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atitarev -

What you're suggesting, Roddy, has been happening in Japan. Before people achieve full literacy in
kanji, they use just hiragana. Hiragana books are very popular in Japan with kids, and there is
also the next step - mixture fully-fledged Japanese text and a hiragana text next to it/above it.
These educational materials, you're talking about, could be done in both pinyin and characters.
There is a limited number of books that have both hanzi and pinyin, e.g. 注音故事乐园
Zhùyīn gùshi lèyuán. They are great. I've got a few now - saves a lot of time looking up
characters and makes sure you pronounce the words correctly and with the right tones. I don't see
why there can't be newspapers, billboards, web-sites and more written in such a way.

In the Arab world kids are taught in vocalised Arabic (they commonly don't write short vowels -
thy cmmnl dn't wrt shrt vwls), and there is some material written in this simpler version of
Arabic. Well, you have no problem finding religious books, written in such a way but not enough
other kind of readings. Literacy is an enormous problem there, although Arabic writing is easier
than Chinese.

Pinyin hasn't been promoted and used enough in China. If it were, it would not be perceived as
such an UnChinese thing.



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roddy -

Are there any situations in which both fully-fledged Japanese versions and hirigana versions are
provided for adult users. I have no idea what the literacy rate is like in Japan, and have no idea
about the language, sorry if that seems like a dumb question. I did listen to the first lesson of
Pimsleur's Japanese course last night though, so I'm sure I'll be fluent in no time.










atitarev -



Quote:

Are there any situations in which both fully-fledged Japanese versions and hiragana versions are
provided for adult users.

Comics (manga) and anime are read/watched by adults or at least adolescents. They are usually
supplied with furigana (hiragana written next to kanji) and subtitles in anime often have them.
I'd say I seldom saw comics WITHOUT them! Even adults books have them occasionally to help with
rare words. I wish translated versions into Chinese followed the same tradition providing hanyu
pinyin or zhuyin fuhao (in Taiwan).

Hiragana Times publishes books, magazines for adults in fully-fledged Japanese (mixture of
hiragana - kanji) and the phonetical guides in hiragana plus English. Very useful!










hbuchtel -

Having an easier to use writing system is one thing, but getting individuals to be interested in
spending the time required to learn it is another thing.

A lot of education is self-motivated. Does written character's connection to traditional Chinese
culture help to increase people's literacy? (I know it does for me! )

Henry










Eulloba -

I am always horrified when I think of DeFrancis advocating the abolition of Chinese characters.
Some other time I will expound on the most perfect writing system ever divised by humans, namely
Chinese.

Given the same language learning conditions to study the writing systems of Chinese and English,
English is by far more difficult and without any of the advantages and the multifuntional
"syllabary-word" which are Chinese characters.

It is very symptomatic that some English speaking Westeners should promote the unnecessary and
preposterous reform of the Chinese script and NOT promote the really necessary reformation of
English spelling: see and sea, time and thyme, and countless instances of erratic spelling... but
they look beautiful, don't they? So who cares about logic (I really like English spelling because
it's so Chinese!).

This indeed has the same colonization connotations as promoting democracy at home but not abroad.
Or promoting democracy to enter the market, not for the benefit of the peple, which amounts to the
same thing.

English speaker are very wise not wasting time in promoting writing reforms and so it is the more
amazing that some Westeners, without any grounds should try and teach their mother to suck eggs:
appalling.










Quest -



Quote:

Comics (manga) and anime are read/watched by adults or at least adolescents. They are usually
supplied with furigana (hiragana written next to kanji) and subtitles in anime often have them.
I'd say I seldom saw comics WITHOUT them! Even adults books have them occasionally to help with
rare words. I wish translated versions into Chinese followed the same tradition providing hanyu
pinyin or zhuyin fuhao (in Taiwan).

I started reading comic books in 2nd/3rd grade, I understood them pretty well. Why the need?

As far as I know, the absolute majority of the Chinese people (adults and pupils alike) are
comfortable reading and writing in Chinese characters. Kids complain about copying characters
during their first 3 years of school because they really don't need to copy the characters the
assigned # of times to learn them. They can learn characters outside of school just as well
without copying them. I don't understand why Westerners keep making a big fuss about 汉字 being
too hard to learn and too hard to memorize. They'd dig up "common" words to ask the "university
educated" Chinese to write, and then say "gotcha, abandon the characters already." If the person
needed to write that word often, he wouldn't have forgotten how to write it. If he didn't need to,
then so what if he forgot? Most essays and compositions are comfortably written without a
dictionary by most people, how are the characters handicapping the Chinese people? If the
characters affected them so much, Mao's romanization would have been adopted without question.

Another pro character argument: reading speed. I was playing a Chinese rpg game a couple days ago.
Texts were presented in a 4line box, I found it interesting that I could scan 4 lines of
screenwide text in under 2 seconds on average and understood what they said. I seriously doubt
that would have been possible with pinyin even with adequate training.

All that said, people who advocate abolishment will continue to hold their views; this whole
debate is pointless. The Americans continue to ignore the metric system, the British continue to
cheer for their royalty, the Christians continue to spend their weekends in churches, the Muslims
continue to wage their jihad, the global youth continue to waste time and money on their celebs, I
wonder how much a fraction of one or two years of a pupil's time spent on character learning
affected his/her competitiveness vis a vis the Koreans and the Vietnamese, who supposedly should
have more time in their lives to pursue more useful endeavors.










roddy -



Quote:

I know lots of Chinese people who are greatly offended by this sort of thing - foreign professors
who specialize in arguing that the Chinese should abandon their writing system! As Victor someone
or other argues on the pinyin.info site, the Chinese could abandon characters, but would have to
change their writing style.



Quote:

Tell your Chinese friends that an American professor who is a great Sinologist has built his
career on a campaign to abolish Chinese characters.



Quote:

If characters were abolished, a fundamental part of Chinese culture would be lost.



Quote:

So it's natural for people to get emotional when some 'outsiders' tell you that your language
(culture) is stupid and needs to be abolished.



Quote:

I am always horrified when I think of DeFrancis advocating the abolition of Chinese characters.



Quote:

All that said, people who advocate abolishment will continue to hold their views;


Djwebb, Quest, et al, 2006.

I'm going to have to yet again reveal my vast ignorance here. Could someone please point me to the
text in which DeFrancis, or indeed anyone with any academic credibility, actually advocates the
abolishment of Chinese characters today. I can see discussions of the feasibility, I can see
consideration of the shortcomings of Chinese characters, I can see contemplation of dual script
systems with pinyin as a more prominent complement to characters, and review of the feasibility
and advisability of local language reform efforts, but that's as far as it goes. I don't have a
copy of Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy here, but I can see from the chapter listing on
pinyin.info that the last chapter is named Writing Reform. Is it in there?










gato -



Quote:

I don't have a copy of Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy here, but I can see from the chapter
listing on pinyin.info that the last chapter is named Writing Reform. Is it in there?

Wushijiao has my copy of "Fact and Fantasy," so maybe he can chime in. De Francis obviously does
not advocate the abolishment of Chinese characters. He's the author of Chinese textbooks and
dictionaries after all. If nothing else, it would be in his personal financial interest to have
Chinese characters around. He does many things in the book -- one of which is to show written
Chinese is actually partially phonetic -- the section on language reform retraces the history of
debate around language reform in China. What he does advocate is to find way to make written
Chinese accessible and practical for the average Chinese. He quotes a survey by a Chinese
researcher who noted that many rural Chinese who attend school for six years eventually forget how
to write most the characters they learned because they do not write on a daily basis.

He also notes that written Chinese is more difficult to learn than most world languages. He quotes
Bernhard Karlgren, the famous Sinologist whose Chinese etymology book is incorporated into the
Wenlin dictionary, as saying that it's not a problem for a foreigner to learn 3000 Chinese
characters in a year with some diligence and asks how many of us are on the same level as
Karlgren. People with an IQ of 150 often underestimate how difficult things are for the average
person (of course, sometimes they overestimate when it flatters them).










roddy -

I've read the book - it was some time ago though.

Quote:

De Francis obviously does not advocate the abolishment of Chinese characters.

Well he must do somewhere, otherwise we would not have the likes of "I am always horrified when I
think of DeFrancis advocating the abolition of Chinese characters." and "a campaign to abolish
Chinese characters." being bandied around. I'd like to read this anti-character manifesto.










atitarev -



Quote:

My Quote: Comics (manga) and anime are read/watched by adults or at least adolescents. They are
usually supplied with furigana (hiragana written next to kanji) and subtitles in anime often have
them. I'd say I seldom saw comics WITHOUT them! Even adults books have them occasionally to help
with rare words. I wish translated versions into Chinese followed the same tradition providing
hanyu pinyin or zhuyin fuhao (in Taiwan).

Quest:


Quote:

I started reading comic books in 2nd/3rd grade, I understood them pretty well. Why the need?

Quest, I admit that being more disciplined in learning/using just characters you, Chinese achieve
better and faster results at mastering them. However, I think it would be great if there were more
materials in the mixture of Chinese and pinyin + English translation to get more adult learners to
be involved in Chinese and enable more people to read and enjoy Chinese texts (be it not in native
script). It helps to master Chinese characters too, seeing them used in context as part of a word
without having to look up the characters.












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