Extracts from UPenn language log about why Chinese characters are so damn fucking

cumbersome. Inefficient, in my words.

----http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=25730
Ted Chiang uninvents Chinese characters
May 13, 2016 @ 12:00 pm Filed by Victor Mair under Phonetics and phonology, Writ
ing systems
"... No, my objection is a practical one: Im a fan of literacy, and Chinese chara
cters have been an obstacle to literacy for millennia. With a phonetic writing s
ystem like an alphabet or a syllabary, you need only learn a few dozen symbols a
nd you can read most everything printed in a newspaper. With Chinese characters,
you have to learn three thousand. And writing is even more difficult than readi
ng; when you cant use pronunciation as an aid to spelling, you have to rely on pu
re memorization. The cognitive demands are so great that even highly educated Ch
inese speakers regularly forget how to write characters they havent used recently
.
The huge number of characters poses other obstacles as well. Ive flipped through
a Chinese dictionary, Ive seen photographs of a Chinese typewriter, Ive read about
Chinese telegraphy, and despite their ingenuity they are all cumbersome inventi
ons, wheelbarrows for the millstone around Chinese cultures neck. Computers and s
martphones are impossible to use if youre restricted to Chinese characters; its on
ly with phonetic systems of writing, like Bopomofo and Pinyin, that text entry b
ecomes practical. In the past century, there have been multiple proposals to rep
lace Chinese characters with an alphabet, all unsuccessful; the only reform ever
implemented was to invent simplified versions of the more complex characters, w
hich solved none of the problems Ive mentioned and created new ones besides. ..."
----http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=25776#more-25776
Backward Thinking about Orientalism and Chinese Characters
May 16, 2016 @ 1:29 pm Filed by Victor Mair under Language and computers, Langua
ge reform, Writing systems
previous post | next post
This is a guest post by David Moser of Beijing Capital Normal University
"... After all, it took a massive, concerted effort on the part of computer prog
rammers for more than two decades to put Chinese character input on a par with t
hat of alphabetic systems. And despite the exciting new advances in character en
try that Mullaney mentions, even now the most common input methods (straightforw
ard pinyin, wubi entry, etc.) are still cumbersome in comparison with typing in
alphabetic text. (Pinyin or handwriting input on a smart phone or pad still gene
rally involves a two-step process, in which the user must choose the correct cha
racter candidate from a pop-up menu.) ..."
"... But again, this smart functionality of the computer keyboard was the result
of decades of very hard work and ingenuity, as computer programmers had to strug
gle mightily to figure out a way to input thousands of complex graphs using only
the limited key set of the QWERTY keyboard. The expansion of computer power he
refers to was a hard-won solution to the very real problem of dealing with a Chi
nese writing system whose component symbols were a crippling burden on human mem
ory and computer memories of the 1980s and 90s. ..."

"... But surely we owe our thanks not to the Chinese writing system itself, but
rather to the ingenuity and cleverness of the programmers who devised the soluti
ons. Advances in cancer drugs may produce useful spinoff drugs that can cure oth
er diseases, but we usually dont thank cancer itself for the breakthroughs. ..."
"... He is surely right that computer technology has come up with exciting new
character-input paradigms, which can be used to improve upon traditional one-toone alphabetic entry. Yet he completely ignores the many age-old burdensome prob
lems that are so much a fact of daily language life that users have simply becom
e inured to them. Among these are:

The countless hours of time it takes to attain basic literacy in Chinese due
to the sheer number of characters to be memorized. China is very proud of its s
upposed 95% literacy rate, yet what goes unspoken is the inordinate amount of ti
me children must spend in mastering the system, in comparison to alphabetic writ
ing systems. As long as Chinese school kids (and hapless foreign adults) are exp
ected to master the writing of this system by hand, all the advanced input syste
ms in the world will not lighten this burden. (One could make the case that the
true contribution of computer technology to Chinese script is not improved input
methods, but the option of sidestepping the inputting of characters entirely by
simply using speech-to-text technology.)
The use of pinyin as an add-on writing system employed to teach Chinese scho
ol kids the sounds of Putonghua. It is in some sense absurd that the poor overwo
rked Chinese children must learn pinyin, an alphabetic writing system, in additi
on to the burdensome character system, in order to master basic reading skills i
n their own language. This is especially ironic, given that pinyin alone would b
e sufficient to achieve basic literacy, if only Chinese books were printed in th
is imported phonetic writing system.
The character amnesia problem (in Chinese tibiwangzi ), namely, the inability t
ecall how to write the graph for a sound due to memory overload. (Referenced in
Language Log here, and here, and here). This has been a problem for centuries, a
nd made only worse now with the advent of the pinyin input method and voice mess
aging options on digital devices. The problem has gotten so bad among young peop
le in China that Chinese state media have produced several TV shows such as Hanz
i yingxiong
Chinese Character Heroes, and Hanzi tingxie dahui

in which middle school children compete in various character writing tasks, as
a way of reviving the rapidly deteriorating skill of writing by hand. This chara
cter amnesia ironically the result of relying on the less memory-intensive alpha
betic pinyin input method! results in much wasted time as users have to check th
eir digital dictionaries to retrieve the forgotten graph, resort to pinyin and,
increasingly English! or simply opt out of the system entirely, resorting to som
e kind of speech-to-text technology to get the right character on the screen.
The enormous cognitive burden of the reading process, which is due to the la
ck of phonetic information in the script. The lack of phonetic feedback for Chin
ese characters increases the difficulty of reading acquisition many fold, discou
rages non-native speakers and even many native speakers from even attempting to
tackle the written language. Many perfectly intelligent ex-pats living in China
make a very rational decision to eschew the written language altogether, realizi
ng that the ratio of effort-to-effect is simply too abysmal. And in Singapores mu
ltilingual education system, Mandarin studies are increasingly shunned by ethnic
ally Chinese students, in large part because the kids increasingly balk at the d
ifficulty of memorizing Chinese characters. The problem has become so severe tha
t the Singaporean government has set up a special agency, the Singapore Centre f
or Chinese Language (SCCL) to improve the effectiveness of teaching Mandarin in
the schools.
These are all daily frustrations that are simply not a part of the digital lives
of citizens in the Alphabetic World, as Mullaney calls it. They are problems with
the Chinese script that the world of Information Technology has not yet solved,

and in many cases, has exacerbated. ..."

"... in 1949, Mao Zedong and his language planners expressed every intention of
abolishing Chinese characters once they came to power. (See my book A Billion V
oices: Chinas Search for a Common Language for more on this history.) Mao himself
said to Edgar Snow in 1936:
Chinese characters are so difficult to learn that even the best system of rudime
ntary characters, or simplified teaching, does not equip the people with a reall
y efficient and rich vocabulary. Sooner or later, we believe, we will have to ab
andon characters altogether, if we are to create a new social culture in which t
he masses fully participate. ..."
"... Computer technology has indeed made great strides in solving the problem of
character entry, putting alphabets and Chinese characters on more-or-less the s
ame footing. Yet educators, publishers, websites, and software developers still
struggle with the same kinds of inefficiencies and added burdens that have alway
s plagued the writing system.
The calls for alphabetization of the Chinese language were quite reasonable and
valid throughout most of the 20th century. Only in the last three decades has th
is changed. Make no mistake: The incorporation of Chinese characters into modern
cyberspace is not proof that the calls for their abolition were merely misguide
d prejudice; rather, it is modern IT technology that has saved the characters fr
om almost certain obsolescence in the increasingly interconnected and complex 21
st century. ..."
----http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=25799#more-25799
Writing Sinitic languages with phonetic scripts
May 20, 2016 @ 8:43 am Filed by Victor Mair under Language reform, Writing syste
ms
"... Suffice it to say here that all children in China learn to read via Pinyin
romanization. The role of phonetic annotation of characters in teaching reading
and writing is also well nigh universal outside of China. ..."
"... To sum up, writing Sinitic lects with phonetic scripts is not a problem. I
t s already been done for more than a thousand years. That said, I don t know w
hy our discussions about IT questions, digital pedagogy, transcription, and so f
orth time and again get diverted into controversies over whether it is possible
or desirable to replace Chinese characters with a phonetic script, comparative t
echnologies, and worst of all Orientalism, postmodernism, and deconstruction. T
o me, the latter are all non-issues, at best side issues, and should not occupy
so much of our time, nor should we invest so much of our emotions in them. ..."
"... Although plenty of Chinese language reformers have been advocating the deve
lopment of a phonetic script for well over a century, it hasn t happened yet bec
ause the time isn t right and there hasn t been a widely supported model for doi
ng so, nor has there been explicit government support for such a shift. But suc
h things do happen in various societies when the time is ripe: the adoption of
the Roman alphabet in Turkey and Vietnam, the adoption of Hangul in Korea, the a
bandonment of Latin in favor of the European vernaculars only a few centuries ag
o, and so forth. Who s to say that something similar cannot or should not happe
n in China? After all, character simplification is already a reality that is a
partial recognition of the need for radical change in the way Chinese is written
. And government leaders and public intellectuals at the highest levels have sk
irted dangerously close to making romanization itself a fact of life. It hasn t

happened yet, but someday it might. ..."

----http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=25856#more-25856
The uses of Hanyu pinyin
May 22, 2016 @ 3:45 pm Filed by Victor Mair under Diglossia and digraphia, Trans
cription, Writing
"... most people probably do not realize to what extent pinyin has already becom
e an essential part of life in China. To remedy that lack of understanding abou
t what pinyin is actually used for every day, I will simply list a few of its ap
plications in education, commerce, science, manufacturing, architecture, constru
ction, and countless other fields. There is no particular significance to the o
rder in which I list these applications.
1. to teach children and illiterate adults the basics of reading and writing
2. archeologists use pinyin to designate cemeteries, tombs, houses, waste pits,
and other elements of the sites they work on
3. in museum labels and catalogs, pinyin is used to annotate the pronunciation o
f very obscure terms for bronze vessels, weapons, etc.
4. to annotate the sounds of unfamiliar characters in written materials of all s
orts
5. in advertising and on packaging
6. braille
7. semaphore
8. road signs
9. teaching Mandarin to non-native speakers
10. designating components and parts of items to be assembled
11.in mathematics, physics, and chemistry
12. in dialectology, phonology, and other sub-fields of linguistics
13. inputting texts in computers, cellphones, and other electronic devices
14. to write down expressions for which there are no known characters or for spe
cial effect, particularly on the internet
15. book titles, publication data, and cataloging
16. indices of books
17. ordering of dictionary and encyclopedia entries
18. spelling the names of Chinese citizens on passports and other official and u
nofficial documents
19. for retrieving passports of citizens who have applied for exit permits

See "Passport pickup by pinyin" (3/02/12)

20. ordering names in lists of people
When I first started studying Chinese 50 years ago, some of these latter functio
ns did not yet use alphabetical ordering. Instead they relied on radical plus r
esidual stroke count, total stroke count, category, etc. Increasingly, however,
and especially in recent years, such ordering functions are being taken over by
pinyin. Naturally, pinyin s role as a device for transcription has only grown
with time. ..."
----http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=26711
Learning to read and write Chinese
July 11, 2016 @ 1:15 pm Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Language acquisiti
on, Pedagogy, Writing, Writing systems
previous post | next post
Responding to "How to learn to read Chinese" (5/25/08), Alex Wang writes:
Thanks for the great blog. I have also enjoyed the articles of David Moser. My
path toward your blog started when I decided to teach my younger son, 4, to sta
rt to read Chinese and English. It also was heavily influenced by watching my e
lder son, 7, struggle with learning how to write characters. He is attending pu
blic school here in Shenzhen. Both were born in HK and raised in Shenzhen. Mor
eover, my wife s side is from the mainland. After analysing the issue at length
I have come to many of the same conclusions as your colleagues and you have.
I can t imagine how much more innovation or progress China would have made if th
ey took the Korean route. Moreover I think there is a large and silent middle c
lass who can not write and are silent due to face/mianzi. Even the native born
parents all say that Chinese is the hardest subject for their children grades 16. My wife who writes government grants (using a laptop) for a large public com
pany has a hard time remembering how to write some of the words that my 3rd grad
er is learning.
Although I haven t read all the comments on all the relevant blog entries, I am
wondering if what I consider the biggest limitation of Chinese has been addresse
d by a blog. As the world becomes global, English easily absorbed many foreign
words. With China having opened up in the past 40 years, many loan words have a
rrived. For example, "salad", the green leafy stuff people eat :-). At least h
ere in Shenzhen it is composed of the word for "sand" (sh ) and the word for "pull
" (l ). If they are already using characters as phonetics for new words, why not
go all the way? I guess the answer must be to keep the culture. That said, it
s seriously hindering their GDP and literacy. Moreover parents and children suff
er terribly, and those who can t afford tutors watch their children slip further
and further behind.
Does anyone know if the upper echelons of the Ministry of Education are trying t
o figure out a way forward, aside from making kids turn in handwritten reports s
o that they have to write more? (This fails as kids create and edit on Word and
then print it out and then copy the finished paper by hand. LOL). I am sure the
government knows the issues and the economic effect, so am just curious as to h
istorical proposals.
Mainly I would like to follow the discussion to learn more. Although expected,
it s disappointing to see some nationalism pervade the arguments.

There are so many words other than "salad" that are entering the language. I wo
nder how the government or whatever organization in China determines which chara
cters to use for such borrowed words or is it just the public consensus. It trul
y seems inefficient to use complex characters as "letters/phonetics". Unfortunat
ely, I don t know how other languages handle word borrowing, but am always looki
ng forward to learning new things.
It was not very easy for my younger son to learn to read Chinese, but I know tha
t learning to write will be brutal as well. I am seriously considering not send
ing him to the public school here. Instead of mindlessly writing each word tens
if not a hundred times, he could be learning programming, drawing, playing, sle
eping, anything but mindlessly muscle memorizing characters.
Another issue that I have with the teaching of the language in schools here is t
he text books. With English there is a natural progression
dog
dog runs
black dog runs
black dog runs quickly
Here it seems they make kids memorize many Tang dynasty poems, or the language r
eminds me of the miniseries "mi yue"* where the people speak with what I call Sh
akespearean Chinese for lack of a better word.
*[VHM: I think that Alex may be talking about "The Legend of Mi Yue", a popular
Chinese historical TV drama.]
They make the kids memorize and try to understand hundreds of historically dated
idioms. It seems that in common conversation these idioms are rarely used, yet
they choose to teach them starting in 2nd grade, and many of the tests weight t
hese over 40 percent.
One teacher told me this is political due to trying to protect the culture.
If this is true it reminds me of the British government trying to protect the Br
itish pound against all fundamentals. I view this is the case with Chinese char
acters. The loss in potential GDP is staggering when one thinks of the millions
of Chinese kids wasting millions of man days/years just mindlessly writing char
acters instead of reading and learning new things.
Among many other Language Log posts concerned with learning to read and write Ch
inese are these two:
"How to learn Chinese and Japanese" (2/17/14)
"The future of Chinese language learning is now" (4/5/14)
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