3 ms·

I don't think it's a bad thing either. Those scripts will not be forgotten soon because of the way information is preserved in our current age. Nothing of thei

by DCKing 12y ago

I don't think it's a bad thing either. Those scripts will not be forgotten soon because of the way information is preserved in our current age. Nothing of their historicity is lost to us at all. Yet this script (and many others) do not present compelling reasons to stay in use. The same goes for Chinese characters; the knowledge of this script among Chinese youth is waning simply because these characters are not as useful as pinyin romanization is. It's "natural selection". From my limited knowledge, only some "effective" scripts in the world that translate efficiently to a digital age. From the top of my head, only Latin, Cyrillic, (other descendants of Greek) and Hangul script feature a small enough 'standardized' amount of characters to express a wide variety of information. That is what is needed to survive in a digital age methinks.

mchaver 12y ago
I haven't noticed that about Chinese. Pinyin and Bopomofo are useful input methods but I hardly ever see material actually written in pinyin other than children's books. My kids have never really complained about having to learn characters and find a lot of pleasure in being able to read and write characters. Most people I hear calling for the eradication of Chinese characters are just a few non-native speakers. Of course, that is just anecdotal, I am sure there are also a few native speakers that hold that view but it seems to be a very small minority. Post-education most people hand write characters a lot less, but they are still reading characters and producing texts with pinyin/bopomofo/cangjie, etc. There are huge amounts of information being written Chinese with the increase of internet usage in China and increase in education. Unless there is another massive education reform in China, I don't see Chinese characters going anywhere.

by DCKing 12y ago

mchaver 12y ago

I haven't noticed that about Chinese. Pinyin and Bopomofo are useful input methods but I hardly ever see material actually written in pinyin other than children's books. My kids have never really complained about having to learn characters and find a lot of pleasure in being able to read and write characters. Most people I hear calling for the eradication of Chinese characters are just a few non-native speakers. Of course, that is just anecdotal, I am sure there are also a few native speakers that hold that view but it seems to be a very small minority. Post-education most people hand write characters a lot less, but they are still reading characters and producing texts with pinyin/bopomofo/cangjie, etc. There are huge amounts of information being written Chinese with the increase of internet usage in China and increase in education. Unless there is another massive education reform in China, I don't see Chinese characters going anywhere.