: would _not_ exist
skissane 2y ago
> Japanese and Korean aren’t related to Chinese and still were written with Chinese characters (still are in the case of Japanese). The problem is – in writing Japanese with kanji, lots of somewhat arbitrary decisions had to be made. Which kanji to use for which native Japanese word? There isn't always an obviously best choice from first principles. But that's not a problem in practice, because a tradition developed of which kanjii to use for which Japanese word (kun'yomi readings). For English, however, we don't have such a tradition. So it isn't clear which Chinese character to use for each English word. If two people tried to write English with Chinese characters independently, they'd likely make different character choices, and the mutual intelligibility might be poor. Also, while neither Japanese nor Korean belongs to the same language family as Chinese, both borrowed lots of words from Chinese. In Japanese, a lot of use of kanji (especially on'yomi reading) is for borrowings from Chinese. Since English borrowed far less terms from Chinese, this other method of "deciding which character(s) to use" – look at the word's Chinese etymology – largely doesn't work for English given very few English words have Chinese etymology. Finally, they also invented kanji in Japan for certain Japanese words – kokuji. The same thing happened for Korean Hanja (gukja), to a lesser degree. Vietnamese Chữ Nôm contains thousands of invented-in-Vietnam characters. Probably, if English had adopted Chinese writing, the same would have happened. But again, deciding when to do it and if so how is a somewhat arbitrary choice, which is impossible outside of a real societal tradition of doing it. > The fact that it used an alphabet instead is a historical accident, not due to any grammatical property of the language. Using the Latin alphabet changed English, just as using Chinese characters changed Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. If English had used Chinese characters instead of the Latin alphabet, it would be a very different language today. Possibly not in grammar, but certainly in vocabulary.

stickfigure 2y ago

If I read you correctly, you're saying "the fact that the residents of England speak English instead of Chinese is a historical accident" and maybe you're right. But the residents of England do in fact speak English, and English is a phonetic language, so there's an inherent impedance mismatch between Chinese characters and English language. I can make up words in English and write them down which don't necessarily have Chinese written equivalents (and probably, vice-versa?).

School-Cotton 2y ago
> If I read you correctly, you're saying "the fact that the residents of England speak English instead of Chinese is a historical accident" and maybe you're right. That’s not what I mean at all. I mean even if spoken English were exactly the same as it is now, it could have been written with Chinese characters, and indeed would have been if England had been in the Chinese sphere of cultural influence when literacy developed there. > English is a phonetic language What does it mean to be a “phonetic language”? In what sense is English “more phonetic” than the Chinese languages? > I can make up words in English and write them down which don’t necessarily have Chinese written equivalents Of course. But if English were written with Chinese characters people would eventually agree on characters to write those words with, just like they did with all the native Japanese words that didn’t have Chinese equivalents but are nevertheless written with kanji. Here is a famous article about how a Chinese-like writing system would work for English: https://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm https://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm
- stickfigure 2y ago
  > In what sense is English “more phonetic” than the Chinese languages? Written English vs written Chinese. How would you write, in Chinese, the words thingamajibber, gizmosity, or half the things that come out of AvE's mouth? These words have subtle, humorous, and entertaining meanings by way of twisting the sounds of other existing words. Shakespeare was a master of this kind of wordplay and invented a surprising number of words we use today. I'm not saying you can't have the same phenomenon in spoken Chinese. But how do you write it down without a phonetic alphabet? And if you can't write it down, how do you share it to a wide audience?
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    > How would you write, in Chinese, the words thingamajibber, gizmosity, or half the things that come out of AvE's mouth? With Chinese characters, of course. Why wouldn’t you be able to? In English “thing”, “a”, and “ma” are already words, and “jibber” would presumably be the first character in “gibberish”. So you could write that made-up word by combining those four characters. > But how do you write it down without a phonetic alphabet? In general to write a newly coined word you would repurpose characters that sound the same as the newly coined word. Every syllable that can possibly be uttered according to mandarin phonology is represented by some character (usually many), so this is always possible. --- Regardless, to reiterate the original point: I'm not claiming Chinese characters are better or more flexible than alphabetic writing. They're not. I'm simply claiming that there's no inherent property of Japanese that makes it more amenable to representation with Chinese characters than English is (other than the fact that a lot of its vocabulary comes from Chinese, but that's not a real counterpoint given that there is lots of native, non-Chinese-derived vocabulary that's still written with kanji). It would be possible to write Japanese entirely in the Latin alphabet, or English entirely with some system similar to Chinese characters, with minimal to no change to the structure of the language.
    - numpad0 2y ago
      > I'm simply claiming that there's no inherent property of Japanese that makes it more amenable to representation with Chinese characters than English is what? No, anything but IPA(only technically) and that language's native writings work for pronunciations. Hiragana, Hangul, or Chữ Quốc Ngữ, would not exist otherwise. e: would _not_ exist

skissane 2y ago

> Japanese and Korean aren’t related to Chinese and still were written with Chinese characters (still are in the case of Japanese). The problem is – in writing Japanese with kanji, lots of somewhat arbitrary decisions had to be made. Which kanji to use for which native Japanese word? There isn't always an obviously best choice from first principles. But that's not a problem in practice, because a tradition developed of which kanjii to use for which Japanese word (kun'yomi readings). For English, however, we don't have such a tradition. So it isn't clear which Chinese character to use for each English word. If two people tried to write English with Chinese characters independently, they'd likely make different character choices, and the mutual intelligibility might be poor. Also, while neither Japanese nor Korean belongs to the same language family as Chinese, both borrowed lots of words from Chinese. In Japanese, a lot of use of kanji (especially on'yomi reading) is for borrowings from Chinese. Since English borrowed far less terms from Chinese, this other method of "deciding which character(s) to use" – look at the word's Chinese etymology – largely doesn't work for English given very few English words have Chinese etymology. Finally, they also invented kanji in Japan for certain Japanese words – kokuji. The same thing happened for Korean Hanja (gukja), to a lesser degree. Vietnamese Chữ Nôm contains thousands of invented-in-Vietnam characters. Probably, if English had adopted Chinese writing, the same would have happened. But again, deciding when to do it and if so how is a somewhat arbitrary choice, which is impossible outside of a real societal tradition of doing it. > The fact that it used an alphabet instead is a historical accident, not due to any grammatical property of the language. Using the Latin alphabet changed English, just as using Chinese characters changed Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. If English had used Chinese characters instead of the Latin alphabet, it would be a very different language today. Possibly not in grammar, but certainly in vocabulary.