正體字 is such an efficient writing system (for me as a beginner)

[learningculture]

This thread is separate and can be discussed on its own, but is partially related to this other discussion here where other community members are assisting me in my research: https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/63468-english-is-becoming-another-chinese-dialect-for-me/


For this thread, I jsut want to say how as a person who's casually learnign to read and write chinese for the past year (ie im still a beginner), 正體字 traditional chinese characters is such a fast and efficient writing system compared to english. Just some context:

- I grew up in western world, my inner monologue in my head is 50% visual imagery and emotions,  40% english, and 10% cantonese
- I am in my mid-40s, grew up and still surround myself around a lot of cantonese people
- i am engineer by training but do a lot of marketing and sales

I think this background is what makes me appreciate how the CHinese writing system is so efficient for me. I highly value :
- communicating specifically (hence communicating in code, organizing concepts in logical manner etc...)
- communicating efficiently
- writing over speech

I am finding 正體字 is very suitable for such purposes for the following reasons:
- English is so lengthy to type out....Platforms like TikTok, Twitter have character limites.  For example, TikTok has a 150 character limit...I can say so much more with 150 漢字 Han characters than I can with 150 alphanumeric characters.
- Most cantonese idioms are 3 to 5 characters in length and its packed chalk full of meaning, but the english variations of these are super long.
- On my android phone, I use my index finger to brush stroke out the chiense words I intend to write.  In english, i use the SWIPE strokes on keyboard.  Within 2 or 3 cursive chinese brush strokes, my android phone almost always guesses the correct word I wnat to use, while the single English SWIPE strokes encounters far more errors, then i have to delete and repeat.  The reason English is more prone to errors is because if I am not dexterous enough to start on the correct letter of the qwerty keyboard, then my SWIPE will yield the incorrect word.  Where as for Chinese characters, I get a single big white square space, and I can sart my brush stroke anywhere, and Android knows what i'm trying to write.
- further to the above point, sometimes I can just write chiense words in the white space without looking at the screen....sooooo efficient, then i can multi-task
- the construction of each 正體字 contains so much details ..the radicals, phonetic parts and whatever else parts tell you so much about context, classification, usage, etc...

I was watching a youtube video on how Europeans replaces the Vietnamese writing system with latin based characters, but vietnamese continue to speak the langauge the same way. I think i'm starting to do the reverse, although i stll think and speak in english, i'm replacing the english writing system with Chiense 正體字 because it's just so much faster and efficient when paired with modern technology.

 

[sanchuan]

Can't fault any of that. There's beauty, brains and brevity to sinographic writing. It's terribly Byzantine (and arguably needlessly so for a writing system), but the rewards are exponential once mastered. 

 

I do, however, believe that this is in no small part tied to the monosyllabic aspect of sinitic morphemes, which is what allows for the degree of expressive flexibility described in your post. I'm not sure the system works quite as well when used to represent English words (English having a less flexible way of organising words and sentences, I feel). 

 

But I can totally see how a visual AND logically minded person would fall in love with it! And it clearly works well to spell out the kind of code-mixing that happens in your mind.

 

PS I wouldn't single out one character set over another though. Simplified characters aren't much different. Only a smattering of super common ones are really different, the majority are exactly the same or just written in what was once simply considered 'cursive'.