Characters are objectively harder, even for Chinese

[pazu]

Ala, Vietnamese can understand latinized alphabet word by word, I'm sure you can too.

I used a program to convert them and too lazy to group them together. Just try to say 你 ---- 好---- 嗎? People can understand it. Say 我 ---- 們 ---- 偉 ---- 大 --- 的 ----- 領 ------袖. People can still understand. But why can't you understand those pinyin written one by one?

One of the reasons why Vietnam fares worse than China, Taiwan, HK, Korea and Japan may be also because it abandons characters.

Well.. just can't agree, indeed economics is related to politics and some many other reasons rather than just the language itself. Look back to China during the Revolution, same people, same language, but different minds and different leaders, then different outcome. And even within China they're not the same, Hong Kong and Taiwan, SHanghai and Beijing, Wuhan and Changsha, one fares better than the other, with the same language. Indeed ALL Vietnamese I met feel quite happy with their Quoc Ngu, the most important point is, no matter what language they use, if the people like it then that's the way it goes.

[nnt]

反貪污 (chong tham nhung) -> 反貪

不合法活動 (hoat dong bat hop phat) -> 不法活動

防預貪污 (phong ngua tham nhung) -> 防貪

公共關係 (quan he cong chung) -> 公關

In Hán Việt:

反貪污 phản tham ô

不合法活動 bất hợp pháp hoạt động

防預貪污 phòng dự tham ô

公共關係 công cộng quan hệ

These Hán Việt transcriptions, though a little too much formal or solemn for a Vietnamese, would be understandable without characters. Their Vietnamese translations (given by Pazu above) just slightly differ from the Hán Việt expressions (in ex 2 and 4 : inversion of nouns and adjectives).

The shortened expressions would be less comprehesible, and confused with other possibilities.

tham nhũng 貪冗 is slightly different from Chinese usage.

[Ian_Lee]

Even assuming that pinyin can replace character, but does anyone consider how much cost it will involve in such huge project?

The cost will be astronomical in any scale you measure.

Will the benefit (if there is actually any benefit at all) outlast the cost? I wonder.

[Quest]

the most important point is, no matter what language they use, if the people like it then that's the way it goes.

good point.

[39degN]

我不知道为什么这种争论总能扯到inherently superior上去，不管谁inherently superior汉字是地球上一种存在即合理的东西，为什么要被取代，因为罗马字母inherently superior？如果真的是这样，那弱势语言就都应该被取代？这和希特勒的日尔曼优越论调有什么不同？

[dmoser]

Dear Pazu,

I totally agree that there are many passages and examples out there that need characters to disambiguate them. Pinyin alone won't work in those cases, rare as they are. (Chinese non-fiction books are virtually transparent aurally; reading them outloud is the same as reading them on the page. Fiction and poetry, however, are more likely to have the kinds of opaque passages you are talking about.) So I don't disagree.

The question is: Of what possible advantage to the language is having numerous texts that are incomprehensible when read out loud?

I agree Chinese characters can achieve levels of terseness in the written language that are unattainable in alphabetic scripts. The question is, of what use is this? Is it merely an aesthetic quality? If so, that's cool as far as I'm concerned; I love that aspect of Chinese. But you'll have to agree it's sort of a tradeoff. I don't think you would advocate going back to wenyan-like incomprehensibility. So if it's merely a matter of enjoying the freedom of writing elegantly economical prose that is borderline gibberish when read out loud, there might be many language reformers who are willing to sacrifice that quality for greater ease of learning, easier retention in long-term memory, and ease of information processing.

At any rate, you guys can all relax; Chinese characters are not going to go away in your lifetimes. Too much hassle, inconvenience and resistance. Garbled Chinglish is more likely to gain prevalence than Hanyu pinyin for everyday use. (Check out some Chinese chatrooms, and you'll see more and more English thrown in.)

(America is not going to adopt the metric system, either.)

[pazu]

Dear Dmoser,

I think one reason for writing Chinese that can be confusing to ears, is because of its compactness. Usually I write 越語 as Vietnamese, but when I speak it I have to say 越南語 because Yueyu is more commonly used to refer 粵語 (Yueyu) in Chinese. It's a trade-off as you have said, some may argue that is it worth to just to save one word (in written form) by investing more time (*can't agree for Hanzi.

[39degN]

dear dmoser,

no offence at all, pls write down your point in chinese, and let's see your real understanding of chinese. then later we can talk about the essentials.

39degN

[dmoser]

dear dmoser,

no offence at all, pls write down your point in chinese, and let's see your real understanding of chinese. then later we can talk about the essentials.

No offense? 对不起,你这样的口气有点令人反感.你的英文没有问题,我觉得你已经完全明白了我的论点.互相交流应该建立在相互尊重的基础上, 而你的态度让我觉得和你讨论这些问题是没有多大意义的. Either my points are valid or they are not. I think offense is precisely what you intended.

David

[dmoser]

Dear Pazu,

I think one reason for writing Chinese that can be confusing to ears, is because of its compactness. Usually I write 越語 as Vietnamese, but when I speak it I have to say 越南語 because Yueyu is more commonly used to refer 粵語 (Yueyu) in Chinese. It's a trade-off as you have said, some may argue that is it worth to just to save one word (in written form) by investing more time (*can't agree for Hanzi.

I'm sure you're right about that. Written Chinese would have to converge more toward the spoken language (as I think it is) in order to make this problem go away.

You seem to have an interesting angle on this due to your background. Are you tri- or quadri- lingual?

David

[ala]

Ala, Vietnamese can understand latinized alphabet word by word, I'm sure you can too...But why can't you understand those pinyin written one by one?

Surely you know that Vietnamese has far more phenomes than Mandarin, so there are less homophones when writing Vietnamese syllable by syllable. We should all be realistic. Yes, written Mandarin has a homophony problem when converted into pinyin. But this should not be an immediate death sentence for pinyin, there are many solutions available to solve these problems, such as word partitioning and alternate spelling. Anyone who has tried to provide single word English translations for Chinese words will realize that English has a lot of homophones as well, but they are not a problem in general usage. We should understand that spoken Chinese has no more homophone ambiguity than spoken English.

Usually I write 越語 as Vietnamese, but when I speak it I have to say 越南語 because Yueyu is more commonly used to refer 粵語 (Yueyu) in Chinese.

The discussion is that, is this ambiguity necessary? Why do you write 越语 instead of the proper dictionary term 越南语? To save time writing that one character? The art of brevity? Is this ambiguity and artificial partition between language and writing good for society? Language is foremost based on sounds and writing is a tool to reflect those sounds, with some disambiguating elements to improve reading speed and recognition. 97% of Chinese characters are phonetic and have little analyzable semantic value.

[39degN]

No offense? 对不起,你这样的口气有点令人反感.你的英文没有问题,我觉得你已经完全明白了我的论点.互相交流应该建立在相互尊重的基础上, 而你的态度让我觉得和你讨论这些问题是没有多大意义的. Either my points are valid or they are not. I think offense is precisely what you intended.

呵呵, 成啊, 哥儿们, 还真说得不错! 非常抱歉, 态度欠佳, 向你道歉.

不过我现在要下网了, 改日交流.

[nnt]

Why do you write 越语 instead of the proper dictionary term 越南语?

He he; I think Pazu should have used Yue4 Ju1 越剧 as a better example

He may have been influenced by Vietnamese usage; for the Vietnamese also use Việt ngữ 越语 as a synonym for tiếng Việt to designate Vietnamese language. In Vietnam (and romanized Vietnamese form), the meaning is clear, but less so in a Chinese context...

[pazu]

ala: if written 越語 is of no confusion at all, you have to ask yourself why you did *write* it as 越南語 even in Hanzi. You're asking funny questions.

Indeed I usually call Vietnamese as 越語 in Putonghua all the time (I'm now in Vietnam), only until once I met a Beijing girl, I found it quite confusing sometimes when we talked about "Yueyu". She thought "Yueyu" as Cantonese instead of Vietnamese. THat's it.

There're many more abbreviations in modern Chinese too, especially in newspaper indeed. Here's an article subject from yesterday's newspaper:

Shao4nian2 pa2 tie3ti1 shi2qiu2 dian4si3

Shao4nian2

pa2

tie3ti1

shi2qiu2

dian4si3

It needed to be written in "longer" forms in pinyin if you want people understand it. Ala, I'm sure you can guess the meaning of the above sentence, but do you believe it works on other people too?

Also another headline:

zeng4 16zi4 zhen1yan2 Liu2 Yan2dong1 yu4 Gang3ren2 he2wei2gui4

These forms are not the ancient written form of Chinese indeed, they're written in modern newspaper and understood by primary school kids too.

Dmoser, hmm... yes, I can speak some Japanese and probably Vietnamese too... though people thought I wanted to go to the mortuary (nha xac) when I actually wanted to go to a bookstore (nha sach) only.

[Quest]

I'm sure you're right about that. Written Chinese would have to converge more toward the spoken language (as I think it is) in order to make this problem go away.

that's already a

if switched to pinyin, 85% (lit. rate in China) of the Chinese people will suddenly have difficulties writing and understanding even simple compositions, articles and literatures.

[ala]

ala: if written 越語 is of no confusion at all, you have to ask yourself why you did *write* it as 越南語 even in Hanzi. You're asking funny questions.

Chinese is read whatever is written. If I see 越語, I'll read it as Yue4yu3. If I see 越南語, I'll read it as Yue4nan2yu3. I don't write something down as 越語 and read it as Yue4nan2yu3; this isn't Japanese. The point is, why would you write down something that becomes ambiguous when read out loud on a noun so mundane as the name of a language, considering that no such ambiguity arises in spoken standard Mandarin? It is utterly unnecessary. The problems with abandoning characters are created by the characters, not the language. That's the point. Since I think you understand this, then the whole issue really is just a matter of how much need there is for a change. And this need can't be measured properly when so many people are misinformed about the nature of Chinese characters, and when possible alternatives are seen in such a distorted view.

[huimin]

Hi,

I was reading your comments then I came across "Chinglish". I would like to know what is Chinglish and how does it work? Can someone explain to me?

In Singapore, we have "Singlish" where we tend to add 'lor' 'leh' 'lor' at the end of the sentence.

[Yuchi]

Isn't chinglish where you add in words like "ok" and various other short english words?

My friend told it was, but I wouldn't know ?_?

[ala]

姓回的回民每回都回到回纥国.

[pazu]

姓回的回民每回都回到回纥国.

It's very easy to be understood and I don't think there's any confusion in this sentence. What's your point? Or instead of elaborating how Hanzi has ruined your youth, you're trying to tell us Hanzi can be as confusing as Pinyin to express an idea too? Don't you have any other better examples?

But in any case, I think you should 省點力氣吧.