tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33211251.post448241909548776757..comments2024-01-08T19:49:13.932+00:00Comments on Froogville: It's holding them back [Why I don't learn Chinese - 20]Frooghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06738623732860210935noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33211251.post-30720223794181718712012-10-06T04:12:19.985+00:002012-10-06T04:12:19.985+00:00A further detrimental impact of this writing syste...A further detrimental impact of this writing system, I fear, is the very poor average level of eyesight in this country. Almost EVERYONE here wears glasses (or if they don't, <i>they should</i>).<br /><br />Reading characters can be a bit of a struggle, even when they're printed quite large, in bold, on good quality paper offering a high contrast. Most Chinese schoolbooks have very, very thin print and thin, yellowed paper; and sometimes the height of the characters is only a few millimetres. It's difficult even to make out the general shape of a character in these circumstances, impossible to distinguish any of the fiddlier details of one. It hurts my eyes just to look at a page of this stuff for a few seconds, without even making a serious attempt to read it.<br /><br />Eye-strain is such a common problem in China that schools are full of posters drilling children on 'eye exercises' (and TCM acupressure point massage techniques) that can supposedly combat its effects. I am not convinced of their efficacy.<br /><br />On top of everything else, I believe the character system is making this country BLIND><br /> Frooghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06738623732860210935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33211251.post-42083662949890310242012-10-06T04:03:59.958+00:002012-10-06T04:03:59.958+00:00In the last of my points in this piece, I was care...In the last of my points in this piece, I was carefully shying away from saying <b>Chinese makes you <i>stupid</i></b>(an argument that I have often seen made), instead confining myself to some observations on the ways in which it may possibly restrict the scope of thought or expression.<br /><br />But there is an argument - a corollary of my point about the disproportionate amount of school time that learning this language takes up - that having to memorise so many characters distorts the cognitive development of the brain (or perhaps maxes out its processing capacity in certain regards?). While Chinese speakers may develop some useful collateral skills from learning their language (the emphasis on pattern recognition supposedly heightens other aspects of visual awareness as well, giving them an aptitude for professions such as graphic design), it is suggested that there may also be a downside.... and that difficulty in acquiring foreign language skills may be one of these.<br /><br />I've also read somewhere a suggestion that differences in Chinese brain structure have been found that are not developmental but innate; that they seem to have a genetic adaptation for the extraordinarily high level of visual processing/memory that their language requires. I'm deeply sceptical about that - not least because historically levels of literacy in China have always been very low. Mind you, if it were true, if would be another excuse for the suffering foreign student of Mandarin: <i><b>I just don't have the right sort of brain for this!"</b></i><br />Frooghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06738623732860210935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33211251.post-87588433372207330102012-10-06T03:54:18.415+00:002012-10-06T03:54:18.415+00:00Well, I'm not really talking about abandoning ...Well, I'm not really talking about abandoning the language, Gary, just the character writing system.<br /><br />And I'm not even necessarily suggesting using the Roman alphabet (and if we were going to use the Roman alphabet, I've always been intrigued by Y.R. Chao's GR system, which attempted to represent the tones by spelling rather than separate tone marks; a more sophisticated romanization than pinyin, I suspect). It ought to be possible to create something like the Korean han-geul system, which is a unique alphabet, and retains something of the style of the previous character-based system. The Koreans saw the wisdom of this change nearly 600 years ago.<br /><br />It would be interesting to try and analyse how the Korean language evolved as a result of the adoption of han-geul. Will have to do some research on that!<br />Frooghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06738623732860210935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33211251.post-69755116912055616362012-10-05T23:01:32.400+00:002012-10-05T23:01:32.400+00:00Not offended, no. Not sure what my position is on ...Not offended, no. Not sure what my position is on this. You make some strong points. But it's hard to think of abandoning a language that's been in use for thousands of years.Garynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33211251.post-16836357338947801482012-10-05T07:28:49.095+00:002012-10-05T07:28:49.095+00:00I suspect the character writing system is responsi...I suspect the character writing system is responsible for the very limited range of sounds in Chinese, and hence the huge number of homophones or near-homophones (and the confusion of meaning that can arise from this). With a writing system that can't convey phonetics, you're left having to remember the specific sound for each character (as well as having to learn to recognise it and remember its meaning and how to write it), and that becomes impractical if there are too many possible sounds.<br /><br />It's also a drawback of the character system that, because of this inability to represent phonetics, it can't reflect how people actually speak: everyone in China uses the same writing system, but the pronuciation varies enormously from one area to another.<br /><br />The inability to easily make small changes to words to indicate grammatical function or verb tense etc. is surely the reason why Chinese has failed to evolve a sophisticated grammar as well. The characters are a very confining system.<br /><br />I really think that adopting an alphabet-based system for writing Chinese would allow the language to grow and change very quickly - to elaborate its grammar, to enlarge its vocabulary, to integrate more dialect variations into the 'standard' language.<br /><br />It's a long overdue reform. Mao considered it back in the early days of the PRC, but got cold feet about the idea. A great pity. It might have been the one <i>good idea</i> he had!Frooghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06738623732860210935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33211251.post-12481854162934862252012-10-05T07:15:39.505+00:002012-10-05T07:15:39.505+00:00I don't think there's any arguing with my ...I don't think there's any arguing with my basic propositions here. Mandarin is a problem for China - a barrier to its interaction with the rest of the world, a drain on its economy, a brake on progress. The issue is whether the problem is serious enough to warrant a drastic solution (in the short-term, replacing the characters with an alphabet-based writing system; in the longer-term, abandoning the language altogether in favour of 'global English').<br /><br />And I didn't even touch on the most fundamental issue concerning the language here, its restriction of literacy. Because memorising the characters requires so many hundreds of hours of school time, it's inevitable that people who have limited access to schooling are only going to achieve, at best, a very limited level of literacy. And even people who do have the benefit of complete schooling may acquire only partial literacy. I think this problem is surely liable to become worse, now that - after school - most people are writing exclusively via keyboards, which mostly use alphabet-based input systems. Passive recognition of the characters might be holding up OK, might even be improving a little; but people will soon be forgetting how to write them.<br /><br />A further point I omitted in the main post is that there are probably all kinds of additional 'hidden costs' of this limited literacy - perhaps particularly in the area of health&safety. How many times have we seen construction workers being given 'safety manuals' which they're going to struggle to read?Frooghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06738623732860210935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33211251.post-49663426207812381632012-10-05T07:02:40.127+00:002012-10-05T07:02:40.127+00:00Nice to see you back, Gary. I hope you're not ...Nice to see you back, Gary. I hope you're not offended! I recall you served your sentence of full-time Mandarin study, didn't you? Sorry to denigrate your efforts.<br /><br />Yes, I enjoy a bit of idle goading once in a while. It might have been quite fun to do a bit of fly-swatting with those batshit crazy Chinese nationalist types, but they seem to have forgotten all about me. They're probably all busy mobbing sites that are unwary enough to comment on the Diaoyu Islands issue.Frooghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06738623732860210935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33211251.post-39342769289485849912012-10-05T06:07:29.847+00:002012-10-05T06:07:29.847+00:00Wow! I know you like to be the king of extreme pos...Wow! I know you like to be the king of extreme positions but you've really outdone yourself here. Are you trying to get the fenqing on your ass again?Garynoreply@blogger.com