A critical analysis of the Chinese logographic writing system; considering its advantages and disadvantages when compared to the phonetic system of western society. By Sam Baker
字如其人
(Zì rúqí rén) ‘How you write is who you are.’ - Chinese proverb.
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内容页面 Contents page: Page 2:
Inner Cover
Page 3:
Contents Page
Page 4:
Image Index
Page 5:
Abstract
Page 6:
Introduction
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Chapter 1: History and evolution of the Chinese character system.
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Chapter 2: Interview with Qu Leilei
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Chapter 3: The history of Chinese character printing.
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Chapter 4: Problems with the Pinyin system.
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Chapter 5: Advantages and Disadvanted of alphabetic systems.
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Conclusion
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References
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Bibliography
page 25:
Appendix 1: Interview with Qu Leilei.
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Appendix 2: Questions from myself to Qu Leilei.
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Appendix 3: Literature Reviews. 3
图像索引 Image Index:
Fig 1: Chinese script evolution, Little linguistics Academy. [online image] avaliabe at: http:// littlelinguistsacademy.com/origin-and-evolutionof-chinese-characters-little-linguists-academy/ [accessed 25th October 2017]
Fig 2: Evolution of Hanzi script SA Chinese. [online image] avaliable at: https://sachinese. wordpress.com/2013/02/06/types-of-chinesecalligraphy/ [accessed 26th October 2017]
Fig 3: Single leaf from the Zizhi Tongjian, 11th Century CE. Colorado College. [online image] avaliable at: https://libraryweb.coloradocollege. edu/library/specialcollections/Rare/chineseleaf. html [accessed 24th October 2017] Fig 4: Woodblock Carving, 3rd century CE. Metropolitan College. [online image] avaliable at: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/ view?exhibitionId=%7bA00420E7-DC1D-4B748DB8-53098E9753BA%7d&oid=77045&amp ;ft=*&fe=1 [accessed 25th October 2017]
Fig: A&B (Left & Right) My own Photographs of Qu Leilei and his Calligraphy taken on an art trip to China, July 2017.
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A critical analysis of the Chinese logographic writing system; considering its advantages and disadvantages when compared to the phonetic system of western society.
抽蹥
Abstract The present paper critically evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of the Chinese logographic writing system when compared to the phonetic system used by western societies. I conducted an interview with acclaimed Chinese calligrapher Qu Leilei to evaluate and gain an understanding of the system from a traditional Chinese cultural background. I have researched a variety of topics from its historical evolution, to its integrated use within a digital society as to achieve a better understanding of the history, and the systems use throughout multiple disciplines. These include the evolution of different writing styles from ancient to contemporary and the use of the pinyin system; the phonetic representation of sound using the Romanized alphabet. Ultimately I aim to assert the efficiency and advantageous characteristics of phonemes in an alphabetic written language system that supersede that of the archaic use of characters and morphemes found within logographic systems. I believe this is an important and vastly understudied field in regards to design as an in depth knowledge and understanding of this subject can greatly advance understanding of graphic communication design as an international discipline. Key words: Logogram, Ideogram, Pinyin, Phonetic, Phonemes, Morphemes, Chinese characters, Communication, Language.
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介绍 Introduction ‘It is said that in Chinese, every character is written like a beautiful flower’ (Guo, 1995: 8). The Chinese Logographic system of writing is complicated and precise as it is written, each individual character having its own identity. Because of this that Chinese typography is seen more as an art form than a means of conveying information; it is revered around the world as one of the most important historic writing forms, its roots in the birth of civilization, influencing culture just as much as culture has influenced it. This is apparent if you look at any Logographic Chinese graphic design or art, people devote their entire lives to learning the numerous scripts found within its parameters and the art of its positioning on paper. It has grown to an extent many other pictogrambased languages will never rival; however this does not come without a cost. Ideographic language can have thousands of symbols; the morphology is heavily cumbersome, complex and difficult. Chinese is inherently difficult to learn, let alone master and throughout thousands of years the Chinese have adjusted the characters used in their logographic system into a complex and diverse writing system, a system so immensely complicated that it is almost impossible to learn it in its entirety. Most ideographic and logographic languages of the world have slowly become extinct from use to the extent that Chinese is the only widely circulated language based on it today, others such as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the un-deciphered hieroglyphs of the ancient Cretans died out around 1000 years ago in part due to the rise, development and circulation of phonetic based language, and in part due to the creation of syllabic and grammatical additions to the existing language leading to an evolution of the language as a whole to a point past basic ideograms (Brunner and Dorman, 2017). Phonetic language is widely regarded as having an advantage over ideographic based language due to the convenience of having only a few individual letters used to create an almost never ending stock of words, which makes it easier to learn and memorize the basic building blocks of the system as well as it’s ease of grammatical use in situations such as contractions of words and the addition of punctuation. In conjunction with the ease of learning, alphabetic systems can be used to write any language as long as the vowels and consonants of that language exist in the alphabet. The advantage of logograms however, is that they too can be incorporated into any writing system as they are based on abstract meanings rather than sounds. ‘If one breaks down languages into their most basic forms they fall into two systems; one expresses the sound; the other expresses meaning’ (Guo, 1995: 8). This has been the cornerstone of language from the beginning of time ensuring a divide between dialects that has created two of the most intrinsically opposite structures of language imaginable.
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第一章 Chapter 1. China is a country consisting of two main spoken dialects; Mandarin and Cantonese, both of which have drastically different pronunciations, however the written characters act as a unifying bridge between the two as they are a constant in the way they are written across the country. They are Commonly misidentified as ideographic (a graphic symbol that represents ideas or concepts) however they are in fact logographic (a sign or symbol that represents words and phrases) as each grapheme or character ‘corresponds to one meaningful unit of the language, not directly to a unit of thought’ (Olsen, 2014). Professor David Crystal from the University of Cambridge has stated: “Though originally derived from ideographs, the symbols for these languages now stand for words and syllables and do no refer directly to concepts or things” (Penguin Encyclopedia, 2004). Chinese characters commonly use a semantic element (known as a radical) and a phonetic element intended to aid in pronunciation. The radicals indicate the meaning of the character, creating a system in which characters can be identified due to the specific radical found within it, usually on the left hand side of the character, meaning all characters with the specific radical for ‘water’ will in some way be related to this subject. Characters are arranged in dictionaries according to the radicals, and the amount of strokes used to create them (Olsen, 2014). The earliest forms of Chinese characters (Hanzi) ‘汉字’ that have been found date to approximately five thousand years ago. These primitive pictogram characters represented by images are known as Oracle bone script (ia Gu Wen) dating from the Shang (or Yin) dynasty and have been found etched into animal bones and tortoiseshell as a way of prophesying the future and connecting with the spiritual world. The difference between pictographic script and ideographic is that pictograms are much more immediately recognizable and represent direct objects by use of schematic illustrations while alternatively, ideographic conveys an idea through the use of representational characters or symbols. This script utilized between 2,500 and 3,000 characters (Ancient scripts, 2017). Since this point Chinese written language has evolved into a vast and complex logographic system of which only four percent is based on the original pictograms. Today there are five major styles of Hanzi that have been developed over the past five thousand years, ‘according to the Kangxi Dictionary ‘康熙字典’ (the standard national dictionary developed through the 18th and 19th centuries) there are 47,035 recognized Chinese characters’ (Wang, 2011), however according to scholars there could be as many as 54,000 in total (Guo, 1995: 8). Hanzi is one of the most used language systems in the world, adopted by nearly one quarter of the global population and until the 18th century accounted for half of the worlds books (Wang, 2011). This has had major influence on the development of further eastern ideographic based languages and is accredited with the origin of 50 percent of the Korean language as well as countless contributions towards Japanese and Vietnamese; together they are loosely referred to as the Sinitic family of scripts (Ancient Scripts, 2017). 7
The language falls into numerous separate categories of script, developed throughout different dynasties in order to enhance and evolve the language as time went by. The most prevalent of these are as follows; Jia-gu wen (Oracle bone script) the basic pictogram based system that all modern day Chinese is rooted from spanning 1600-1000 BCE, Da zhuan (Greater seal) spanning 1000-700 BCE, Xiao zhuan (Lesser seal) from 700-500 BCE and finally Lis shu (Clerkly script) which came into use around 500 BCE during the Qin period (Wu and Cheng, 2002). Lis shu characters are regarded as the foundations of the modern Hanzi as it was within this period that regional variations were standardized to create what has become the standard character form. This has been widely unchanged since its inception until the mid 20th century.
Fig 1: Chinese script evolution
When compared to similar languages of an ideographic or logographic nature, it is apparent how far Hanzi has developed over its period of use, not only to the extent that it is the most prominent of the few vernaculars still in systematic use globally, but to the fact that it is still in circulated use at all. Over the course of the evolution of civilization there has been countless reasons for grapheme based languages to fall into obscurity; most notably the rise of globalization in regards to the importance of international communication, and the lack of compatibility between traditional hand written scripts within technological advancements (such as the use of keyboards). This is an area I will be covering in depth further on in my study. Languages that incorporate grapheme orientated characters have for the most part faded into obsolescence, most notably the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians, commonly found carved onto monuments of great religious or spiritual significance. Hieroglyphs are a system that employs characters in the form of pictures. Those individual signs may be read either as pictures, as symbols for pictures, or as symbols for sounds, although the term is widely used to denote glyph based writing around the world such as the texts from the Mayans and the Incas, Hieroglyphs themselves are strictly Egyptian in origin and use.
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Hieroglyphs consist of three basic elements: logograms (a basic sign denoting a word), phonograms (representing sound) and determinatives (used to specify meaning and aid in word division). Cumulatively these create a very complex and cumbersome language system that could only be mastered by specialist scribes after years of arduous study and practice (Brunner and Dorman, 2017). In comparison, this is not unlike Chinese in regards to requiring an in depth understanding of the language in order to become truly adept as utilizing it, taking into consideration that an average literate Chinese person only knows approximately 4000 of the 50,000 possible characters. Hieroglyphs fell out of use between the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE due to the rapid influx of Christianity throughout the region, bringing with it the incorporation of the Greek alphabet. Along with the addition of seven extra letters to cater for Egyptian sounds not present in the Greek tongue this formed the creation of the Egyptian Coptic language, thus creating a format for the illiterate members society to learn the art of written communication, ultimately leading to a drop in the knowledge of hieroglyphic writing and consequently its demise (Brunner and Dorman, 2017). This has been the case for a great number of similar languages around the world in which swift introduction of more functional systems has superseded the traditional lingua of the region, most commonly by occupation of foreign countries or through the establishment of religious influence to the area, bringing with it its own set of religious scriptures and texts. Interestingly this never occurred in China; events instead transpiring to result out in much the opposite effect, and that elevated the system to become one of the most powerful and prominent dialects in history whose only main contender is that of the western alphabetic system.
第二章 Chapter 2. Language however is a subjective discipline; one society’s perception of the paramount form of written communication can make undisputable logical sense within the parameters of the culture that utilize it, but can be utterly incomprehensible to another. For this reason I conducted an interview with esteemed Chinese artist and Calligrapher Qu Leilei to achieve an in depth understanding of Hanzi from the perspective of a Chinese cultural background. Qu Leilei is a founding member of the ‘stars’ group alongside artists and activists such as Wang Keping and Ai Weiwei, known for rebelling against the Maoist regime by use of freedom of expression within art. Son of Qu Bo, a highly revered novelist known for writing the novel ‘Tracks in the snowy forest’, A book studied in schools throughout China, He now resides in England after fleeing China to escape political persecution and has since published the books ‘Chinese Calligraphy: Standard script for beginners’ and ‘The complete guide to Chinese calligraphy’. He had this to say on the subject: “To me, because I grew up from that cultural environment, I learnt naturally, I know it’s not easy but we didn’t realize how difficult it is to remember a single character one by one and remember every stroke by every stroke. We spent a long time learning it. Nowadays we compare with primary school. I must say Chinese children have to work much harder to remember all the characters, in Spanish or English as long as you can talk you can read spelling, maybe not perfectly, it’s still much easier.”
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This demonstrates that even though Qu Leilei thinks in reflection that the Hanzi system has fundamental flaws within the process of learning in comparison to languages such as Spanish or English, the cultural surroundings have just as much of an impression on the development and learning of a language. Being immersed in a culture that speaks, writes and thinks in a particular vernacular can almost remove the innate illogical patterns and syntax within a system. It is only upon studying another language that we can identify problems within our own. Later in the interview Leilei continues to say; “Because a spelling language is more developed and modernized. It was only later on I realized Chinese was more difficult, but if you know the rules or radicals and sounds then it can make it a lot easier. When I teach calligraphy, I realized the older the script, the better people learn, because it is more picture based so you can guess what it means. And as long as you know what’s related, it’s easier to learn.”
Fig A: (Left) Qu Leilei, Calligraphy brush workshop. Fig B: (Right) Calligraphy by Qu Leilei.
Further on into the interview Qu Leilei mentions that one of the fundamental differences he has noticed between the logographic and phonetic systems is the effect on individuals thought patterns. He states that in alphabetical languages, people think in logical steps and conclusions when asked questions in order to achieve an outcome or answer. This is because in a phonetic language the words are pronounced as you would read them off of a text, being built up from a pattern of letters to create a sound. The lack of visual stimuli apart from the respective letters means that in order to produce thought, our brains must think in the patterns and logic omnipresent throughout our language. This is in direct contrast to the way Leilei states that he thinks. According the Leiei, due to the basis of the logographic writing system, he thinks in pictures rather than words. 10
Using visual cue’s to fabricate thought and ideas. This is strongly supported by the ‘SapirWhorf hypothesis’ otherwise known as the ‘Linguistic relativity theory’, a theory first widely studied and developed by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf (1929). The basis of this hypothesis is that the language in which you learn and communicate dictates how you think and ultimately how you perceive the world around you (Werner, 1997: 7684). Such a hypothesis would indicate that (in the case of Chinese) because the writing system is so fundamentally different to that of a western origin, it completely changes the thought process of the individual and in turn causes them to observe their surroundings in a way we can not understand. This in turn leads into another interesting hypothesis that if you learn and immerse yourself in a foreign language for long enough you can re-wire your brain into thinking in that particular systems patterns and characteristics. Although I find that phonetic language makes more logical sense in terms of structure, I understand this is an almost entirely biased opinion based off the fact that I do not speak fluent Mandarin, nor write in fluent Hanzi, nor was I raised from a Chinese cultural background. I believe than someone will never truly be able to understand a language system unless born into it, as any attempt to learn one will almost certainly be initiated through their mother tongue, thus skewing the way they perceive it due to the SapirWhorf hypothesis and meaning that they would be attempting to think in the structure of that language, but essentially using their own thought process brought on by the innate and deeply rooted knowledge of their own system as a secondary translation system. However I do find myself intrigued by Qu Leilei’s comments regarding the process of thinking in images. This has led me to wonder whether there is ultimately one language form that is superior to another in terms of structure, logic, usability and sense, or whether each language is similarly superior to the other in its own distinct values. For instance alphabetical styles may make more sense in an academic standing, being used for disciplines such as science and Literature, whilst contrastingly Chinese Hanzi could be utilized more successfully while administered in artistic professions such as design, art and poetry. One of the considerable drawbacks with the Hanzi system is the sheer quantity of characters found within its parameters. As stated earlier on in my writing, the Kangxi Dictionary claims to recognize 47,035 Chinese characters, spread throughout various scripts and styles this creates an immense library of content to learn the basics of, let alone master. This vast volume of characters has consequentially created in part, a high illiteracy rate in China. Studies from Brown University have concluded that 90% of all Chinese newspapers and magazines tend to use no more than 3,500 of these characters, 900 of which make up 90% of the newspaper alone. Furthermore with knowledge of just 2,500, you can read 97.97% of everyday written language (Wang, 2011). This information shows that even with a high illiteracy rate within China, most of the average population can still manage to get by with a limited vocabulary. The numerous scripts lend themselves to learning the vastness of Hanzi with an even more difficult challenge. The character for ‘Sun’ in ‘Oracle bone’ script is made up of two simple strokes, an outer circle and a horizontal inner line. This is a basic pictographic character, representing a simple sun, but still recognizable. However within ‘Running script’ the character has evolved into a much more geometrically based version of this, still representing the sun but in an unfamiliar style. Finally in ‘Modern simplified script’ the circle aspect is gone altogether, instead being shown in the form of an elongated rectangle with a horizontal line across the center in a more logographic form. 11
Fig 2: Evolution of Chinese characters. ‘Evoluton of Character for Sun.’
The character for ‘Sun’ in ‘Oracle bone’ script is made up of two simple strokes, an outer circle and a horizontal inner line. This is a basic pictographic character, representing a simple sun, but still recognizable. However within ‘Running script’ the character has evolved into a much more geometrically based version of this, still representing the sun but in an unfamiliar style. Finally in ‘Modern simplified script’ the circle aspect is gone altogether, instead being shown in the form of an elongated rectangle with a horizontal line across the center in a more logographic form. This has completely removed any visual relation to the sun and thus creating a character that is harder to learn, as one now has to learn the written character and the pronunciation of it separately, rather than being able to use the more pictographic character as a visual cue to remember the word. Of course, the Chinese population does not have to learn every script to be able to get by, however for scholars, or professions such as historians or lawyers, this is a major hindrance within their field.
第三章 Chapter 3. Contrary to popular belief, The modern day movable type printing system was not originally invented by German inventor Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, but by Chinese Inventor ‘Bi Sheng’ (990-1051 AD). He invented the press between the years 1041 and 1048 (Norman, 2017), an invention that is now noted by scholars as the first of its kind. Prior to Bi Shengs invention most printing done in Asia was that of the woodblock style, the earliest example of this was discovered in China and contained an image of flowers, dating back to the Han Dynasty (220 AD). The Chinese were the first to utilize this system for type printing, it would mainly be used for religious texts and official documents, one of the largest being the Buddhist canon Tripitaka (requiring 80,000 individual woodblocks) (Sutherland, 2014). Woodblock printing stands alone by itself as an incredibly efficient system of copy printing as once carved, a well maintained woodblock could last for centuries. Documents would be carved by hand onto wooden plates as an entire page at a time, making quick reproductions at a rate no other country could match. At this point in the western world, scribes or monks used ink to painstakingly copy each letter and word at a time to produce copies of scripts. This was a very time consuming process to finish, not to mention the years of practice that went into an art such as this, or the consequence of having to start again after making a mistake. 12
Fig 3: (Above) Single leaf from the Zizhi Tongjian, 11th Century CE. [Chinese Woodblock Print]. Fig 4: (Right) Woodblock Carving, 3rd century CE. [wood carving].
China had the upper hand by a wide margin; however this margin only covered religious or official scripts. The act of scribing out new texts required a skilled carpenter to carve an entirely new set of plates, taking months as a time, or simply writing it out with ink and paper. This problem as solved by Sheng with the invention of the movable type press, now being able to swap out individual characters to modify or change texts. This is regarded as the predecessor to modern day type presses, however it was still a very different press to what we have today. The characters were individually carved out of clay blocks, each being a standard width and height as to allow the text to sit firmly and consistently within the block of text it was creating, as is the style of Hanzi. Clay was used due to its ease and speed of being carved into; metal type, as we know it today wasn’t invented until the 13th century in Korea (Sutherland, 2014). The movable type press accounted for a surge in Chinese printing; this is a contributing aspect to the fact that until the 18th century, half of all books on earth were printed in Hanzi (stated earlier in my essay). However this new and revolutionary system didn’t come without handicaps. The press itself was gigantic and immobile, the space needed to store thousands of clay character carvings was huge and the arduous and impractical task of typesetting blocks from a catalogue of thousands of characters was a tedious and time consuming job. Consequentially this led to the demise of the movable type press within a Hanzi based society, combined with a system of 50,000 characters it was overall seen as an impractical and over complicated invention for such a vast language. It wasn’t until Johannes Gutenberg’s version that the invention really came into its own, as with a western alphabetic system, English being that of 26 separate letters and punctuation, the press gained popularity out of its speed and relative ease of operating. Capable of producing copies or original documents fast and efficiently with little problems. Type set in metal also gave the upper hand as it would take hundreds, if not thousands of prints before a block had to be re carved, leading to cheaper manufacturing (Hellmut, 2017). 13
Overall it would seem that until very modern techniques of printing and publishing, Chinese did not lend itself well to the task of being industrially reproduced on a massive scale. However if we look to more ancient and primitive methods, China had a far more innovative printing system in regards to the structure of Hanzi scripts that is still widely used today partly due to tradition, and partly due to its amazingly well suited medium.
第四回 Chapter 4. In modern day china, steps have been taken to make the language more accessible for various platforms, whether it is students learning correct pronunciation of characters, or ease of use when typing with a keyboard. This system has come to be known as the Chinese Pinyin (拼音) system. Essentially this is the adoption of the Roman alphabet used for written communication of the phonemes of characters. Pinyin utilizes 25 of the 26 letters available, leaving out ‘V’ for which there is no need in Chinese. For example: the character (是) translates into the English word ‘Yes’, however in Pinyin Chinese this would be written out as ‘Shì’, The letters being an indication as to the pronunciation, and the accent above indicating the tone used when pronouncing the word. Phonetic representation of sounds using Romanized phonetic spelling system does not represent meaning (Mushangwe and Chisoni, 2015). The main use of Pinyin is for that of typing using keyboards or entering text into a computer program, as creating a system of this for utilizing the vast bank of Chinese characters would be impossible given the quantity of them at hand. The system works by having the user enter the letters composing the pronunciation of the spoken character into a keyboard of which the next step is selecting which character you want to use out of a selection that appear. Even though this system is a cumbersome one to use, it is an improvement on the previous one adopted by China in order to achieve the same result. Within my own interview, Leilei talks about how the current Pinyin system is superior to that of the previous system known as the ‘four strokes’ system. This utilizes the traditional Chinese characters by having the user enter the strokes the character is composed from in a certain order to achieve the same results. This however, in a country with such a high illiteracy rate brings its own range of problems, foremost being the fact that people may not know every stroke used within a characters formation, This is in part also due to the fact that Hanzi readers do not tend to read the stokes a character is created from but read the character as a whole, much in the same way that English people do not read the individual letters of a word, just recognize the pattern of the letters that form a word. This in turn leads to typing in of the wrong sequence and consequentially resulting in the wrong characters being offered. Pinyin answers to that problem by removing the use and knowledge of strokes all together, being a more logical system does not mean that there are not flaws though, especially in a language so vast with many regional variations on pronunciation. For instance, a Chinese person born in Hong Kong would initially learn to write in standard script, but speak with a Cantonese dialect. “This is a problem due to the fact that Pinyin only works with Mandarin pronunciation” (Qu, 2017). Because of this factor the person would then have to learn the Mandarin speech of the word they would like to use, as well as the Roman alphabetic spelling of it in order to type it in and then select the correct character 14
from a selection given, due to the fact that many Chinese characters are pronounced the same but can have drastically different meanings only recognizable by the strokes of the characters, creating a very difficult and unnatural way of communicating within your own language. Pinyin is a very helpful system in terms of learning correct Chinese pronunciation but has its drawbacks when being used to learn as it creates a situation in which the student no longer has to learn the traditional character in order to communicate in a form of text. The inherent problem being that the term ‘Shì’ (mentioned earlier in this chapter) can have multiple meanings when pronounced out loud, the sound is used for words such as; ‘yes’, ‘is’ and the number ’10’ as well as numerous other terms; therefore creating a confusing or incoherent sentence when used in the wrong context. In the study: ‘A critical analysis of the use of Pinyin as a substitute for Chinese characters’ by Herbert Mushangwe and Godfrey Chisoni, published May 2015, the two researched the use of the Pinyin system within the confines of Zimbabwean students learning the Chinese language. Throughout the study they held several experiments and gathered integral research in the field of learning through use of the pinyin system in an attempt the better understand the affect of language acquisition through this secondary, nontraditional language form. Through their research findings the two came to the overall conclusion that the utilization of the pinyin system negatively affects the speed and accuracy of learning the Chinese written language, while subsequently being an aid to the learning of pronunciation. This conclusion matched my expectations as the nature of pinyin predetermines the outcomes of the related experiments, many of which revolve around incoherent sentences and the lack of understanding of Hanzi characters evident from education through this system. The researchers in this text outline this problem by referring to the lack of characters used to denote true meaning: “During early stages of learning Chinese as a second language, simple phrases (such) as the following ones are normally taught; “Ni jiao shenme mingzi?” (What is your name?), or such phrases as “ni duo da le?” (How old are you?), these phrases can be understood even without Chinese characters. However if someone writes; “Ni baba shi mai shenme de? “(What does your father sell? or what does your father buy?) This phrase is not clear unless we know the character for the word “mai” which can mean buy or sell depending on the character used” (Mushangwe and Chisoni, 2015, 687). This portrays the importance of having an understanding of the characters and shows that with an understanding of Pinyin the speaker’s effectiveness of communicating are drastically diminished in regards to conveying the point of text in Hanzi.
There is of course, the fact that the students found having taken part within this survey are of Zimbabwean descent, not Chinese. Zimbabwe has 16 official languages spoken and written throughout its territory, ranging from English to Shona, Ndebele and most interestingly Xhosa. Spoken by 7.6 million people, Xhosa’s main individuality of the language is its integration of click noises throughout pronunciation, signified by an ‘X’. However this language is not dissimilar to Chinese as it is spoken with varying speech tones to denote meaning; languages such as this give Zimbabweans a natural advantage in learning Chinese as they already have an integrated use of speech tones throughout their spoken tongue (Pariona, 2017). The difference lies in the written form, and an acquisition of this through a Phonetic Translation is utterly impossible. Cultural barriers aside, these findings are relevant to the situation abundant within China today as the Pinyin system grows in popularity with the ever emerging technology 15
companies, it would appear that a standardized understanding of the composition of Hanzi characters will fade more into obscurity the further China evolve into a digitally reliant generation. This is of course a problem for a country in which the culture is so immensely influenced by its own calligraphy and literature, but still less and less of the population are gaining a detailed understanding of the Hanzi characters due to the integration of the phonetic alphabet system.
第五章 Chapter 5. While it is true that the Hanzi system does not come without its flaws, we must remember that every writing system has its advantages and disadvantages, especially when compared to that of a foreign dialect. Take English as an example; being only 1,400 years old it is considered a relatively young language that has many of its roots in West Germanic lingua and became the main English dialect in early medieval England (Hammond, 2017). Many people believe that the written form of the English language is one of the most refined and logical writing systems of the modern era. Being a hybrid of numerous European languages such as Greek, Latin, Germanic, French and more, the language has essentially stolen aspects from other languages in an effort to better refine itself and create a coherent and punctually sound system. ‘Statistics show that around 1,500 million people speak or write English around the world, with only around 375 million of those being actual native speakers. This has catapulted English into being one of the main Lingua Franca (a commonly spoken international language used in an aid of translation between people that do not share a common language)’ (Potter and Crystal, 2017). It is for this reason that every airline pilot globally has to be able to speak and write fluently in English, in order to relay information successfully with foreign communications. One of the main advantages of the English language over Chinese is the aspect of phonetic spelling naturally occurring throughout the alphabet-based language. This is a major benefit as words for the most part, follow the rule that they are spelt exactly as they are pronounced. This is an incredibly useful feature of the language as it means that as long as someone knows the phonemes of a word they wish to spell, and the phonetic characteristics of the English alphabet, it is incredibly hard to misspell a word, even with having no prior knowledge as to how it is written down. There are of course exceptions to this rule. Pronunciation and spelling are one of the most difficult aspects of the English language to perfect, Within my Prior interview with Qu Leilei he mentions the trouble he has understanding how to pronounce words when reading them from a text, for example in English the word ‘how’ has an obvious pronunciation to a native speaker, however to a Chinese native speaker this would not follow the same pronunciation pattern. Instead of writing out ‘how’ a Chinese persons understanding of the verbalization of this word would be spelt ‘Hao’ as from the Chinese ‘Nǐ hǎo’ (你好) which translates into ‘hello’ in English. In this example the ‘ao’ together form the sound of an ‘ow’ in English which in terms of phonetics makes much more sense as a form of communicating the correct pronunciation of this sound. 16
Further on in my interview Leilei mentions the difficulty inherent within a proportion of English words, for example, the City of ‘Carlisle’ has an unusual spelling that in no way relates to the pronunciation of the word unless one understands the tendencies of common silent letters throughout the language. In this case it is due to the silent ‘S’, a misleading aspect of English spelling. Leilei claims that this is a confusing and unnatural way of spelling and would be much better if spelt ‘Carlile’ or ‘Carlyle’. Unfortunately silent letters are abundant throughout English spelling creating a difficult and confusing system of spelling for non-native English writers to understand. Up until the 17th century however, spelling in English was not considered an important aspect in relaying the word, it was only with the standardization of the English Dictionary that correct spelling became an important addition to the language, up until this point many English speakers wrote words down in regards to how they pronounced them out loud, even Shakespeare is guilty of this by abundantly having numerous contrasting spellings of the same words found throughout the same play script (Hammond, 2017). These ‘silent’ letters however are not the only confusing aspect of Phonetic spelling system. If we study words from an etymological point of view we come across spellings that seem inherently foreign, and that is mainly because they are. Due to heavy foreign influence into the English language it has ended up with many distinct features. One of the most prominent is the use of ‘PH’ and ‘GH’ to denote the letter ‘F’ within many words, for instance the word ‘Phonetic” utilizes ‘ph’ in order to create the phoneme of an ‘F’, this is also apparent in the word ‘enough’. In the case of the name ‘Stephen’ the same letters are used to produce a ‘V’ sound. Both of which are unapparent in direct pronunciation of the words. This is thought to stem from aspects of Greek and Roman writing having found there way into the English writing system over the course of its evolution. There are countless examples of other influences of foreign dialects evident through the English system, which in turn creates one of the most complicated forms of written spelling today. There is no set amount of letters that form a coherent phonetic alphabet; in English there is 26 letters and a fairly large amount of punctuation points, however in Hawaiian the alphabet consists of only 12 letters (5 vowels and 7 consonants) used to make up their entire language. This is in heavy contrast to the Khmer language of Cambodia, which utilizes 74 separate letters consisting of 33 consonants, 23 vowels and 12 independent vowels, making it the largest alphabet in use (Andhog, 2014). When compared to the Hanzi systems use of 50,000 characters, this seems like a relatively small and easy system to use being that one only has to remember the basic letters to be able to write down the phonetic representations of words, but in reality they are not as different as they seem. Whereas the Chinese have 50,000 characters to remember, one must remember that while the English language utilizes only 26 letters, those letters are used to build up 171,476 officially recognised English words, over three times as many as the Hanzi system is made up of. This naturally puts the alphabetic system at a disadvantage to Hanzi in respect to volume of vocabulary. In reality there are many more words than this, with 47,156 being recognised but labelled as ‘obsolete’ and countless others under the title of ‘common colloquialisms’ or ‘slang’ and thus not recognised by the official English Dictionary (Oxford Dictionary, 2017). Altogether these build up the English language to being one of the most vast and cumbersome in circulation today, and accounts for one of the most overlooked aspects as to why many people believe that the western alphabetic system is superior to that of the Chinese.
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结论是 Conclusion In conclusion I believe that neither writing system is inherently superior to the other in terms of structure, logic and effectiveness of use throughout multiple disciplines. Each culture has approached the challenges and hurdles around the form of written communication in the best-suited form in respect to technology, time, evolution and culture. The entire population of the world has contrasting and individual native tongues in which they communicate with others through an in depth, shared understanding of the language. No one individual can say with any certainty that the language they are brought up communicating in has any measurable form of pre-eminence over an apposing language system. The only real acquirement they could achieve of any merit is an understanding that people from a different cultural background achieve the same outcomes in an opposite way; after all, language is a state of mind over anything else, dictating how we think and our perceived views on the world. This is strongly backed by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in the study of language effecting the thoughts and ideologies within a cultural language barrier. Evolution of language systems is arguably one of the most important tools mankind has ever developed. The acquisition and addition of foreign aspects to a language greatly improves its task of communicating concisely and swiftly while simultaneously bringing people together with a hybrid form of shared language. In the case of Chinese, the lack of foreign infiltration into the system has made it one of the most culturally important aspects of Chinese life. Having an ancient language that belongs solely to your people creates a sense of individuality and cultural identity, which in the age of mass globalisation and internationalism acts as an anchor to preserve the integrity of the culture. As I stated earlier in this paper, one does not notice the problems inherent within their own language system until they have studied another. In the case of English and Chinese, problems are evident throughout an in depth study of each language, from the opposing point of view that a native speaker would not give a second thought towards. The process of growing up in a culture permeated by a particular language system creates an illusion of absolute correctness throughout the respective system. I personally believe both systems are superior in their own rights; achieving coherent techniques that work with drastically different approaches to achieve analogous results. In the case of the Western alphabetic system, I believe that this works much more effectively in terms of logical conclusions and preciseness, creating a system with greater use throughout academic disciplines. On the other hand, in respect to Qu Leilei’s comment on the affect of the Chinese logographic forms on thought patterns and the integral aspect of pictography found throughout the language I believe that Hanzi is far better suited for disciplines in an artistic licence, such as art, design and poetry. Utilising an image based aid for communicating subject rather than meaning. It is my understanding that through an in depth and concise knowledge of foreign language systems, our own understanding of visual medium can be adapted to better suit a Universal audience. Utilizing the disciplines of graphic design or film we can create a more refined and effective utilization of techniques and subject matter better suited to communicate with foreign audiences while taking into account aspects such as thought patterns, intake of visual material and understanding of differences inherent within cultural and social boundaries. Appropriate use of this knowledge will be an important and invaluable asset in the future of global communication evolution.
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在我的写作中使用的参考 References used within my writing Books: GUO, Bonan. 1995. Gate to Chinese calligraphy. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.
Online Journals: MUSHANGWE, Herbert CHISONI, Godfrey. 2015. ‘A Critical Analysis of the Use of Pinyin as a Substitute of Chinese Characters’, Journal of Language Teaching and Research, vol. 6, no. 3, pp 685-694. WERNER, O. & LAMARQUE, Peter V. 1997. ‘The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’, Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of language, Elsevier Science Ltd, pp 76-84.
Websites: ANCIENTSCRIPTS.com. (n.d.). ‘Ancient Scripts: Chinese’. [online] Available at: http:// www.ancientscripts.com/chinese.html [Accessed 19 Oct. 2017]. ANDHOG, m. (2014). ‘What Language Has the Largest Alphabet?’ - angmohdan. [online] angmohdan. Available at: http://www.angmohdan.com/language-largest-alphabet/ [Accessed 23 Oct. 2017]. BRUNNER, H. and DORMAN, P. (2017). ‘hieroglyphic writing’. [online] Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/hieroglyphic-writing [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017]. BRUNNER, H. and DORMAN, P. (2017). ‘hieroglyphic writing - Christianity and the Greek alphabet’. [online] Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/ topic/hieroglyphic-writing/Christianity-and-the-Greek-alphabet [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017]. HAMMOND, A. (2017). ‘Ten things you might not have known about the English language’, OxfordWords blog. [online] OxfordWords blog. Available at: https://blog.oxforddictionaries. com/2015/08/12/ten-things-you-might-not-have-known-about-the-english-language/ [Accessed 23 Oct. 2017]. 19
HELLMUT, L. (2017). ‘Johannes Gutenberg | German printer’. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johannes-Gutenberg [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017]. NORMAN, J. (2017). ‘The Invention of Movable Type in China’ (Circa 1041 – 1048) : HistoryofInformation.com. [online] Historyofinformation.com. Available at: http://www. historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=25 [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017]. OLSEN, D. (2014). ‘Chinese writing’. [online] Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: https:// www.britannica.com/topic/Chinese-writing [Accessed 16 Oct. 2017]. Oxford Dictionary (2017). ‘How many words are there in the Engli...’ | Oxford Dictionaries. [online] Oxford Dictionaries | English. Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/ explore/how-many-words-are-there-in-the-english-language [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017]. PARIONA, A. (2017). ‘What Languages Are Spoken In Zimbabwe?’. [online] WorldAtlas. Available at: http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-languages-are-spoken-inzimbabwe.html [Accessed 25 Oct. 2017]. POTTER, S. and CRYSTAL, D. (2017). ‘English language | Origin, History, & Characteristics.’ [online] Encyclopeadia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Englishlanguage [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017]. SUTHERLAND, A. (2014). ‘Chinese Invention: World’s First Known Movable Type Printing | Ancient Pages’. [online] Ancient Pages. Available at: http://www.ancientpages. com/2014/12/30/chinese-invention-worlds-first-known-movable-type-printing/ [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017]. WANG, Y. (2011). ‘Introduction to Chinese Characters | Year of China’. [online] Brown.edu. Available at: https://www.brown.edu/about/administration/international-affairs/yearof-china/language-and-cultural-resources/introduction-chinese-characters/introductionchinese-characters [Accessed 19 Oct. 2017]. WU, W. and CHENG, H. (2002). ‘Evolution of Chinese Characters’. [online] Ocf.berkeley. edu. Available at: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/chinese/handout.html [Accessed 19 Oct. 2017].
Interview: QU, Leilei (2017) ‘Chinese from a cultural background’, Interviewed by Sam Baker, 25 Oct 2017. (Appendix).
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参考书目
Bibliography Books: FU, Shen. 1977. Traces of the brush: Studies in Chinese calligraphy. Connecticut: Yale University Press. GUO, Bonan. 1995. Gate to Chinese calligraphy. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. HARRIST, Robert E. Jr. WEN, C. Fong. 1999. The Embodied Image: Chinese calligraphy from the John B. Elliot collection. Italy: Princeton University Press. QU, Leilei. 2004. Chinese calligraphy: Standard script for beginners. London: The British Museum Press. QU, Leilei. 2007. Complete Guide to Chinese Calligraphy: Discover the Five Major Scripts to Create Classic Characters and Beautiful Projects. London: Cico Books. SMITH, Richard J. 1992. Chinese Almanacs: Images of Asia. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
Bibliography Online sources Journals: HAYES-HARB, Rachel HUI-WEN, Cheng, 2016. ‘The influence of the Pinyin and Zhuying writing systems on the acquisition of Mandarin word forms by native English speakers’ Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 7, no. 785, pp 1-13. KAY, Paul KEMPTON, Willett, 1984. ‘What is the Sapir-whorf Hypothesis?’, American Anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley, Michigan State University. Pp 65-79. KÖHLER, Reinhard ALTMANN, Gabriel GRZYBEK, Peter FENXIANG, Fan, 2008. ‘Analyses of script: Properties of characters and writing systems’, Quantitative Linguistics, vol. 63, pp-25-61. MUSHANGWE, Herbert CHISONI, Godfrey. 2015. ‘A Critical Analysis of the Use of Pinyin as a Substitute of Chinese Characters’, Journal of Language Teaching and Research, vol. 6, no. 3, pp 685-694. WERNER, O. & LAMARQUE, Peter V. 1997. ‘The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’, Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of language, Elsevier Science Ltd, pp 76-84.
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Bibliography Online sources Books: BO, Mou, 2009. Chinese Philosophy A-Z, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. HUANG, James LI, Audrey SIMPSON, Andrew, 2014. The handbook of Chinese Linguistics, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. LI, Wendan, 2009. Chinese writing and calligraphy. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. MAIR, Victor H. 2016. Sinitic Language and script in East Asia: past and present. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania press. MIYAOKI, Osahito SAKIYAMA, Osamu and KRAUSS, Michael E. 2007. The vanishing languages of the Pacific Rim, Oxford: Oxford University Press. PACKARD, Jerome L., 2004. The Morphology of Chinese: A linguistic and Cognitive Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bibliography Online sources Websites: AGER, S. (n.d.). ‘Evolution of Chinese characters’. [online] Omniglot.com. Available at: https://www.omniglot.com/chinese/evolution.htm [Accessed 19 Oct. 2017]. ANCIENTSCRIPTS.com. (n.d.). ‘Ancient Scripts: Chinese’. [online] Available at: http:// www.ancientscripts.com/chinese.html [Accessed 19 Oct. 2017]. ANDHOG, m. (2014). ‘What Language Has the Largest Alphabet?’ - angmohdan. [online] angmohdan. Available at: http://www.angmohdan.com/language-largest-alphabet/ [Accessed 23 Oct. 2017]. BRUNNER, H. and DORMAN, P. (2017). ‘hieroglyphic writing’. [online] Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/hieroglyphic-writing [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017]. BRUNNER, H. and DORMAN, P. (2017). ‘hieroglyphic writing - Christianity and the Greek alphabet’. [online] Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/ topic/hieroglyphic-writing/Christianity-and-the-Greek-alphabet [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017].
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Citrinitas.com. (2017). ‘The History of Visual Communication – Ideograms’. [online] Available at: http://www.citrinitas.com/history_of_viscom/ideograms.html [Accessed 26 Oct. 2017]. DE LA LUZ SÁENZ GARZA, J. (n.d.). ‘How many Chinese characters are there?’ | Hutong School. [online] Hutong-school.com. Available at: https://www.hutong-school.com/howmany-chinese-characters-are-there [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017]. DEFRANCIS, J. (1984). ‘Ideographic Myth’. [online] Pinyin.info. Available at: http://www. pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017]. HAMMOND, A. (2017). ‘Ten things you might not have known about the English language’, OxfordWords blog. [online] OxfordWords blog. Available at: https://blog.oxforddictionaries. com/2015/08/12/ten-things-you-might-not-have-known-about-the-english-language/ [Accessed 23 Oct. 2017]. HELLMUT, L. (2017). ‘Johannes Gutenberg | German printer’. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johannes-Gutenberg [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017]. HOCH, J. (2013). ‘Egyptian language’. [online] Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: https:// www.britannica.com/topic/Egyptian-language#ref1004432 [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017]. NORMAN, J. (2017). ‘The Invention of Movable Type in China’ (Circa 1041 – 1048) : HistoryofInformation.com. [online] Historyofinformation.com. Available at: http://www. historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=25 [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017]. OLSEN, D. (2014). ‘Chinese writing’. [online] Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: https:// www.britannica.com/topic/Chinese-writing [Accessed 16 Oct. 2017]. Oxford Dictionary (2017). ‘How many words are there in the Engli...’ | Oxford Dictionaries. [online] Oxford Dictionaries | English. Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/ explore/how-many-words-are-there-in-the-english-language [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017]. PARIONA, A. (2017). ‘What Languages Are Spoken In Zimbabwe?’. [online] WorldAtlas. Available at: http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-languages-are-spoken-inzimbabwe.html [Accessed 25 Oct. 2017]. POTTER, S. and CRYSTAL, D. (2017). ‘English language | Origin, History, & Characteristics.’ [online] Encyclopeadia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Englishlanguage [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017]. SUTHERLAND, A. (2014). ‘Chinese Invention: World’s First Known Movable Type Printing | Ancient Pages’. [online] Ancient Pages. Available at: http://www.ancientpages. com/2014/12/30/chinese-invention-worlds-first-known-movable-type-printing/ [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017]. Valerieyule.com.au. (n.d.). ‘Alphabetic writing systems pro and con’. OzIdeas. [online] Available at: http://www.valerieyule.com.au/writalfa.htm [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017].
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WANG, Y. (2011). ‘Introduction to Chinese Characters | Year of China’. [online] Brown.edu. Available at: https://www.brown.edu/about/administration/international-affairs/yearof-china/language-and-cultural-resources/introduction-chinese-characters/introductionchinese-characters [Accessed 19 Oct. 2017]. WILLIAMS, N. and Testen, D. (2004). ‘Ideographic Writing’ – Encyclopaedia Iranica. [online] Iranicaonline.org. Available at: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ideographic-writing [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017]. WU, W. and CHENG, H. (2002). ‘Evolution of Chinese Characters’. [online] Ocf.berkeley. edu. Available at: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/chinese/handout.html [Accessed 19 Oct. 2017]. Bibliography Interview QU, Leilei (2017) ‘Chinese from a cultural background’, Interviewed by Sam Baker, 25 Oct 2017. (Appendix).
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Appendix 1:
Transcript of interview taken with Qu Leilei Commenced 25th October 2017 Leilei: all over the world some nations just have speech to communicate, they don’t have writing, but more civilized and developed ones not only have talking but also have characters for writing so they can record things, they’ve been developed. Over many thousands of years, the earliest we can find is in Iraq and Mesopotamia, back to about seven or eight thousand years. China goes back to about 500o years. Every kind of language has a certain way of developing. The interesting thing is most scripts are more towards spelling language (alphabetic), but Chinese is the only one stayed and is based on the pictogram. The reason Chinese didn’t develop that way is that 2000 years ago in the eastern Han dynasty the Chinese characters stopped development and settled on standard script that has been used over the past 2000 years until today, except in china we have simplified script from the communist party in 1949 onwards. Still today in Hong Kong and Taiwan those areas use classic characters, only mainland china uses simplified, as you can see on a computer you’ll see either ‘classic’ or ‘simplified’, this is because Chairman Mao thought classic characters were too complicated for the people to read. The reason why it stopped developing is from the Qin dynasty in 221 BC, the whole of china united and the first emperor wanted to establish his dictatorship and realized the most important thing was to unite all writing to link and unite to remove all regional differences from the seven separate states it was before. Some counties had there own writing, it was quite similar, but not standard, The Qin dynasty united and set up the first standard script which was called (small seal) Zhuan script. (Talks about evolution of characters, such as rain, water and fish) The problem was at that time the script made writing very slowly and only special people could write it, soon afterwards around 206 BC onwards, in the iron time, the whole state business industry was getting busier and there was lots of recording to do so we needed simplified, therefor small Zhuan script evolved into Han clerical to make writing much faster and then in the eastern Han dynasty they started standard script. It was then believed the Chinese character could not develop any further. However after the opium war in the 19th century, china was beaten and occupied, the westerners realized china was too far behind and lots of intellectuals wanted to change to spelling language as it was much more logical and modern, but the never succeeded, partly because there’s an strong cultural background and also the it’s interesting itself because it’s artistic unlike alphabets language. But from this we have lots of western influenced words for example: tank, sofa, coffee… because no such thing existed in china before, just like tai chi in the western world they just pronounce the eastern word for it. We don’t have these objects in our life, but when the new objects come in we have to give them a name, the best way is to give them just as their own name and use the sounds of Chinese characters for their pronunciation. But now it’s reached the point when people are struggling, because generally Chinese script it a stroke script, all built up of 8 stokes, all strokes are slightly different, horizontal is one, vertical is one, hook is one, dot it one, and so on… 8. But in western Latin language, all words are made up of 26 letters. Unlike in the alphabet where 25
you combine letters to make words, in Chinese characters we combine words to create new words, for example; fly is one character, machine is another, put them together to make ‘fly machine’ and that’s airplane. Electric is one, shadow is one; we put them together to make ‘electric shadow’ which is movie. Chinese words are made that way. Now we get into how basic Chinese writing is made up, it’s 6 basic features: Number one is the pictogram, or pictures, number two making the pronunciation, number three express the meaning, number four borrowing from different sounds… lets look at the first three, most the time Chinese use these three ways to make a character Usually the radical directly comes from the pictogram. The radical set up the category; we use the other side (right) of the character to decide meaning, for instance if we look at this character, we have the radical for water, and the other side is mother, water and mother together is the sea. So that is a picture made with meaning. Another one is also using the water radical, however the other side is a rectangle with a stroke in the middle, and you can imagine if the rectangle was to become slightly oval, that would become an eye. This one means water picture, or eye picture. These two together makes ‘tear’. Another one has four little stokes for the radical, that means earth, the other side has succeed, pronounced ‘chung’ witch means ‘city’ these are the most important part of Chinese character, they are used to build up all other characters. The problem is if you cant read/write in this character it’s impossible to read old books to learn the culture. Interestingly when I was in Vietnam, in the history it belonged to china, but they don’t have their own language or writing, they’ve been occupied so much. But when I was on the street I could read everything. But they use the alphabet for the spelling speaking language, so I can understand the reading, and the sounds, but not the meaning. It’s an artificial language. The same thing has happened in Korea and japan. I did a comparison with different script from ancient Greek, Asian Chinese and ancient Egyptian, and in the very beginning they were quite similar, for example, one stroke means ‘1’, two strokes means ‘2’. At the very beginning they were similar, later on they divided. The reason I would say why the character is so important and existed until today is because another feature of Chinese language is the same pronunciation with a totally different meaning, we joke about it in Chinese culture, for example and extremely interesting example is ‘Shi’ if you look in a dictionary it has around 100 different ‘shi’s’, just look at the poem ‘Shi shi shi’ all pronounced to same but with a totally different meaning. Which means if you can only talk and pronounce that but can’t read it doesn’t make any sense; you have to read the characters. I tried to think of an example for a western person to understand pictograms, for example ‘eye’ looks like and eye, and also ‘bed’ can resemble a bed. Without spelling you can tell what it is. Western and Chinese calligraphy is very different, in the west they used hard instruments and write on soft surfaces, in china we use soft instruments and write on any surface, in my primary school we used pencil, and then fountain pen, and then the ball point pen was invented that we called the ‘atomic pen’, but now everyone uses the computer which means that they can read the characters, but lots of children cannot write them as they can’t remember all the individual stokes it’s made up from. If you want to write ‘Ma’ which can mean mother, horse, hemp, they’re all pronounced ‘ma’ because they all use pinyin, which is a spelling language in the western alphabet. Because of this school are now brining calligraphy back into the curriculum.
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Appendix 2: Questions from myself to Qu Leilei: Commenced 25th October 2017
1) What do you think of the Chinese character system? Does it have any inherent problems? To me, because I grew up from that culture environment, I learnt naturally, I know it’s not easy but we didn’t realize how difficult it is to remember a single character one by one and remember every stroke by every stroke. We spent a long time. Nowadays we compare with primary school. I must say Chinese children have to work much harder to remember all the characters, in Spanish or English as long as you can talk you can read spelling, maybe not perfectly, but it’s much easier. Because a spelling language is more developed and modernized. It was only later on I realized Chinese was more difficult, but if you know the rules or radicals and sounds then it can make it a lot easier. When I teach calligraphy, I realized the older the script, the better people learn, because it’s more picture based so you can guess what it means. And as long as you know what’s related it’s easier to learn. 2) When you’re teaching or learning Hanzi, would you learn the characters for things within your vicinity first, or would you learn groups of radicals to build the language? Certainly from the most basic things like ‘1’ ‘2’ ‘3’ and things like mum and dad, just what naturally what’s in your surroundings. Such as the numbers from 1 to 10. Things like 11 come next as they’re just 10-1. Weekdays are also easy as they’re just ‘weekday 1’, weekday 2’ and so on… the same with months. 3) What do you think of phonetic based language? I don’t find it a particular problem to study it, I’ve just got to switch the way I am thinking because Chinese pictogram and alphabetic is spelling, this is a different way to thinking. If someone asks me if I want to do something I naturally see a picture in my mind, that it the Chinese way to thinking. Western thinking is logic like 1+1=2 and 2+2=4 and so on. 4) s spelling a problem, with situations such as ‘Hao’ and ‘how’? English spelling’s very strange, but that’s the English way, for example if you say ‘I’m going to reading, reading a book’ those two words are the same. And if not one taught me Carlisle I have no way to spell it. You just have to get used to it. 5) Theoretically if you didn’t know how to write and you had no spoken language, and you had the option to learn either the character or the alphabetic system, which one would you go for? 27
I think it depends, if I’m a painter and I want to do art certainly I feel Chinese is more interesting, but if I do science or mathematics certainly alphabetic is the right way. We do learn spelling in the pinyin system at the same time as learning characters though, which is quite a good part of the new Chinese education. When we learn this we learn it in phonetics. But when we write this down we have to write a little sign to show how the word is pronounced, this creates different meaning. For example if we write ‘Ba’ which means dad, it will have a little flick about the ‘A’ indicating weather to raise your voices tone or lower it. This can change the meaning from ‘dad’ to ‘pulling’ or even the number ‘8’. This is important when learning Chinese, you have to learn how to pronounce correctly and the tones must be right. Another example of this is ‘Mai’ can be either ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ this is totally different and opposite, but exactly the same pronunciation just different tones. 6) What do you think of pinyin? Do you think it’s a hindrance or do you think it’s useful in terms of typing into a phone? The computer system for Chinese spelling took a long time to develop. At the very beginning they had the ‘four corner’ system, later on we had the ‘five strokes’ system which means they designed a key for each stroke of this character so you have the first four strokes and then the fifth is the last stroke of the character, which gives you an option of which character to use. The problem with this is that if you don’t know the correct sequence of strokes to build up a character, you wont be able to find it. Nowadays the most popular system in pinyin (spelling) the only problem is you have to learn proper mandarin; pronunciation and tone. Since there is only one system of characters but more than one regional dialect. Interviewer: so pinyin wouldn’t work with Cantonese then? Leilei: exactly, in canton now in places like Hong Kong naturally they speak Cantonese, but the have to learn mandarin otherwise they cannot learn this system. In china now, parents spend money to private tutor their children English so they can go and study abroad. But in the countryside areas they have to get tutors for mandarin otherwise they cannot use computers. Interviewer: so you’re saying then that someone living in a Cantonese region has to learn Cantonese, but also the standardized characters, but also the mandarin pronunciation of them to be able to learn the pinyin (Romanized) spelling of it to then be able to type it into a keyboard and to then have to choose which specific character they want to use in order to type in their own language? Leilei: yes, they have to. It’s about survival really, naturally. It’s like the difference between English and Italian, in English you’d say ‘magnificent’, but in Italian you say ‘magnifico’, that’s more like the difference between mandarin and Cantonese dialogue. All over china now, at home they speak their normal dialogue but in school they all speak standard mandarin. The problem is that the Internet is getting popular so fast, it raises the question of ‘are these dialects dying out because of this?’ and ‘to what extent is that a tragedy?’ however it has the practicality of uniting everyone in this usable system, it gives the opportunity and access to financial gain, food, wealth, education, it opens up a lot op bad things for them but also a lot of good things, it’s essentially survival.
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Appendix 3:
文献评论
Literature Reviews: Research Paper: A Critical Analysis of the Use of Pinyin as a Substitute of Chinese Characters by Herbert Mushangwe and Godfrey Chisoni, Published May 2015. The paper ‘A critical analysis of the use of pinyin as a substitute for Chinese characters’ is a research paper outlining the problems found within the aquisition of a foriegn language through a secondary language system. Conducted by Herbert Mushangwe and Godfrey Chisoni in may 2015. The paper outlines the situations encountered through Zimbabwean students learning Chinese as a second language. Within this paper the two conducted several experiments to better understand the use of the Pinyin system as an educational tool, overall coming to the conclusion that while Pinyin aids in aquisition of the pronunciation of Chinese, it subsequently hinders the learning of Characters leading to incomprahensive sentences or language stuctures. This is a conclusion supported by several studies held on the students and well as statistical evaluations. This is valuable information in regards to the subject of my dissertation as a well informed understanding of Pinyin and how it works supports my aruments and points about the subject matter. However while this paper is relavent and contextual, the use of Zimbabwean students learning of this language does not directly correlate to my dissertation subject but the statistics found relating to their education can be relevant to points made throughout the chapter. Academic Web Source: Encyclopeadia Britannica. The Encyclopeadia Britannica is a well established and highly regarded sourse of information within western education. Being one of the longest running producers of academic education has earned them a place of esteem for many professors and scholars. The articles referenced throughout my Dissertation are published and written by numerous professors of prestigious backgrounds such as Cambridge and Oxford, lending academic weight to the articles statistical and factual information. The information found within the Encyclopeadia lent itself to the study within my essay with great use, covering many of the subject points in depth. While the information of the Britannica is widely regarded as substantial, during my research I read many papers and books with disagreeing points of view, often written by other proffesors of the subject from highly regarded publishers. While the apposing points of information were themselves well researched, I found that the Britannica could be more factually reliable as it is common for new information to be discovered relating to a subject for which the Britannica re-evaluates and writes articles depending on the use, historical and factual weight behind the new argument or point of view, leading to new volumes being printed regularly inclusive with the new information at hand in the most up to date research on the subject.
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