The change to Pinyin is already happening.

[mulans]

A while ago the BBC reported that the PRC is in the process of switching to another writing system.

The most likely candidate is Pinyin.

I have a hard time seeing why chinese characters are going to survive. Writing chinese characters is a very slow and timeconsuming process, most chinese people I know already use Pinyin daily on their computer, on their cellphone, some even write in Pinyin.

Unlike in the past, many chinese are also familiar with the roman alphabet, through both pinyin and romanic and germanic languages.

[coolnicholas]

it's nonsense!

[tysond]

This process to change to another writing system doesn't seem to be announced, known, seen or expected here in China.

Pinyin is an OK input method (like the old cellphone input methods were for English) but I see many Chinese drawing characters at about the same speed, perhaps some of them can be faster. Also, for those forced to use pinyin input systems (e.g. on PC systems) I've had to help them with the pinyin, so quite a few people don't even know it.

Why does this topic keep coming up?

[Demonic_Duck]

Link to this supposed BBC source?

Either way, if they did indeed suggest that PRC would switch to pinyin, I'd take it with a pinch of salt the size of the grand canyon. Whatever your opinions about Hanzi vs. alphabetic writing systems, I think there would be very little popular support for such an idea (especially among older generations). Chinese people have grown up using and reading characters their whole life. They actually find them a lot faster to read, too.

[Hofmann]

Link.

[muyongshi]

Besides absolutely needing to cite a source to this, we have covered the pros/cons/likelihood of this happening in multiple threads. So unless there is a new source, a discussion on the "likelihood" of it happening is not beneficial in this thread.

[YuehanHao]

It is nonsense, but mulans is not 100% wrong. I also recall having seen such a BBC story, some time ago. Quite funny, in fact. (e.g., "Some people may think this is a joke, but it's a very serious business. Having fifty-thousand buttons on computer keyboards just isn't feasible any more.")

I could not locate the original, but here is a screenshot captured at a secondary source:

http://eastasiastude...c-42424242.html

Like mulans, perhaps, my wife was also confused by the article - though the fog lifted when she was reminded of the date...

約翰好

[Demonic_Duck]

Mystery solved! Nice article, by the way

[Lu]

Nice article! I vaguely recall having seen it before, it's funny. Why the OP thought that it would be true is beyond me.

[Kenny同志]

People will easily fall for what the author says if they don't look at the URL.

[coolnicholas]

haha, Nice article of April fools' day,why OP believed that?

[Ruben von Zwack]

re.: writing of Characters supposedly being slow:

Just for fun, I counted the strokes in some written words in my mother tongue, and in Chinese, and found that the Chinese word usually has less strokes. (yes, even your typical word-combined-of-2-characters) Haven't done it for English, but I suppose you would find the same.

[civic94]

i dont think china will erase characters that survived for thousands of years. maybe they might simplify their characters even more so more people can be literate, but not completely switching to pinyin.

[Ruben von Zwack]

@civic - have a look at the date of the article in question (post #7)

[roddy]

As muyongshi said, '...we have covered the pros/cons/likelihood of this happening in multiple threads. So unless there is a new source, a discussion on the "likelihood" of it happening is not beneficial in this thread. '

I'll close this, as there's no point to it. Anyone who wants to continue the discussion can find the multiple threads referred to, read them carefully, and then come up with some new and interesting points.