From a thread asking opinions about emoji usage.
However it happens and whomever is responsible here we are... and we're losing ground fast. And things like emojis are leading the charge.
Should we tell them @WhyEssEff@hexbear.net is responsible?
Link: https://hexbear.net/comment/4277133
The Chinese have done well with making logographic writing accessible to the masses
While true, it's taken a tremendous amount of effort, and from what I can find, it still takes more schooling to reach the same relative level of literacy.
The Koreans had it right in switching over.
The same relative level of literacy for knowing how to read Chinese for English would be being able to read Dutch and Flemish as well as Old English and Germanic Runes. The Chinese education system lasts exactly as long as that of any other country. Anecdotally the highest level of schooling I achieved with Chinese is gradeschool level and I can read the previously mentioned 12th century construction manuals. I don't think an English speaker with only a grade school level of education could read even modern construction codes without a lot of trouble.
Koreans literally still have to teach their kids some amount of Chinese characters. Their ID cards has their names written with Chinese characters, scientific publications have to use Chinese characters for disambiguation. Even Korean Wikipedia has to use Chinese characters for disambiguation.[1] North and South Korea has been seperated for maybe 2-3 generations and they already have significant spelling differences due to dialectical differences. Also despite being a relatively young writing system, Hangul is already partially non-phonetic[2]. Perfectly phonetic writing does not exist. You have to force everyone to memorize one particular dialect's pronunciations, and by the time you've done that it will have already drifted away so that the orthography is non-phonetic. It's a never ending treadmill that effectively limits the ability to read primary historical documents to the elite while not actually making writing that much more accessible.