Good arguments _for_ the current Chinese script

[perjp]

I've read quite a few books and Chinese linguistics lately, information about most of them can be found at www.pinyin.info. The classic is "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy", by John DeFrancis. I've also read two others on the list, namely "Asia's Orthographic Dilemma" and "Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning."

The common factor for these books are that they are written by respected lingustic scholars and that they all come out heavily against characters. In fact, they methodically break all arguments I've seen used for keeping the character script.

Just to eliminate bias, I'm looking for books that come out in the defense of the character system. They need to be written by respected Sinologists of course.

Any help?

[liuzhou]

Is it only coincidental that the books you mention are written by non-Chinese?

[perjp]

Is it only coincidental that the books you mention are written by non-Chinese?

I should think so, yes. I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say, but the aguments presented in the books wouldn't be any more or less valid if they were written by a Chinese person.

I'm not sure I could comfortably read that sort of content in Chinese either.

[Quest]

I think we've established that most foreigners preach against characters, and most chinese support the use of characters.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1692

[perjp]

I think we've established that most foreigners preach against characters, and most chinese support the use of characters.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1692

I've been following that thread, and I'm not trying to start a new one.

I'm simply looking for good books/articles (English and Chinese are both acceptable I guess) with good lingistic arguments that come out either in favor of characters or more neutral.

The reason I want to do this is get a more holistic view since I feel there's bound to be a certain level of bias in the books I've read.

[gato]

I see that you haven't read Jerry Norman's "Chinese (Cambridge Language Surveys)" (1988) or J. Marshall Unger's "Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning" (2003).

I'm interested in this topic as well and have read John DeFrancis's book. Did you check the bibliographic section of the three books? There must be something.

Another way to approach this question is to look at other cultures that have used a ideographic writing system and how they've dealt with the issues. I can think of the ancient Egyptians. Are there any more recent? There're the examples of the Vietnamese and Koreans abandoning Chinese characters for a phonetic writing system, but there might have been some nationalist reasons behind these moves, or foreign intervention in the case of Vietnam. Has there been a case in modern history of a people abandoning their own ideographic writing system in favor of a phonetic system? Does anyone else use a ideographic system today beside the Chinese and Japanese?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521296536/qid=1109958388/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-3234942-5966210?v=glance&s=books

This general introduction to the study of Chinese traces the language's history from its beginnings in the second millennium B.C. to the present, and provides a clear picture of the contemporary language and its sociolinguistic status. Chinese, in its numerous dialects, has more speakers than any other language in the modern world, and this vast extension in time and space brings to its study an exceptional complexity. Nevertheless, Norman's crisp organization and lucid elegance make this extraordinary range of material easily accessible even to those with an elementary understanding of linguistics. Chinese includes information on the genetic and typological connections of the language, the writing system, the classical and early vernacular tongues, the modern language and non-standard dialects, and the history of linguistic reform in China.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0824827600/ref=pd_sim_b_3/103-3234942-5966210?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

"In this informative and entertaining book, once and for all, J. Marshall Unger thoroughly demolishes the notion that Chinese characters directly convey meaning without any reference to specific languages and cultural contexts. To do so, he unleashes an amazing array of weapons, ranging from the perceptions of a famous comedian, the techniques of specialists in memorization, the secrets of shorthand, the mysteries of probability, computer science, and artificial intelligence, to the profundities of philosophy. With a razor-sharp mind and deft pen, he exposes the self-contradictory folly of those who would assert some sort of independent, transcendental status for Chinese characters. Anyone who reads this book from beginning to end--parts of it are easy and fun, others are challenging and demanding--will surely come to the same conclusion as the author: in reality, there is no such thing as an ideogram." --- from the foreword by Victor H. Mair

[chrisburk87]

It drives me nuts, when people think Chinese must be changed.

Since 1-2 years, I have been learning Chinese. The beginning was hard exercise, but I recognized the more characters you learn the easier it is. Now, I often can guess the pronounciation and sometimes the meaning of a character. I don't need to write a character 10 times to know it, I mostly recognize them by watching at them.

I even have no problem to recognize not generally used characters with more than 30 strokes. Like for example the biang2 in biang2biang2麵. Unfortunatley I can't write it online, because my pc is unable to do this, but if you give me a piece of paper I could write it down for you.

Chinese characters are not that difficult, you just need to be open for them. And that's the problem what most westerners unfortunately are.

If westerners don't want to learn Characters, they shouldn't learn Chinese.

[roddy]

Just to eliminate bias, I'm looking for books that come out in the defense of the character system. They need to be written by respected Sinologists of course.

perjp is looking for book recommendations. Anyone want to discuss the topic can try the Reading and Writing forum.

Roddy