Some languages in the region developed their own indigenous writing systems, but even these were alphabetical or syllable based, and so were fully tied to the phonetics of those languages. The point of the article we’re commenting on here, however, is that Chinese *characters* per se were never fully “phonetic”, hence the impossibility of fully replacing them with an alphabetical/phonetic system. The “shi shi” story is a hilariously extreme example.
It being pictographic (?) rather than alphabetic/phonetic has some interesting side effects - my Taiwanese partner struggles to sound out how English words are pronounced from how they're spelt, presumably because you can't really do that with Mandarin (but then you could maybe from bopomofo?)
Research shows that alphabetic languages (like English) rely heavily on the dorsal pathway in the brain to decode letters into sounds before accessing meaning.
Chinese, however, relies more on the ventral pathway and a unique region called the Left Middle Frontal Gyrus (LMFG) to process the spatial structure of the character and map it directly to meaning.
Some Japanese people and most foreigners input Japanese on a computer or phone using latin characters that, like with Chinese, are turned into the right mix of kanji and kana. There's an interesting progression because you type latin characters, they get turned into hiragana when they can and only converted into the mix of kanji and kana when you tell the computer to do so. Although these days with predictive text you can often start a word and get a whole sentence of prediction (which is great until it turns out to be wrong but only subtly so and you miss the wrongness).
What I find interesting (and irritating) about the simplified Chinese characters is that they are different to the Japanese ones. Both have simplified them, but the Chinese ones seem to me to be more radically simplified.
In a way, some simplified Chinese characters are quite radical, as their simplification drew inspiration from cursive script, the very script from which Japanese hiragana also evolved. In this sense, certain simplified characters resemble slightly more complex hiragana.
Chinese may be a clearer example of how Latinization, full or nearly-full, might impoverish a language. Wonder about that for Bahasa Malaysia or Indonesia vs Japanese. Experts?
As a long-time Sino-philologist, I’m no expert on the Bahasas, but to my knowledge they were never character-based (like Chinese) to begin with, so any impoverishment would have proceeded through a different vector.
I had to pull out my book. Kingdom Of Characters by Jing Tsu…are you the same author? The history of creating a “typewriter” for characters is also fascinating.
Sentence structure and the thought processes in writing differs in alphabetic writing, I don’t think it’s possible to make Chinese alphabetic.
I'd love to read The Kingdom of Characters; it seems fascinating. I also want to explore the story behind making Chinese characters typable, which is another captivating topic.
A number of individuals spent their entire lives creating their own typewriter ideas for characters; the complexity of the machines was staggering. Upon each "success" by the various inventors, right about the time it seemed like they'd made it and their invention would be adopted, some new technology came along to supplant their invention...this continued right on up to the development of Pinyin writing on a computer.
Some languages in the region developed their own indigenous writing systems, but even these were alphabetical or syllable based, and so were fully tied to the phonetics of those languages. The point of the article we’re commenting on here, however, is that Chinese *characters* per se were never fully “phonetic”, hence the impossibility of fully replacing them with an alphabetical/phonetic system. The “shi shi” story is a hilariously extreme example.
Sorry, this was a reply to Y Thn’s comment regarding the languages of Indonesia and Malaysia, not a comment on the article as a whole.)
It being pictographic (?) rather than alphabetic/phonetic has some interesting side effects - my Taiwanese partner struggles to sound out how English words are pronounced from how they're spelt, presumably because you can't really do that with Mandarin (but then you could maybe from bopomofo?)
There is actually neuroscience to back this up.
Research shows that alphabetic languages (like English) rely heavily on the dorsal pathway in the brain to decode letters into sounds before accessing meaning.
Chinese, however, relies more on the ventral pathway and a unique region called the Left Middle Frontal Gyrus (LMFG) to process the spatial structure of the character and map it directly to meaning.
I loved your book on the topic. I remember how my Chinese friends struggled on their laptops but cheered the advent of smartphones.
I’m looking forward to reading this post. 🌱🌷🌱
Some Japanese people and most foreigners input Japanese on a computer or phone using latin characters that, like with Chinese, are turned into the right mix of kanji and kana. There's an interesting progression because you type latin characters, they get turned into hiragana when they can and only converted into the mix of kanji and kana when you tell the computer to do so. Although these days with predictive text you can often start a word and get a whole sentence of prediction (which is great until it turns out to be wrong but only subtly so and you miss the wrongness).
What I find interesting (and irritating) about the simplified Chinese characters is that they are different to the Japanese ones. Both have simplified them, but the Chinese ones seem to me to be more radically simplified.
In a way, some simplified Chinese characters are quite radical, as their simplification drew inspiration from cursive script, the very script from which Japanese hiragana also evolved. In this sense, certain simplified characters resemble slightly more complex hiragana.
Chinese may be a clearer example of how Latinization, full or nearly-full, might impoverish a language. Wonder about that for Bahasa Malaysia or Indonesia vs Japanese. Experts?
As a long-time Sino-philologist, I’m no expert on the Bahasas, but to my knowledge they were never character-based (like Chinese) to begin with, so any impoverishment would have proceeded through a different vector.
I had to pull out my book. Kingdom Of Characters by Jing Tsu…are you the same author? The history of creating a “typewriter” for characters is also fascinating.
Sentence structure and the thought processes in writing differs in alphabetic writing, I don’t think it’s possible to make Chinese alphabetic.
I'd love to read The Kingdom of Characters; it seems fascinating. I also want to explore the story behind making Chinese characters typable, which is another captivating topic.
A number of individuals spent their entire lives creating their own typewriter ideas for characters; the complexity of the machines was staggering. Upon each "success" by the various inventors, right about the time it seemed like they'd made it and their invention would be adopted, some new technology came along to supplant their invention...this continued right on up to the development of Pinyin writing on a computer.