
China’s tyranny of characters - kafkaesq
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/07/language
======
pipio21
It is important to note that China had alphabetic systems, like Mongolian,
since a long time ago. It was a conscious decision not to use them.

Learning to write and read is much easier in alphabetic so the elite opposed
it from the start as they viewed it as a menace to their status.

They were right, when people in Europe could read Calvino's printed Bible and
own one themselves it changed the status quo radically, creating lots of
problems to the people on top. Before printing it took three years of a worker
salary to copy a book.

The same process happened in Korea and Japan, with equivalent systems to
alphabetic, the difference is that in China elites won, because it was central
planned. It was not easy though, specially at first it faced very strong
opposition in these small countries.

"as though Europe had thrown away Latin and decided to enforce French across
the continent."

That is exactly what happened with Napoleon. Then the fashion language to
speak became German, then after WWII it was English, because of the Americans
new world hegemony.

~~~
Retric
They use the same written language with multiple spoken languages. That does
not work with an alphabet.

Signs use the same principle.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol)
Though Arabic numerals have become fairly universal.

~~~
kafkaesq
_They use the same written language with multiple spoken languages. That does
not work with an alphabet._

It can work if you make it work (and ignore side effects).

As attested by the many, many languages have been (forcibly) switched over to
invented or completely foreign alphabets, over the millennia.

~~~
Retric
You can map a spoken language to a random set of symbols.

    
    
      long A sound = vr in language 1.
      Z sound = vr in language 2.
    

But, unless each language also has a different spelling you can only have one
language end up even vaguely phonetic, the other is just going to have random
symbols mapping to words. As in "Krithnotrix" -> "Bob" because in L1
"Krithnotrix" translates to a short word.

This means if you have 10 languages then ideograms are easier in 9/10 of them.

~~~
kafkaesq
Except that mappings between real languages and writing systems don't work
that way (being in general far from truly phonetic).

~~~
Retric
Sure, they are not perfect, but you don't want rainbow and monkey to both be
spelled VVKX because they are homonyms in another language so they must be
homonyms in all your languages.

------
jasonjei
Language is powerful in China. Wars were fought in China to unify culture. For
example, the Chinese language in modern vernacular is generally not referred
as a language in itself but referred as zhongwen, or "Chinese culture." The
first emperor to unify China realized how important for maintaining power it
was to have the people using a single common language (just as it were with
the Roman Empire, compared to after its fall).

The Qin dynasty despite its short reign laid the cultural foundations for
generations of China (including and up to now). Before that, China was a
collection of several warring states with their own written languages that the
Qin dynasty immediately abolished. It allowed them to centralize
administration of standards and take power from local lords to the central
bureaucracy.

What is happening in Hong Kong is a power play by the mainland authorities,
just as it was in many instances in mainland history starting from the first
emperor.

My mother's family was from southern China, and relocated to Taiwan when the
Communists won, my maternal grandparents' family having worked in the
Kuomintang government. While my grandparents' native tongue was Cantonese, the
only language my mother knows from her years in Taiwan is Mandarin (the Taiwan
authorities had a strict prohibition on non-mandarin Chinese dialects).

------
tokenadult
Here is a written example of differences between the Cantonese language and
the Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) language when written in Chinese
characters. I've seen many examples of signs or other written language in
public places in Hong Kong that are incomprehensible to literate speakers of
Mandarin, and some examples of written Taiwanese in Taiwan that are
incomprehensible to people from anywhere else. How you might write the
conversation

"Does he know how to speak Mandarin?

"No, he doesn't."

他會說普通話嗎？

他不會。

in Modern Standard Chinese characters contrasts with how you would write

"Does he know how to speak Cantonese?

"No, he doesn't."

佢識唔識講廣東話？

佢唔識。

in the Chinese characters used to write Cantonese. If you can see the Chinese
characters at all as this is displayed on your screen, you should easily be
able to see that many more words than "Mandarin" and "Cantonese" differ
between those sentences in Chinese characters.

~~~
auganov
Well that example is rather radical. As long as you know (or can guess)
traditional characters you can read a HK newspaper just fine with a stutter
here and there.

~~~
spacehunt
That's because newspapers in HK are still written in Modern Standard Chinese
most of the time. In less formal contexts such as social media, however,
written Cantonese is rather more common.

~~~
auganov
So the subtitles on HK videos, tv etc are usually sanitized to be standard?

~~~
spacehunt
Often yes. For video only the really local content (eg. 100Most) are subtitled
in exactly the same characters as the ones actually spoken.

(Edit: actually I just rewatched some 100Most content after I wrote the above
and no, sadly even their videos are subtitled in Standard Modern Chinese.)

------
eonwe
This is only partially related, but I remember watching the news in the
nineties and being dumbstruck on how Académie française policed the usage of
language in public life. It was probably about use of Anglicisms in television
or by politicians.

I forgot about it for years until I learned from Wikipedia that that wasn't
just a reaaction against Internet, but a policy that has been going on for
centuries:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha)

So the mandarinisation doesn't seem that odd against such a background. The
similar effort bore fruit in France as I think now virtually all people in
France speak Parisian French compared to 12% or so at the advent of French
Revolution and the following policies.

~~~
bitwize
I learned about the Académie Française in French class (1990 or so). I thought
they were guarding against anglicisms creeping in through teen slang -- "c'est
too much" and that.

~~~
macavity23
Also through vocabulary. 'Le weekend' (vs 'la fin de semaine') is the classic
example, both of what l'academie does and how utterly (though heroically)
doomed its efforts are.

------
wyuenho
David Moser, like many people, Chinese or otherwise, who's argued in the
Communist party-line idea that a phonetic written language, or in fact any
simplification of Han script helps eliminate illiterates, simply cannot
comprehend statistics.

Case in point:

Japanese, a language that mixes 3 different scripts, one of which is Kanji
(Han characters), is taught to everyone in Japanese since pre-school. An
excellent Japanese reader can comprehend about 3000 Han characters,
incidentally, is also the average number required for a Chinese speaker to
read newspaper. Japan's literacy rate has been around 99% for so long that the
government has basically stopped reporting that statistic.

In the past 30-40 years, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, all regions that
continue to use the "complex" traditional Han script, has achieved 95+%
literacy rate. We don't hear many people in those regions complaining about
how hard traditional Han characters are.

As a comparison, India, which teaches Hindi and English in school, both of
which much simpler scripts than Han, has achieved an average of 74% literacy
rate in the most recent census.

All of the above tells us that the complexity of a language's written script
has very little to do with literacy. The dominant factor in improving literacy
is the introduction of free primary and secondary education across a region.
No other factor even comes close to achieving a high literacy rate.

So stop with this non-sense that the Han script is too complex to teach, learn
and use now. 100s of millions of people have done it.

Another point of this article is that the Han script is too rigid, which is
not true. The 6 ways of constructing new Han characters has been recognized
for millennia, it's just over the dynasties, the rulers have been reluctant to
invent new ones to cater to new ideas. It's the people who forces down a way
to use it that's rigid.

~~~
jbooth
I know about 200 words of spoken chinese and can write maybe 4 (including yi
er san ;)). Now, admittedly, I'm just picking it up here and there rather than
attending classes and spending hours writing characters over and over, but I
think learning the strokes for 3-5,000 characters is undisputably 'harder'
than learning to write 26 or so letters and a really consistent pronunciation
system like pinyin.

That's not to say you're wrong that literacy is all about education. But
harder is still harder.

~~~
komali2
It's true - Chinese kids age 7 can write less words in Mandarin than American
kids age 7 can write in English. However, it doesn't change the fact that the
difficulty of the language has nothing to do with literacy rate. China has a
low literacy rate because huge swaths of the population don't have access to
education.

I learned Japanese and Chinese to a fluent level, and at least from my biased
point of view Japanese is a tremendously more difficult written language. Not
only do you have just as many "characters" (kanji, hanzi, 汉子, 漢子, whatever) as
you do in Mandarin, those characters can have many different pronunciations.
You also have katakana (phonetic, 46 + modifications), hiragana(phonetic, 46 +
modifications), and just for fun the occasional English (phonetic, 26). And
yet, Japan has a 99% literacy rate.

Compare that to the USA's 97.9% literacy rate, a country that teaches English
(26 letters, phonetic), and I think the argument that difficulty of the
language reflects the literacy rate falls apart.

~~~
Nadya
You aren't biased - just educated in the languages. ;)

To illustrate the difficulty of Japanese for others, I'll provide an example:

    
    
        生 - raw (nama)
        生まれる - to be born (u・mareru)
        生きる - to live (i・kiru)
        生活 - living; life (sei・katsu)
        生地 - cloth; fabric (ki・ji)
    

I'll stop there. There are _more_ readings for that single kanji but they are
obscure or an "alternative" to a more commonly used kanji. To my
understanding, this problem does not exist in Chinese - which uses a single
reading mapped to a single character. The same character, in Mandarin, would
be read 'shēng' with many of the same meanings (to be born, life, raw)

The above example is one of many kanji with multiple readings in Japanese. How
do you know which reading to use? Context and because you know the word. :)
That problem isn't unique to Japanese, English suffers from it as well! Think
of homophones like tear and tear. You use context to figure out how it is
read. It adds some level of difficulty but isn't impossible.

~~~
spacehunt
There are lots of characters that have more than one reading in Cantonese,
Mandarin and other Chinese languages -- in fact 生 has 2 readings in Cantonese:
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%94%9F#Pronunciation](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%94%9F#Pronunciation)

~~~
Nadya
I stand corrected, thank you. I had Mandarin in mind, although that fact was
unclear since I only mentioned it in my example. I'm unfamiliar with Cantonese
and lack any knowledge at all of other Chinese dialects. So at least for that
character - it has one reading in Mandarin. The two readings in Cantonese are
a single (and similar) vowel apart, nothing like the differences between
"nama" and "ki". So I'll change my argument: even though Chinese has multiple
readings - Japanese takes it a step further in complexity.

According to this page [0], most sound differences in Mandarin are a variant
opposed to a completely different sound. Variant sounds are easier to memorize
because they often "make sense". In Japanese, variant sounds often occur
because it is "easier to pronounce". If I had to wager a guess, Chinese
variant sounds are done for the same reason - though I could be wrong on that
as well. :)

Thank you for the correction.

[0]
[http://pinyin.info/chinese_characters/](http://pinyin.info/chinese_characters/)

~~~
spacehunt
I agree, the multiple readings in Cantonese/Mandarin are nowhere near as
different as the different readings for the same Kanji in Japanese. I never
meant to imply otherwise, sorry if I sounded I was.

As someone trying to learn Japanese, it is one of the harder parts of the
language for me to learn. Conjugations frustrate me more though. :)

~~~
Nadya
I didn't take it as such - I took it as a correction to my misinformation and
updated my argument to reflect the new information. My backing point was
'Japanese makes kanji more difficult than Chinese" but my information wasn't
correct originally.

Might I ask what you find difficult about conjugations? I might be able to
help. With the exception of U-Verbs (五段) I found that they are very consistent
and very "mathematical". Nothing else gets as complicated as "house and houses
but mouse and mice, goose and geese but moose and moose". While there are
still exceptions due to etymology, they are relatively rare. The same 2 verbs
are exceptions to most everything and there are only a few common words which
are exceptions, such as いい conjugating as よい.

I concede that 五段活用 is a pain in the rear but it is something you get an "ear"
for over time. So if that is were you get frustrated my only advice is chug-
chug-chug along! Eventually if you conjugate one of the words incorrectly it
_sounds_ wrong to you, even if you aren't certain you were wrong or not.

~~~
spacehunt
Yes, it is the verb conjugations that are tripping me up (the English
Wikipedia page on this [1] has a complicated chart that looks slightly scary),
but they are getting easier the more I use them. I do find many parts of
Japanese grammar to be very consistent, like you said.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugation)

------
cheatdeath
In Hong Kong, I sometimes see peoples screens when I'm using public transport.
WhatsApp audio recordings are very popular, sometimes I can see the entire
conversation is just audio recordings back and forth. Other times it's Chinese
(I can't differentiate which), sometimes English, often a mix. I've only seen
someone drawing characters with his finger once.

~~~
andyjdavis
Keep an eye out for either Pinyin or Zhuyin. I believe they are somewhat
common for texting purposes. You input this stuff and your device starts
displaying characters for you to pick from avoiding the slower process of
actually drawing characters.

Links for those unfamiliar with those two things.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo)

~~~
footpath
Although in the case of Hong Kong, neither Pinyin input nor Zhuyin input are
likely to be used, as both are based on the phonetics of standard Mandarin
Chinese. There are alternative input methods that are shape-based
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_comp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers#Shape-
based)) such as the Cangjie, and Cantonese-only input methods.

~~~
andyjdavis
I actually have not come across Cangjie before and it looks really
interesting. Thank you for the link :)

------
mahranch
> gaining so much regional identity and independence that they want to do a
> Brexit of their own.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they've wanted their own Brexit from day 1. At least
Hong Kong does, and even Taiwan probably too. Especially Taiwan. I feel sorry
for Taiwan, watching stuff like this ([http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/30/hong-
kong-student-begs-for...](http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/30/hong-kong-student-
begs-for-international)) from Hong Kong and knowing that's a real possibility
for them. At least the pro-China people in Taiwan (yes, they exist) will have
to reevaluate their opinions after seeing how China has handled the Hong Kong
return...

------
kiwidrew
At least in Hong Kong, "new" characters for spoken Cantonese are often derived
from existing Chinese characters that sound similar, despite those characters
having a completely different meaning. Wikipedia has a fascinating entry [1]
with many examples of this.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese#Cantonese_ch...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese#Cantonese_character_formation)

------
legulere
> But central authorities are also now worried about any regional languages
> (which it insists on calling dialects) among the Han majority

It's not as clear cut that variations of Chinese are languages and not
dialects as the economist makes it out. This is very similar to arabic.
Wikipedia for instance also calls them dialects. This is very different from
Uighur and Tibetan which are pretty clear cut separate languages, but which
are intermingled here in this article.

~~~
jacobolus
Wikipedia calls them “varieties” because to call them “languages” would result
in a giant political flamewar.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese),
also see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Varieties_of_Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Varieties_of_Chinese)

That doesn’t mean they aren’t distinct languages (and not mere “dialects”) by
any definition a modern linguist would typically use.

Calling them “dialects” would be similar to calling English, German, and Dutch
“dialects” of “Germanic”.

~~~
legulere
English is pretty far from continental western germanic (German, Dutch, ...).

Continental western germanic is actually a good example of a group where the
distinction between dialect and language is not clear. There's a dialect
continuum in the area [1], so you often can't draw clear cut lines what
belongs to one language and one to another.

\- With Low German the question is wether it is an own language or just a
dialect of German.

\- With the three frisian varieties the question is wether they are different
languages or just different dialects of Frisian.

\- Luxemburgish can be considered just a dialect, like the German dialects
spoken just behind the border that are essentially the same, or an own
language.

\- Dutch belongs to a dialect group that also spans over wide parts of Germany
and Luxembourg [2]

\- And there are many more things to think about like Afrikaans or Yiddish

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Continental_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Continental_West_Germanic_continuum)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian_languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian_languages)

------
Freak_NL
Weird. On Firefox, with ad-blocker and PrivacyBadger disabled, I am stuck on a
page with only navigation menus and a title that reads 'Explicit cookie
consent'.

In Chrome I get the expected I-agree-to-your-cookies consent form.

Anyone else getting this?

~~~
seszett
I've had this for a while on this domain, which Chrome and Ghostery. I haven't
been able to read their articles for months at least.

------
panglott
"the use of a standard language is undeniably helpful in educating the poorest
and helping them engage with broader development trends in the country and
across the world."

This is what the powerful say every time they're trying to forcibly strip a
community of its language and culture. But is it even remotely true? The major
varieties of Chinese have as many speakers as major European nations. Is it
really to be believed that local varieties of Chinese or minority languages
can have no recognition in school?

------
peteretep
Crikey, 'duang' is a much better word than 'boing'.

------
kazinator
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_kana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_kana)

~~~
PeCaN
Hokkien Taiwanese is no longer particularly prominent in Taiwan, let alone the
Taiwanese kana (according to that link they're not even all in Unicode).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin)
is more relevant, as it's still moderately widely used today in Taiwan.

------
ianbicking
Out of curiosity, how do writers deal with dialog with Chinese characters? It
seems like characters would give the meaning but not the voice.

~~~
vilhelm_s
There are some complications when Chinese characters are used to write non-
Chinese languages, but in general Chinese characters correspond to sounds (one
character per syllable). You might like this article, "The Ideographic Myth".
[http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html](http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html)

~~~
Aelinsaar
That was a really fascinating read.

------
allemagne
>The inflexibility of the Chinese script has always reinforced the
inflexibility of the Chinese state.

The democratization of Taiwan and Hong Kong must be pretty frustrating to
writers who want people to take these kinds of baseless yet simplifying
statements seriously.

~~~
Noseshine
"reinforced", not "caused".

~~~
dibujante
"Movable goalposts", not "fixed goalposts".

------
gbog
"the boxy prison of Chinese characters"

What does it even mean? We are all "prisoners" of our language, because we
can't easily think and express anything that cannot be molded in this
language. But Chinese characters may actually give more "freedom" to their
users, in that they convey directly their meaning, without the necessity of a
sound. See 凹 and 凸, they mean concave and convex. Avoiding the articulation
over the pronounciation is a blessing in many respects. It allows more people
from distant cultures to converge with the writen language, and share much
more.

~~~
Chathamization
Only a tiny minority of Chinese characters are pictographic, and most
characters have a phonetic element. You'll have a better chance guessing the
pronunciation of a random Chinese character than guessing the meaning of a
random Chinese character.

~~~
panglott
The value of iconocity in the more pictographic characters is more of a
mnemonic tool. It's much easier to _remember_ the meaning of the more
pictographic ones.

