I happen to disagree slightly with De Francis on this point, BTW. Senso strictu, he is correct, but looking at it in such a limited way minimizes the cross-language utility of sinograms. 花 *means* "flower" whether it's Mandarin "huā" or Japanese "ka" or Japanese "hana". Indeed, the fact that the same kanji can be used for both native Japanese words and Chinese loan-words illustrates my point.
De Francis' point is that you can't use hanzi for real communication other than the most basic (e.g., street signs). 花 means "flower" in China and Japan because it represents the Chinese morpheme for "flower" and the Japanese equivalent, not because it has any inherent "meaning" per se. I feel that since many hanzi represent equivalent morphemes in several different languages, they can actually be said to have inherent "meaning" for all practical intents and purposes. A Japanese reader can see the sentence "我有一只猫。" and come away with a general sense that it has something to do with "a cat," but they can't *read* it any more than a Chinese speaker can truly read the sentence "私は猫を所有している。" OTOH, both Japanese and Chinese can find 日本 on a map without any trouble, since it means "day-root" in both languages. (Actually, it means "Japan" in both languages, but it literally means "day-root", too, and I think that sounds more poetic.) On 2013年1月30日, at 下午12:08, Charlie Ruland <[email protected]> wrote: > Yes, and on page 145 DeFrancis comes to the following conclusion: > > Chinese characters represent words (or better, morphemes), not ideas, and > they represent them phonetically, for the most part, as do all real writing > systems despite their diverse techniques and differing effectiveness in > accomplishing the task. > > The chapter these lines are from is also on-line: > http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html . > > Charlie > > > * Tim Greenwood <[email protected]> [2013-01-30 20:17]: >> A very accessible book on all this is "The Chinese Language: Fact and >> Fantasy" by John De Francis, published in 1984 by University of Hawaii >> Press. There is a brief synopsis on Wikipedia >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Language:_Fact_and_Fantasy >> >> - Tim >> >> >> >> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 1:46 PM, John H. Jenkins <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On 2013年1月30日, at 上午4:50, Andreas Stötzner <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Most ideographs in use are pictographs, for obvious reasons. But it would >>> be nice indeed to have ideograms for “thanks”, >> >> 謝 >> >>> “please”, >> >> 請 >> >>> “yes”, >> >> 對 >> >>> “no”, >> >> 不 >> >>> “perhaps” >> >> 許 >> >>> – all those common notions which cannot be de-*picted* in the true sense of >>> the word. >>> >> >> >> I'm not being entirely snarky here. The whole reason why the term >> "ideograph" got attached to Chinese characters in the first >> place is that they can convey the same meaning while representing different >> words in different languages. Chinese writing was one of the inspirations >> for Leibniz' Characteristica universalis, for example. >> >> Personally, I think that extensive reliance on ideographs for communication >> is a bad idea. Again, Chinese illustrates this. The grammars of Chinese and >> Japanese are so very different that although hanzi are perfectly adequate >> for the writing of a large number of Sinitic languages, they are completely >> inadquate for Japanese. Ideographs are fine for some short, simple messages >> ("The lady's room lieth behind yon door"), but not for actually expressing >> *language*. >> >> And, in any event, if you *really* want non-pictographic ways of conveying >> abstract ideas, most of the work has been already done for you. >> >> >>
