Religion and Ethics BBS

Religion and Ethics BBS
[ Religion and Ethics BBS ]

How European Languages & Cultures Achieved Dominance Over Chinese

Posted by DFM on March 26, 2025, 7:45 pm

The reason that Gutenberg succeeded in beginning a total revolution in society and the Chinese printers did NOT is to be found in the nature of European versus Chinese writing systems. When I was a kid, I had one of these kiddie printing kits. Although I was only a tyke, I quickly discovered that I could print ANYTHING with my little box of rubber type. There were 26*2 + a couple of dozen distinct characters, giving less than a hundred different pieces and less than a thousand pieces of type when multiplicity of character was considered. Compare the less than 100 distinct characters with the more than 15,000 distinct Chinese characters of a MINIMAL Chinese equivalent. The simplicity of European writing systems was far simpler and more practical than the unwieldy Chinese system. The complex nature of Chinese typography has held Chinese civilization back for centuries and continues to do so. Chinese culture was a prisoner of the ideographic symbolism of written Chinese vis-à-vis the phonetic based Western symbolism.

The ‘26’ kit should be mandatory for Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Chicago

Posted by GOG on March 27, 2025, 9:14 am, in reply to "How European Languages & Cultures Achieved Dominance Over Chinese"

school systems. At first grade. But since reading and writing skills are in the tank for the graduating classes, perhaps in the senior year, too.

Heer in da Souf, we git on daun wif boud 19 ;)

Posted by Mondo Fuego™ on March 27, 2025, 9:25 am, in reply to "The ‘26’ kit should be mandatory for Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Chicago "

Ain no nee ta hab 26 ltrz. Dat wazfl.

Written Chinese is TOUGH.

Posted by 7:77 on March 26, 2025, 8:54 pm, in reply to "How European Languages & Cultures Achieved Dominance Over Chinese"

Difficult to speak (either Mandarin or Cantonese) for most Westerners, too, since we're not used to tonal languages.

But the writing system is the killer. It allows for tremendous nuance of expression, but the absurd complexity isn't worth it, imo. Japanese kanji (the more-complex characters imported from China) is similarly frustrating, but at least there are fewer characters: c. 3800, and most Japanese adults know "only" about a thousand. The kana (hiragana for native Japanese words, katakana for "import words") is easier to deal with, there being a little over in each. Kana are more of an actual (phonetic) alphabet, rather than being essentially pictographs.

"the absurd complexity isn't worth it" AHA. Too much intellectual overhead.

Posted by DFM on March 27, 2025, 1:19 pm, in reply to "Written Chinese is TOUGH."

« Back to index

[ Religion and Ethics BBS ]