
The Chinese Language, Ever Evolving - robg
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/chinese-language-ever-evolving/
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tokenadult
Submission upvoted because it is an interesting issue, particularly to me as a
second-language user of Chinese. But I'm appalled at the choice of
commentators by the New York Times. I wish they had asked someone with some
real expertise on the subject, like William Boltz

[http://depts.washington.edu/asianll/people/faculty/boltzwm.h...](http://depts.washington.edu/asianll/people/faculty/boltzwm.html)

or James Unger

<https://pro.osu.edu/profiles/unger.26/>

or some still living student of the late John DeFrancis.

A linguist would quibble, of course, that strictly speaking the writing system
is not "the Chinese language" at all, because people use language whether or
not they are literate, and indeed whether or not the language they speak has a
writing system. What is desirable in a writing system is mostly efficiency,
but what is usually preserved in a writing system is precisely it's most
arbitrary and least efficient features, as it is passed culturally from
generation to generation.

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0_o
Simplified Chinese characters are ugly and ridiculous, I am in China and I
prefer to read and write in traditional Chinese.

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vicaya
Upvoted for Prof. Eugene Wang's perspectives. As a fan of Chinese calligraphy,
I'm proficient in both Simplified and traditional Chinese characters.

