Author: SL Lee
Date: 05-07-03 08:16
Greg,
Hanyu Pinyin can never replace the Chinese characters which are a lot more precise and concise than the alphabets in expression. A German sinologist Lothar Ledderose has written a book on the beauty and scientific soundness of the Chinese character by pointing out a simple example. A billborard with Chinese can be easily recognized a t a distance. The same thing written in alphabetical language may not be readable from a distance.
Zhuyin Fuhao was actually adapted from a Japanese system. It is a clumsy way to learn Chinese pronunciation when pinyin is available. This is particularly true for English speakers who already have learn the alphabets since day one.
The argument for zhuyin is that it gives more "exact" pronunciation, which is untrue. One can learn pinyin and be very exact in pronunciation too.
The debate on zhuyin or pinyin is mostly political. This includes the new pinyin in Taiwan, which essentially is the same pinyin used in mainland, except a few consonants. They are made different for no reason at all as English-speaking people have the same problem in pronouncing these with their native pronunication technique.
When I was the principal of a weekend Chinese school in US years ago, I tried to promote pinyin but unfortunately the teachers were all from Taiwan and there was a strong opposition solely for political reasons. The result was the school finally split into two when the mainland parents have more kids in the school.
This is totally unnecessary. As far as I know, there are now quite a few non-Chinese American children learning Chinese in the pinyin school, but none in the zhuyin school. This is a clear demonstration that politicizing of zhuyin is really a deterent for learning the language.
The promotion of a different system eventually will isolate Taiwan more from the international community, when United Nations, US, Singapore and many other countries are standardized on pinyin. This is absolutely the biggest mistake to insist in zhuyin.
On the simplifed characters, I have a different opinion. Everyone should start learning the simplified characters as a basic tool, but at appropriate time, they should be taught the Fantizi, which is what most Chinese classics are written or printed. Dropping the learning of fantizi can cause problems in reading newly discovered ancient texts. Unless the high school kids also learn fantizi, no scholar can be trained to read and use it. It would be too late to learn it in universities.
Here is a message I wrote to the other message board "China the Beautiful" in 1999:
SUBJECT:
Calligraphy started as an artistic writing
COMMENT:
Carrie,
Chinese calligraphy started out with writing. There are several routes for development: imaging of natural objects, imitation of sound, intuitiveness, and sharing (details of these concepts will require a much more elaborate explanation). Because of the imaging of natural objects, many words tend to be quite artistic already. The artistic development came mostly after the invention of soft brushes. The hard brushes actually were invented very early during the bone oracle era (probably 4000 years ago at least). The soft brush started in Qin-Han period. The ability to control the thickness of the strokes using a soft brush give the flowery diversity of styles.
Contrary to the western alphabets, Chinese do not have phonetic alphabets, although there are words will sound imitation through "sharing". So, reading Chinese is almost entirely through image recognition. That is why generally speaking Chinese have a better pattern recognition skill. A German sinologist at U. Heidelberg, Professor Lothar Ledderose, has made some keen observation on this in his lecture at the National Art Gallery (Washington DC). I am waiting for him to publish his book. One of his remarks is that the Chinese words are so different from one and another, yet the complexity still allows immediate perception. It is far easier to read an entire passage than other languages with very similar patterns (e.g. 26 alphabets). Will write more later.
FROM:SL Lee
USA - Friday, March 12, 1999 at 06:04:27 (PS
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SL Lee
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