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Perhaps interestingly, China did two rounds of simplifying Chinese characters. The first one was well received, but the second one[0] fell out of favor and was
by Gathering6678 1y ago
Perhaps interestingly, China did two rounds of simplifying Chinese characters. The first one was well received, but the second one[0] fell out of favor and was rescinded, because it was making up a bunch of new characters (in English that would be equivalent to making up new words). People don't want to remember new words.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#Second_round_of_simplification_(1977%E2%80%931986) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#...
- YurgenJurgensen 1y agoI think perhaps more interestingly, they presumably had the opportunity to create a phonetic system like Hangul or hiragana, and certainly the institutional power to force any change through if they really wanted to, but elected not to.
- Gathering6678 1y agoAh, yes. The romanization movement of Chinese characters[0]. We do have a pinyin system that bacame extremely important when computers came into China. If you didn't know pinyin, you would have to use other complicated methods (e.g. Wubi) to type in Chinese, which requires memorizing a whole new system. [0]: only Chinese version available. https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B1%89%E5%AD%97%E6%8B%89%E4%B8%81%E5%8C%96%E8%BF%90%E5%8A%A8 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B1%89%E5%AD%97%E6%8B%89%E4...