Compounds (辭) vs. Characters (字) and the need to preserve the latter

[Mark Yong]

A slightly controversial topic, which I am sure will draw flak from some readers, so please bear with my opinions, and take them for what they are.

The Chinese language started off as essentially monosyllabic (yes, I am aware that there are exceptions, e.g. 蝴蝶, hence the qualifying word essentially), but with civilisation leading to the development of increasingly complex concepts, it became impossible for the existing lexicon of characters to describe every single object or concept in existence, hence necessitating the creation of compounds. The evolution of the spoken languages leading to a large number of homonyms also required compounding in speech in order to provide re-clarification. Re-clarification is also required in order to provide more specific definitions, given the “top-down” nature of the Chinese language (e.g. when one says 前, does one refer to front as a noun, an adjective, the state of being “in front”, etc.?).

I can understand and accept the afore-mentioned rationales behind the development of compounds as practical consequences of linguistic development over a period of time, and have no desire to challenge those rationales. That is not the objective of my post. My main concern lies with those cases where compounds were created for objects or concepts, even though there were already single characters in existence that described those same objects or concepts adequately and unambiguously, and eventually supplanting and obscuring those characters to near-extinction.

I am aware that this phenomenon has a lot to do with the adoption of the vernacular style of writing as standard. By emulating the modern standard spoken language, the written language inevitably absorbed those re-clarification compounds, and by the same token, avoided the use of the single character equivalents that would otherwise have caused confusion in speech due to the homonyms.

That said, my point is that while the practicalities behind the development path of the spoken language are understandable, I feel that it is equally important that the single-character words themselves do not fade into obscurity in the written word. Every unique character having its own meaning is a characteristic of the Chinese written language found in few other surviving written languages today, and it would be a shame if this powerful and unique aspect of written Chinese was lost due to a shift towards speech-based writing.

A large number of characters that were once commonplace in Chinese are no longer seen in texts today - ironically, they are preserved and in common usage in Japan (and here, I humbly beg to differ with John DeFrancis’ views debunking what he called the “Universality Myth” of Chinese characters - but I digress). Many others survive as under the guise of “dialect characters” – a term that does no justice to what are actually bona fide characters in Classical Chinese lexicon, but did not enter Modern Standard Chinese lexicon due to a bias towards the Northern dialect as standard. Character simplification and its resultant merging of once-distinct characters (e.g. 發 and 髮 are now both 发) on the sheer basis of them being homonyms has not helped; on the contrary, it merely results in a “half-baked” shift towards phonetic writing.

As an example, let us look at the ways individual characters describe the various shades of ‘red’:

紅 Bright red

赤 Dark red

朱 Vermillion

絳 Purple red

緋 Dark red

丹 Cinnabar

Another set of examples are the various times of day:

朝 Dawn

晝 Daytime

晌 Noon

晡 Late afternoon (specifically, the hours 3-5pm)

曛/暝 Sundown

夕 Dusk

One may argue that the development of compounds is better than learning the mono-syllabic equivalents, as it places less demands on learning and memorisation. But does it? The very nature of the Chinese written language already demands knowledge of some 4,000 characters to read through a newspaper. Will the reduction of those additional characters reduce the burden, as compared to learning more compounds? Yes, it is true that the canon of 40,000+ characters in the 『康熙字典』 does include a whole lot of what Fr. John L. Weiger called “monstrosities of no practical use”. But there still remain a significant number of gems of value.

The preface to Hong Kong writer 陳雲’s 『中文解毒』 has a valid point - Why should a perfectly clear written phrase 『禁餵野猴』 have to be lengthened to 『禁止飼餵野生猴子』, simply to emulate the “re-clarified” spoken form? In this instance, a doubling of the number of characters used has provided no further clarification to the sentence under consideration; in fact, it has burdened the eyes (and here, I emphasise that the phrase, by virtue of being displayed on a signboard, is therefore meant to be read, not spoken aloud for the ear to hear) and the mind with more unnecessary text to process. The advantage of compactness in the Chinese script is rendered null and void.

I am aware that this flies in the face of what the neo-linguistic giants like 魯迅 and 胡適 proposed - that “one should write the way one speaks”. I can agree with it to a certain extent from the perspective that one’s writing should be unfettered. But at the same time, I feel that there is a lot to be said about preserving the unique aspects of the written language, and acknowledging that in any language - not just Chinese - there will always be a degree of distinction between how one writes and how one speaks.

[Hofmann]

Many people don't read much non-Mandarin material. What can one do? Create new ways to pronouncing characters? Or make everyone speak Old Chinese?

[Hugh]

The Chinese language started off as essentially monosyllabic

That's not totally accurate. It started off with an essentially one-to-one mapping of characters to words, and characters today are all one syllable. But it's not certain that characters all had single syllable pronunciations 3000 years ago.

It could well have been something like modern Japanese which has various numbers of syllables for each character.

[anonymoose]

Yeah. I think Europeans should all learn to write in Latin too so as to preserve the traditional written language. Think how practical that would be also. Then European speakers of different languages could all communicate with each other via text, just like speakers of Chinese dialects can communicate with each other via characters.

[Guest realmayo]

I think anonymoose is being sarcastic? Latin and English are two different languages. Written Chinese and spoken Chinese, well, aren't.

Written Chinese is not

a) exactly the same as the spoken language

b) Classical Chinese (near to anonymoose's Latin)

But c) somewhere in between.

Written Chinese lends itself to compression of meaning and economy of expression. But less so the spoken languge -- perhaps because so many characters share the same sound? Or because a reader "hovers" over a page in a way that someone listening to a stream of spoken language cannot?

Either way, I agree with the OP that any written language will express itself in a different way to the spoken one and that, yes, continued efforts to replace features of the written language with ones from the spoken language will weaken the written language. It's interesting to think about how that is happening in the context of a preference for compounds over single characters.

In an ideal world, or at least a China with full and advanced literacy, it would be more feasible to wish that that the written language could retain those elements which are not in the spoken language but which give power and interest to the written form. But I assume there is some quasi-Darwinian element to languages and if you're aiming for mass literacy then perhaps it is too idealistic to assume that much of the non-spoken will survive in the written language.

I also think there's a false assumption that a written language is a natural counterpart to a spoken one. I don't know about the situation today, but if you went back 100 years what percentage of spoken languages had a written version? 50%? 20%?

[Mark Yong]

Hofmann wrote:

Many people don't read much non-Mandarin material. What can one do? Create new ways to pronouncing characters? Or make everyone speak Old Chinese?

Creating new ways of pronouncing characters would be doubly counter-productive, given that the characters would likely already have defined pronunciations (recorded in the 切韻 or one of the rhyming dictionaries).

When you say “speak Old Chinese”, I am not sure if you are referring to the language, or the pronunciation, or both. But either way, the focus of my post is not so much on the spoken language, but on the written. That would imply a divergence (rather than convergence) between the spoken and written languages, and this I accept.

East Asia Student wrote:

That's not totally accurate. It started off with an essentially one-to-one mapping of characters to words, and characters today are all one syllable.

You are right, I stand corrected on my original statement. What I meant to say was that Chinese “words” essentially started off with single monosyllabic morphemes mapping to individual “words”. Today, what we call “words” in English, could mean either standalone or compounded morphemes.

anonymoose wrote:

I think Europeans should all learn to write in Latin too…

I hate to digress from the topic at hand, but since you brought it up, it might interest you to know that – yes – I do advocate the restoration of Latin as part of Europe’s linguistic curriculum.

realmayo wrote:

I also think there's a false assumption that a written language is a natural counterpart to a spoken one. I don't know about the situation today, but if you went back 100 years what percentage of spoken languages had a written version? 50%? 20%?

There is some middle ground here. Pulleyblank argues that even Classical Chinese started off life as identical to the spoken language of Lu during Confucius’ time. But that said, he further states that this correspondence between the spoken and written languages was only for a very short period. The same can be said for Ciceronian Latin, which did not survive in its ‘pure’ form for very much more than two centuries after the Golden Age of Latin.

In the case of Chinese, even going back 500-1,000 years would still show a significant difference between Literary Chinese and the spoken vernaculars (Mandarin, the youngest of the dialects, achieved stable form around the 16th/17th century).

[skylee]

Mark Yong, so what do you suggest people do?

[Mark Yong]

skylee,

What I am advocating is a better knowledge of these now-obscure Chinese characters. I admit that this is a double-edged sword, as it implies the following:

1. Better literacy in Classical/Literary Chinese
   
2. Acceptance of bona fide characters and words that have been relegated (unfairly) to “dialect” or “foreign” status
   
3. Less bias/preference for Northern-only vocabulary (actually, (2) and (3) are related)
   
4. A return to Traditional Characters (the character simplification process resulted in the purging of a number of characters deemed as ‘non-standard’, and the merging of once-distinct characters)
   

This is not something that “the people can do” alone. It has to be supported by high-level educational policies, in order for it to work on a large scale. I do not expect this to happen in the near future, if at all. This post is not about demanding for change; it is just me voicing my views on how such important elements of the Chinese language should be preserved.

[Mark Yong]

Actually, one need not jump immediately to obscure characters. As a simple example, consider the word “cheap” or “inexpensive”. Nowadays, we normally write it as the compound 便宜. Neither of their component morphemes mean “cheap” or “inexpensive” - in fact, they mean (in very simplistic terms) “convenient” and “suitable”. By contrast, consider the single character 廉. That character alone has the specific meaning “cheap” or “inexpensive” (okay, I know it also carries the extended meaning of “honest”). Compounding it as 價廉 makes the meaning “cheap” or “inexpensive” even clearer. Today, we see that compound 價廉 mainly in advertisements as part of the phrase 『物美價廉、童叟無欺』. There, another example - 叟 for 老人.

If you do a Google search for the key words “便宜廉”, the first page of results gives you precisely that - 『便宜廉』, and in most cases as part of the phrase 『便宜廉房價』. Isn’t prefixing 廉 with two characters 便宜 a triple redundancy (by my count, two redundant characters plus the fact that 廉 already means 便宜)? Correct me if I am wrong, but in the days not so long ago when 文言文 was still the standard, such redundancies would have been considered bad writing style.

On the subject of Universality, here is some food for thought: I do not speak Japanese. I am in Japan, and find myself having to somehow express the concept of “inexpensive items” to a local Japanese. We shall assume this person has had some schooling, making him/her adequately Kanji-literate, which then makes 筆談 the most logical means of communication between us. Which phrase do you suppose will get the idea across to him/her - 廉の物 or 便宜の東西?

Again, I must stress - I am referring only to written Chinese, not spoken.

[lintsaihai]

None of them are used in modern Japanese to denote meaning of cheap. You would need to write 安い物, Japanese use 安 to write their adjective cheap 安い yasui

廉 ren can mean cheap but it's an archaic form, not used in everyday life, and 便宜 bengi means conscience or advantage.

[Mark Yong]

Correct, am aware that 廉 is not the modern standard way to say ‘cheap/inexpensive’ in Japanese. But from what I gathered off the Web, it does feature in some specialised terminology, e.g. 廉価版（れんかばん） “cheap/inexpensive edition”.

This illustrates a relevant point on Universality. 廉 is a less common to say “cheap/inexpensive” in Modern Standard Chinese. It is considered ‘archaic’ in Japanese - but is not totally unknown. And both exist in Chinese and Japanese lexica with that one common definition.

My point is that while Chinese may say 便宜, and Japanese may say 安い, both would (should?) be intrinsically aware of 廉, and would (should?) be able to recognise and use this character for ‘cheap/inexpensive’ (as the ‘lowest common denominator’, for want of a better word) when communicating with one another.

Perhaps 廉 may not be the best example, but it’s something that came off the top of my head.

[Iriya]

I understand that you as a foreigner find the Chinese characters fascinating, but the native speakers generally do not. Their language is a tool for them, nothing more. All your proposals, not only returning to the complex character forms, but to the 文言文 and obscure characters as well, the native speakers would find this completely ridiculous.

Every language is constantly evolving. Pretty much every language has gone through a number of writing reforms. Nowadays, all (?) modern written languages reflect their spoken counterpart. It's just a matter of convenience. Back in the days of the 文言文 there were few books, no newspapers or magazines, no internet, few people were literate.

[rezaf]

I don't think returning to a complex form of 文言文 is possible but probably some elements of 文言文 can be easily learned and used today. A good knowledge of characters and classical Chinese can help us to express ourselves using fewer characters and save a lot of time which is necessary in the modern society.

[imron]

@Iriya, why do you assume that Mark is not a native speaker just because he is fascinated by traditional characters and 文言文? If you'd been around the forums for longer, perhaps you wouldn't jump to such hasty conclusions.

[jkhsu]

I always thought that formal written Chinese already has some 文言文 elements in it? Many two character words are often shortened to one character. I think it's kind of cool to express the same meaning using fewer characters.

[Mark Yong]

Iriya,

Your seal 『入鄉隨俗』 does reflect your sense of adapting to a changing environment.

Firstly: If your definition of ‘foreigner’ is one who is not a long-time native and resident of mainland China, then yes, I am a foreigner. But that said, Chinese is my ancestral language, the language I use at home, in social interactions, and as part of my work life, and it constitutes a conservative one-third of my regular reading material. It is not some ‘foreign and exotic’ thing to me.

Chinese characters and the Chinese language are not native to mainland China alone. They are also native to Hong Kong and Taiwan, where Traditional (I prefer not to call them ‘complex’) Characters are the standard. So, in their case, there isn’t even the question of “returning to the complex character forms”.

Mainland China’s decision to adopt character simplification resulted in some characters being no longer recognised as standard. This is not the case for those places where Traditional Characters are still the standard. I am not referring to 方言俗字. I am referring to standard characters in the 文言文　lexicon. Paradoxically, I would argue that Taiwan has better-preserved the traditional features of the Chinese language (e.g. continued use of Traditional Characters, deeper knowledge and use of 文言文) compared to mainland China - would you consider them as ‘foreign’, just because they do not adopt mainland China’s linguistic standards and norms?

I am assuming that the ‘native speakers’ you are referring to are from mainland China, given your disdain for Traditional Characters and 文言文. Let us not forget that the adoption of Simplified Characters in mainland China was not of the people’s volition - it was mandated by the government of the day. After two millennia of 文言文 as the standard, replacing it with 白話文 in the early-1920’s would have been considered just as ‘ridiculous’ (I think the word ‘revolutionary’ is more appropriate) at that time. If Simplified Characters are utility-wise superior to Traditional Characters, why were they not adopted by Hong Kong and Taiwan? Surely they are no less practical-minded than mainland Chinese? Nor do I believe that it is in any way a political knee-jerk reaction, either. For that matter, why has Kanji not been completely shed by the Japanese, given that they have a fairly robust kana system?

So, I humbly beg to differ with your opinion - in this instance, the adoption of Simplified Characters in mainland China was not a natural linguistic evolution as you put it; it was formally institutionalised, with specific characters identified and promulgated as standard over known dates across the 20th century. What I would concede are the gradual informal evolution of 楷書 to 草書/行書 and minor intrusions of vernacular elements into 文言文 across history, those I would consider as ‘natural linguistic evolution’.

PS. I apologise if my seemingly-anachronistic use of the term “mainland Chinese” is seen as offensive; it was used only in the context of differentiating between written characters used on the mainland vs. Hong Kong and Taiwan.

[skylee]

All your proposals, not only returning to the complex character forms, but to the 文言文 and obscure characters as well, the native speakers would find this completely ridiculous.

What a sweeping generalisation.

[rezaf]

I have also noticed that in general the Taiwanese are better at using formal/literary words and expressions than the mainland Chinese. I have always wondered about their education system. Do they learn more classical Chinese at school?

[Iriya]

I think the term "traditional characters" is loaded, so I prefer to use the direct translation of the Chinese term - 繁体字. There's a reason why the complex forms are called this way. E.g. 网 is much older than 網, the components 糸 and 亡 are in fact redundant and were added later. The character was indeed "complexified" over the centuries. There are many other examples, such as 从, 号, 气, 与, etc.

I have no "disdain" for the complex forms (why would I have them on my user picture otherwise), it's just that I don't think they're very practical in the modern world. I'm sure most of the Taiwanese and HKers use a lot of simplified/shorthand characters in informal writing. Writing 號 instead of 号 in an informal note is just... unnecessary. What the mainland government actually did is standardize what the people have already been using for centuries. Very few new characters actually had to be invented.

In any language, there's a difference between what's "standard" and what are people actually using. Let's take the word 角色, for example. The standard is jue2 se4, but everyone (99% of population according to my teacher) is pronouncing it jiao3 se4. 血 (as a noun) is pronounced xue3 by almost everyone, although few dictionaries actually have this reading. The same thing with the complex characters. Yes, they've been standard for many centuries. It doesn't mean that everyone used them, though.

What are you suggesting is opposing the natural evolution of the language. I'm against that.

[rezaf]

I think you are confusing evolution with change. Not every change is towards getting better.  There is a difference between evolution and regression.