What's the use of hanzi?

Yes Changye, you get the point.  ;o)

Correction.........

Now No wonder Mandarin is "difficult" to learn, hehe.

Hi kimiik

Now wonder Mandarin is "difficult" to learn, hehe.

Changye,

Here is the right question to ask :

How many people speak basque fluently ?

If there were few people speaking this language fluently, except for some key words who would really notice your mistakes ?

Hi kimiik

Sorry if there was a tone in insinuation there. I have never met a Basque speaker, and just wondered how many people had. But your credentials are certainly better than mine.

In retrospect, my post may have suggested I know something about the Basque language. I only know something of its history, and that it has been highly 'infected' by Spanish.

There was no abruptness in your message, I was just questioning your use of the word 'just'. On re-reading, my message in fact looks abrupt, so I apologise for that.

Hi kimiik

Do you think Basque is really difficult to learn?

Hi unclefester,

I don't live very far from the "basque country" and visit some friends regularly there. As we often discuss this subject openly between us, I may have brought my point of view too abruptly here in my last message. Sorry for that.

I also consider the basque language as "the last surviving remnant of a much larger language family which prevailed through most of Europe before the spread of the Indo-European languages". This language only survived in poor and remote areas of the Pyrenean mountains and later have spread a little bit around its "natural habitat" with northern and southern variations.

Good news about Basque: It has no gender!!
Bad news about Basque: It has about fourteen (?) cases........

Basque is just used as an identity language and, because they want to be seen as "different".

I think this statement neglects the history associated with the Basque language. Its probably a true statement, if not for the word 'just'. There has been a claim (not proven) that the Basque language is the last surviving remnant of a much larger language family which prevailed through most of Europe before the spread of the Indo-European languages. Out of interest, kimiik, how many Basque speakers have you spoken to regarding the difficulty of their language?

This book also mentions the basque language as another isolated language. But I never heard a "native basque speaker" saying that basque is isolated or difficult to learn. Basque is just used as an identity language and, because they want to be seen as "different", basque people would consider themself as ... "the last Mohicans" (not 硕果仅存 but more 旧果仅存).

Hi kimiik

That's right. Japanese is an isolated language, at least, as of now. Its origin is not clear, and no one has yet found a sister language of Japanese. Grammatically, Korean and Japanese have a lot of things in common, but their pronunciation systems are very different from each other.

There are mainly two reasons behind the Japanese misconception about the Japanese language, that is to say, "Japanese is difficult for foreign people to learn". One is that Japanese writing system is rather complicated, and the other is that Japanese is an isolated language, which are all true.

Interestingly, I hear that not a few Korean also think their language is difficult to learn, even though its writing system is extraordinarily simple. I guess this kind of sentiment among us east Asian people might be attributed to the fact that we are not good at learning foreign languages, hehe.

Hi Changye,

Only a book preview is available on Google. Yesterday, I skimed through the introduction and first chapter which present japanese as a very isolated language. That's always interesting to "hear the view" of a native speaker about his language.

Hi kimiik

How did you find the book? It's a well known book about the Japanese language written by Haruhiko Kindaichi, a prestigious Japanese linguist. I happen to have the book, both the first and second editions. I didn't know there was an English version of the book.

Changye and Zhenlijiang,

I didn't know that japanese people and officials were so insecure about the potential of their language. I just checked on Google and even in 1942, at the top of "japanese language expansion" policy, the comments of Shimomura Hiroshi (1875-1957) sounded pessimistic.

Kimiik, I agree with Changye that Japanese at least were probably not that deluded even in the "bubble-y" mid-to-late 80s, when I saw many yuppie types rush Tokyo, take up Japanese, do "the Japan gig". I think they groundfully (as Changye says, Japan money was buying up prime real estate in NY and perceived as a threat to US industry) thought Tokyo was the place to be, at the time.

If the world is ending in 2012 I want to know. There are a number of efforts I'd stop making right now.

changye, then I guess hanzi will be around for another 2000 yrs, barring events in 2012, meteorites, nuclear war, invasion from another planet/solar system....:)

Hi kimiik

Really? I didn't know that. I don't think Japanese were that "ambitious" even in 70s and 80s, when their country's economy was booming. They were just busy buying up real estate in other countries and had no time promoting the use of Japanese language. Furthermore, most Japanese groundlessly believe their mother language is too difficult for foreign guys to learn, just like many Chinese guys think "Mandarin is difficult to learn".

Hi simon

What if someone reads a book aloud to you? Would you also go mad?

It depends on how familiar you are with the content of a book. If it's a fairy tale, I wouldn't go mad！

Hi calkins

I never make plans that far ahead............hehe

I know, just being silly...and it was the first opportunity I've had to use the "world is going to end" saying (which I just recently learned)!  I agree it is an interesting topic.

Hi Changye,

Many people said almost the same thing about the japanese language in the 70s. Wasn't the expansion of japanese overrated ?

Hehe Calkins, ultimately no, but it's fun to speculate!

Does any of this matter?  I heard the world was going to end in 2012.  世界末日快到了！ :)

Hi pretzellogic

Given the current growth rate of Chinese economy/military power, it's highly likely that all the people in the world 2,000 years from now speak Chinese as the first official language, hehe.

changye, simonpettersson, it might be relevant to both your points if the period to be considered were 1500 - 2000 years from now.  It's somewhat easy to say that with current capabilities for mass communication likely to get easier, and the continuing passing of smaller languages by the wayside, that maybe 2000 years is enough time for hanzi to disappear, but along with many of the languages spoken today to change into something else.  Maybe echoes of the top 5 most widely spoken languages today, or a mix of the 83 "global" languages, into 1 that no one recognizes today. 

I tell you what,this part of the discussion is just continuing to increase my interest in Japanese.I've been hoping for a long time Praxis would come out with a JapanesePod to study along with CPod.I'll just keep crossing my fingers.

A huge part of writing well in Japanese is knowing just how much kanji to use. Aesthetics are as important as correctness! I guess there are no real rules; you just have to develop an eye and feel for the balance that communicates most effectively and pleasingly.

You can't stuff your sentences with them just because you know more than the average person, unless you're deliberately simulating a turn-of-the-century intellectual and your readers know you're doing that. You can't use them so sparsely that you exasperate and lose your readers, who can't tell where words begin and end. We do need kanji. And we have been re-discovering our love for them recently. I'm just now watching a quiz show in which celebrity contestants win points and lots of respect for correctly reading and writing kanji that we wouldn't necessarily have to, to perform well at work and function on a daily basis. Some of these more "advanced" questions are easy actually, for those of us who know some Chinese.

Hi simon

Please read the article more carefully. It beautifully explains the reason why Japanese people have no need to give up using Kanji (Chinese characters).

This might be relevant for the discussion. According to this article, a lot of Japanese can't read kanji very well. Maybe kanji will disappear from Japan, after all?

@Kashkj,

Glad to see you posting comments on the community! Did you enjoy the meet up last Wednesday?! I did use a book for studying Hanzi last year which was pretty good, but I can't remember the name of it offhand. I'll have a look at home and get back to you!

@ousijia/or anyone who knows!

Can you recommend any good books for studying Hanzi? 

I love skritter but there is nothing like a good old fashioned book!

sarrah:

What if someone reads a book aloud to you? Would you also go mad?

Also, the difference between pinyin and the phonetic symbol alphabet is that people whose mother tongue is English don't learn the phonetic symbols in school (or if they do, they soon forget them) nor use them every day to write.

Hi simon,

i am Chinese here, well PINYIN just like Phonetic symbol  in English, it's easy for people to read. Hanzi have more meanings than PINYIN itself, i just cannot imagine if there is a book all writing by PINYIN,i think i will be mad to read it....cannot imagine.:)

good day to you!

sarrah

Hi simon

Here is an interesting episode. I have a friend who is a Korean Chinese. His native tongue is Korean, but interestingly enough, he prefers videos in English with Chinese subtitles to ones with Korean subtitles, since the former has better readability for him. I think nobody wants to watch movies that have "pinyin" subtitles, hehe.

Sidenote: does anyone know what the old Chinese videogames did? What with the memory restrictions and all?

Hi simon

So it doesn't really prove anything.

I don't think so. For example, the English sound "buffalo" only has several meanings, on the other hand, the Chinese sound "shi4" represents forty different characters and meanings (which are ones shown in one of my dictionaries). Chinese has a big disadvantage over English.

The had had had thing is an exercise in the importance of punctuation. Once that is punctuated, it makes perfect sense.

That's a good point. Old Japanese video games even used solely hiragana and katakana because of memory restrictions, right? And it never took hold, it seems. Maybe I'm just worrying over nothing.

Hi simon

Japanese people have been using Hiragana and Katakana, alternatives for Kanji (Chinese characters), for one thousand and a few hundred years, but Chinese characters are still used in Japanese.

I think that both Chinese and Japanese peoples will never stop using Chinese characters, at least, unless the authorities officially force people to do so, just like two Korean governments did after the war.

With computers, you can write faster as you don't have to handwrite Chinese characters, which means you can spend more time reading now. In the age of Internet, reading and readability are more important than ever. There are a lof of things to read on the net!

Also, about sebire's poem, the same sort of thing can be done in English:

James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Or in Latin, like Cicero's "malo malo malo malo".

This sort of a thing can be done in a lot of languages. Luckily, nobody writes this way except for when intentionally trying to. So it doesn't really prove anything. Sure, the "shi shi" poem is a lot longer, but then it uses four different sounds, not just one. Pinyin differentiates between those four sounds quite well.

xiaophil:

I completely agree. Chinese without the characters would be pretty dull. At least compared to Chinese with the characters. I'd be much less interested in learning the language if it didn't have the hanzi.

changye:

But the thing is, for 2,950 of those 3,000 years, there has not been any alternative, and the writing system has served to unite a large variety of mutually unintelligible dialects. Neither of those things are true anymore.

In fact, half of using hanzi has already disappeared. Nobody writes in hanzi anymore. It is not really a writing system, it's just a reading system. People can read it, but more and more are losing the ability to write it.

This article is from 2001 and I don't imagine it's been getting better since then.

Hi simon

"The long run" in China is probably much longer than you might expect. After all, Chinese people have been using Chinese characters for more than 3,000 years.

@sebire,

That poem link is great!! Can't wait to show some Chinese friends.

Every language develops its own character, which I feel is essential to give it that 'refined' feel.  Refinement and convenience rarely go hand-in-hand.  The way I see it, languages would be no fun to learn if there was nothing to complain about, and learning characters gives us a reason to do just that.  Then again, I am not learning Mandarin for business or such practical purpose.  I am learning it because it is a challenge that everyday taunts me on.

但是各人有各人的想法. 

To be clear, I, too, love hanzi and find it easier to read it than to read pinyin. And that's because I've read a lot more hanzi than pinyin. I'd hate to see it disappear, especially since I spent countless hours learning to read the damned things!

That's besides the point, though. Is "we're used to it" a solid enough advantage to be able to keep it in the long run? I'm not so sure. Please note, though, that "the long run" is not ten years, but rather a hundred.

I agree with Mark, once you are able to read Chinese characters, it is definitely much easier then reading 拼音. I even find it easier to write 汉字 rather than 拼音. Most characters make sense once you know the meaning, you can tell why they are used to describe a particular word. Long live 汉字!

For what it is worth, although I am predisposed to like alphabets by my upbringing and heritage, when reading Chinese, pinyin seems more combersome than 汉字。 I personally don't like reading it other than to know how to pronounce a 汉字.

My experience is that when communicating in writing with Chinese people is that the chance of confusion when I write in pinyin is higher than for 汉字.

汉字 make other things accessible to me. I have used them with some success to communicate in Japan, even though I speak no Japanese.

My chance of understaning a 1000 year old poem in Chinese is better than my chance of understanding a 1000 year old poem in English.

So, I have been won over to the opinion that 汉字 are useful and something to be cherished.

I think there're actually much less Chinese homophones than we think, thanks to tones and multi-character words (most of them are two-character words) frequently used in modern Chinese. Furthermore, vocab used in conversation is limited compared to that in writings.

As dogupatree beautifully explained, Chinese characters, once you have mastered them, enable you to read Chinese fast.

Let me take Korean and Japanese as examples. Both languages have very similar vocabs and grammatical structures. Japanese uses Chinese characters, but Korean does not. As a result, you can write/input Korean faster than Japanese, on the other hand, you can read Japanese faster than Korean thanks to the use of Kanji.

As dogupatree cleverly pointed out, most of us generally read far more than we write. In this sense, I'm very happy being a native Japanese, hehe. Joking aside, to enhance "readability" should be the most important function of Chinese characters.

Let's also not forget about Tawain (and other Chinese speaking countries) that use bopomofo (zhuyin).

Isn't use of characters a bit like ADSL, where the A stands for asymmetric (it's efficient because we download far more than we upload)? In everyday life, nearly everybody reads far more than they write - road signs, the destination on the bus, adverts, dozens of webpages... many of us read a newspaper a day, but we probably don't write that much in a year.

(By the way, interesting tags! Personally, I think Chinese characters are great - they're the dog's b******s!)

Because they speak in a way to prevent or minimize confusion or ambiguity. As well, phrasing, tone, etc, all contribute to understanding.

Pinyin is ugly and slow to read/comprehend for even colloquial text. For other texts the use of pinyin would make understanding impossible. Pinyin is just a tool.

The issue really is readability. Can you imagine reading a book written entirely in pinyin? I was conned into buying a book for beginners once that was written in pinyin, and it's utterly useless. It's completely unreadable. At least in English, our homophones are spelt differently.

Check out this famous poem which demonstrates the issue.

If there are too many homophones, then how do people still manage to speak to each other?

There are too many homophones. I bet it's just as likely as English spelling reform.