Nobody reads alphabetical languages character to character. English words are composed of components too. It's highly inaccurate to say that you only have to memorize 27 characters in English when you actually have to memorize way more to understand words.
I think this issue stems from historically Han text being used for more languages than just Mandarin. Han text being written in a vernacular Mandarin style is a quite recent invention.
Chinese has an advantage in that you can often devise a meaning from characters in a way you often can’t in English, but not pronunciation.
Funnily enough, the recent popularity of compound words in Chinese has made this even better.
For a commonly cited example, 火山 which means volcano, is literally composed of "fire mountain". 计算机 literally means computing machine. An alternative writing of computer, 电脑, literally means electric brain.
you've got it completely backwards. Library is also 'book building' but in fucked up latin.
you can figure out english meanings of words through germanic, latin, and greek roots & how the other word parts modify it---but pronunciation is completely arbitrary. a very casual relationship exists in english between how even directly borrowed words are pronounced vis-a-vis their original language
Yeah I have never heard a good argument for logograms over an alphabet or syllabary. It genuinely does seem to just make things harder and more confusing. Not saying they should overhaul their writing system or something to change that obviously, that would be insane.
Learning <30 symbols is objectively simpler than several thousand
Modern Chinese script isn't purely logographic, most of the characters are radical-phonetic. Like the word 媽 (mā) means mother, it combines the radical (left part of the character) for woman 女 with the sound of the word for horse 馬 (ma) indicating that the word sounds the same. A lot of characters show up a lot purely as their phonetic sound, which is why you can sometimes guess how a character is pronounced even if you've never seen it before with that radical. And I think the characters used for phonetics repeat a lot, and they often reference other words.
Think about it like this, if you learn 20 radicals and 20 determinatives (the right part of the symbol), that's 40 symbols, but you've learned 400 words from all the combinations they make.
It's still memorizing a lot of symbols instead of something like an alphabet, but it's not as daunting as most people think.
Also the people complaining about it are always foreign learners. I'm sure there is a very small number of native speakers who whine about it but when you're surrounded by Hanzi it's hard to not learn it. Seems kinda fucked up to tell someone their 4000 year old writing system "doesn't make sense" and "there are no benefits to it compared to alphabets". The Chinese are doing fine with it. I'm not looking it up but I guarantee literacy is much higher than America.
Learning <30 symbols is objectively simpler than several thousand
This is comparing apples and oranges.
Chinese characters are not the base units of the writing system. The equivalent of alphabetical characters in Han script would be singular strokes, of which there are only 10.
It's easier to learn the meaning of new words when they reference other words, unlike in english where you come across a new word and it can be referencing latin or other languages.
Of course it's kinda hamstrung when that reference can refer to 1 of 10 different characters that use that component and whose meaning has gone through a 3,000 year long game of telephone.
Yeah I have never heard a good argument for logograms
You need fewer characters to express the same idea. Ever notice Spanish language takes more space than English to write the same meaning? Chinese takes even less.
Learning <30 symbols is objectively simpler than several thousand
I agree, but I think it's easy to overstate this. With many alphabetic languages, you have to memorize patterns of symbols that no longer match the pronunciation. E.g. Ever notice how every vowel in English makes multiple sounds that overlap with the other vowels?
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Skill Issue.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_(Chinese_characters)
Chinese text isn't pictographs.
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So, like English?
Nobody reads alphabetical languages character to character. English words are composed of components too. It's highly inaccurate to say that you only have to memorize 27 characters in English when you actually have to memorize way more to understand words.
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I think this issue stems from historically Han text being used for more languages than just Mandarin. Han text being written in a vernacular Mandarin style is a quite recent invention.
Funnily enough, the recent popularity of compound words in Chinese has made this even better.
For a commonly cited example, 火山 which means volcano, is literally composed of "fire mountain". 计算机 literally means computing machine. An alternative writing of computer, 电脑, literally means electric brain.
You can also apply some of that knowledge to Japanese and vice versa
This is more true of Vietnamese, Spanish, Turkish, Indonesian etc.
It's less true of English where memorization plays a big role
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you've got it completely backwards. Library is also 'book building' but in fucked up latin.
you can figure out english meanings of words through germanic, latin, and greek roots & how the other word parts modify it---but pronunciation is completely arbitrary. a very casual relationship exists in english between how even directly borrowed words are pronounced vis-a-vis their original language
Try harder then 鬼佬
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Yeah I have never heard a good argument for logograms over an alphabet or syllabary. It genuinely does seem to just make things harder and more confusing. Not saying they should overhaul their writing system or something to change that obviously, that would be insane.
Learning <30 symbols is objectively simpler than several thousand
Modern Chinese script isn't purely logographic, most of the characters are radical-phonetic. Like the word 媽 (mā) means mother, it combines the radical (left part of the character) for woman 女 with the sound of the word for horse 馬 (ma) indicating that the word sounds the same. A lot of characters show up a lot purely as their phonetic sound, which is why you can sometimes guess how a character is pronounced even if you've never seen it before with that radical. And I think the characters used for phonetics repeat a lot, and they often reference other words.
Think about it like this, if you learn 20 radicals and 20 determinatives (the right part of the symbol), that's 40 symbols, but you've learned 400 words from all the combinations they make.
It's still memorizing a lot of symbols instead of something like an alphabet, but it's not as daunting as most people think.
Also the people complaining about it are always foreign learners. I'm sure there is a very small number of native speakers who whine about it but when you're surrounded by Hanzi it's hard to not learn it. Seems kinda fucked up to tell someone their 4000 year old writing system "doesn't make sense" and "there are no benefits to it compared to alphabets". The Chinese are doing fine with it. I'm not looking it up but I guarantee literacy is much higher than America.
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This is comparing apples and oranges.
Chinese characters are not the base units of the writing system. The equivalent of alphabetical characters in Han script would be singular strokes, of which there are only 10.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_(CJK_character)
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It's easier to learn the meaning of new words when they reference other words, unlike in english where you come across a new word and it can be referencing latin or other languages.
Of course it's kinda hamstrung when that reference can refer to 1 of 10 different characters that use that component and whose meaning has gone through a 3,000 year long game of telephone.
You need fewer characters to express the same idea. Ever notice Spanish language takes more space than English to write the same meaning? Chinese takes even less.
I agree, but I think it's easy to overstate this. With many alphabetic languages, you have to memorize patterns of symbols that no longer match the pronunciation. E.g. Ever notice how every vowel in English makes multiple sounds that overlap with the other vowels?
Can we compromise and switch everyone to Hangul?
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