> He said that there had been a breakthrough in written > Chinese that had happened during the leadership of Chairman Mao, > where the symbols used were greatly simplified to allow a more universal > access to the written language.
I disagree. The "breakthrough in written Chinese" is the equivalent of a new font in English, like the change in printed German from using a Gothic font to the Roman font. There was another attempt at a breakthrough which as far as I know has failed, namely to alphabetize Chinese words. For example: traditional Chinese: 黑龍江 simplified Chinese: 黑龙江 alphabeticized Chinese: Heilongjiang (Hei-long-jiang) This is not "instead of", but "totally replace". Only a totalitarian regime with Mao's degree of control would have even contemplated the simplified Chinese system, let alone the alphabeticized system. In the case of the latter even that degree of control was not enough. I think they'd have to kill off anyone raised on the old symbols, and inculcate the alphabeticized system from birth along with giving mother's milk. ----- Original Message ----- From: David Mitchell <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, January 31, 2010 2:36 Subject: Re: [Jchat] the things i dislike most about J To: Chat forum <[email protected]> > I find the comparison of J symbology and written Chinese > interesting. I > struggled for years learning Spanish, Latin and German in my > early school years > and I gained little useful fluency. In my last year of > college, I studied > Mandarin Chinese (since mostly forgotten). > > I found spoken Mandarin a surprisingly easy language to learn > (at a 6 year old > level.) I found written Chinese much more challenging. > > Part of the course discussed the history of the language. > Our teacher noted > that classical written Chinese was a formal language of the > elite, never > intended for general use. He said that there had been a > breakthrough in written > Chinese that had happened during the leadership of Chairman Mao, > where the > symbols used were greatly simplified to allow a more universal > access to the > written language. > > On 1/29/2010 18:27, Dan Bron wrote: > > DIETER ENSSLEN wrote: > >> J is challenging in itself. > > > > I agree that J is challenging to learn. > > > >> All meaningless symbols. > > > > But I disagree here. The phrase "meaningless symbol" is > an oxymoron: if a symbol doesn't mean anything, it's not a > symbol. And, > > of course, all J's symbols mean something ([1]). > > > > The analogy we usually give is to Chinese. When I look > at a Chinese newspaper or sign, I certainly can divine no > meaning. So yes, > > to me, the symbols are meaningless. But over a billion > people on this planet live their whole lives using only Chinese, so > > obviously it means something to them. And maybe that > "something" is worth the difficult challenge to learn Chinese > (which is so > > very different from English). Or maybe not. > Depends on what your goals are. > > > > -Dan > > > > [1] http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/vocabul.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
