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bĂŹyĂ o

bĂŹyĂ o (bÏ·yĂ o certainly · {[being] needed; required; essential} [→ [need | necessary; indispensable]] ćż…èŠ) đŸ‘ˆđŸŒ Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

As part of a series of posts about some common myths about Chinese characters, this post discusses the Indispensability Myth. So, this week’s MEotW is “bĂŹyĂ o (bÏ·yĂ o certainly · {[being] needed; required; essential} [→ [need | necessary; indispensable]] ćż…èŠ)”, which can effectively mean “indispensable”.

Can Chinese Characters Be Replaced?

In the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, linguist and sinologist John DeFrancis introduces the chapter entitled “The Indispensability Myth” with the following:

The belief that Chinese characters are indispensable exists on several levels that range from the most shallow mindlessness to the most serious thoughtfulness. As usual, much of the mythology is based on a confusion of terms and on mixing up speech and writing. In its most general form the Indispensability Myth holds that Chinese cannot be written in an alphabetic script. This seemingly straightforward statement turns out on closer examination to involve a great deal of ambiguity centering on the meaning of the two terms “Chinese” and “cannot.” As I have stressed repeatedly in the previous chapters, the term “Chinese” covers a wide range of meanings. The indispensability thesis needs to be tested against each of them.





scientific linguists have repeatedly demonstrated in actual practice the validity of their thesis that the speech of any individual can be written in an alphabetic script. The overall approach in such an undertaking is the same for all forms of speech in that it involves direct observation and analysis. The specific solutions vary according to the linguistic details (phonemic, morphemic, lexical, syntactical, and so forth) for each form of speech. Any student of linguistics with a modicum of competence can create an alphabetic system of writing for any form of speech in the world. To deny this elementary truth in general or in specific application to Chinese is to reject science and embrace mythology.

DeFrancis goes on to discuss different approaches that have been tried to create alphabetic writing systems for the languages spoken in China. Regarding the most successful approach so far, he writes:

The third solution was adopted in the Latinization movement of the thirties and forties, and by Protestant missionaries and Chinese reformers earlier, to create as many separate schemes of romanization as there are instances of mutually unintelligible forms of speech. The basis for this approach was largely the practical one of creating as simple a system as possible for a given group of speakers in order to facilitate their acquisition of literacy. There was never an overall attempt to determine the exact number of schemes that should be created or to relate the schemes to each other as part of an integrated plan of writing reform. The more or less ad hoc empirical approach is therefore all the more impressive with respect to the results that were actually achieved. Publication in various alphabetic schemes in the century from the initiation of missionary work to the cessation of Latinization activities in the 1940s is significant both for its quantity and for its quality since it includes such diverse items as the Bible, Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-glass, Tolstoi’s “The Prisoner of the Caucasus,” Pushkin’s poems, Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman” and “Story of Ah Q,” the Soviet Constitution, communist land laws, miscellaneous biographies of Westerners, newpapers and journals, and much additional literature. All this provides practical proof of the theoretical truth that the alleged impossibility of using an alphabetic script in place of Chinese characters to represent spoken Chinese is a bit of unmitigated nonsense. It also provides support for the theoretical assumption that there is in fact no significant limit to the subject matter that can be written in Pinyinized versions of the various regionalects [(the mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese)].

As the article “Pīnyīn Is a Good, Workable Writing System on Its Own” says:

Pīnyīn can indeed be used to write anything that can be spoken in Modern Standard Mandarin, from the simplest expressions to the most advanced, complex, and deeply meaningful expressions, so it qualifies as a full writing system in that fundamental sense as well—Pīnyīn is indeed “a method of representing the sounds of a language by written or printed symbols”.

Indeed, PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) can be used to represent the key, indispensable factor in communication on spiritual matters, that Mandarin field language learners should be striving for. This key, indispensable factor is explained to us in the Bible itself at 1 Corinthians 14:8–11:

For if the trumpet sounds an indistinct call, who will get ready for battle? In the same way, unless you with the tongue use speech that is easily understood, how will anyone know what is being said? You will, in fact, be speaking into the air. It may be that there are many kinds of speech in the world, and yet no kind is without meaning. For if I do not understand the sense of the speech, I will be a foreigner to the one speaking, and the one speaking will be a foreigner to me.

Yes, while traditional worldly human Mandarin teachers generally say that characters are indispensable, and that extensive knowledge of characters is thus the goal that Mandarin learners should strive for, the Bible itself tells us that the actual key, indispensable factor required for communication on spiritual matters is “speech that is easily understood”. In that regard, we should note that PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) can simply and directly represent any and all understandable modern Mandarin speech, no characters required. Besides “speech that is easily understood”, everything else language-related is of lesser or even little importance, and perhaps even to be actively avoided, in our vital work of praising Jehovah and trying to help save lives in the Mandarin field. We should keep this principle in mind as we consider what DeFrancis calls the Speakability Test, and what he goes on to say about various kinds of traditional Chinese writings.

The Speakability Test

What is the Speakability Test? Note how DeFrancis tells us what he means by that:

The preceding discussion of the Indispensability Myth has been based on a definition of “Chinese” that is limited to its spoken manifestation. Strictly speaking, this is the only acceptable definition of the term. Yet this limitation is very often ignored—sometimes deliberately, sometimes out of sheer ignorance in muddling speech and writing. A popular formulation of the Indispensability Myth holds that because homonyms are so numerous in “Chinese,” characters must be used to avoid the unsupportable ambiguity that would result from writing alphabetically. This view has been advanced in a typically exaggerated form by writers.




Now we are asked to consider quite a different question based on some quite different and not entirely clear definitions of “Chinese.” The term is variously used to refer to such concepts as Chinese characters, Chinese characters in a dictionary, written Chinese, the Chinese language written in characters, perhaps even spoken Chinese written in characters. Our new question is: Can “Chinese” as thus loosely defined be written in an alphabetic script? One possible answer to this question is that it should never have been asked in the first place. “Chinese,” we might insist, must mean spoken Chinese. Whether it has been traditionally written in Chinese characters, cuneiform symbols, hieroglyphics, or anything else is totally irrelevant to the question [of] whether Chinese (that is, current spoken Chinese) can be written in an alphabetic script.

However much we might like to adopt this entirely justifiable stand, the need to confront the Indispensability Myth in its various forms requires further discussion of the issues. Actually the answer to the new question, or rather to the new series of questions, is quite simple. It is based on the eminently practical approach of asking another, quite simple question: Can the “Chinese” you have in mind be understood if spoken aloud? If the answer is yes, then this Chinese can be Pinyinized. If the answer is no, then it cannot. We can test this approach, which consists of what might be called the Speakability Test, by applying it to various kinds of Chinese.

Homophones and Homographs

Continuing on, DeFrancis says:

Those who think of “Chinese” in terms of Chinese characters often invoke such imaginary problems as the ninety words pronounced li (without tone indication) or the more modest thirty-eight words pronounced yì (with tone indication). Most of these “words,” as pointed out in the earlier chapter on the Monosyllabic Myth, exist only in dictionaries. To apply our basic question is in error on two counts. The first is that it is methodologically incorrect to pick out of a dictionary—in any language—a bunch of homophonous expressions and then parade them in isolation to show how ambiguous they are. Such a procedure could also be applied to English to show that it cannot be written alphabetically. See how ambiguous “can” is! On hearing it one cannot tell which of the half dozen or so homophonous words is intended—actually as many as ten or more if we include the slang terms for prison, buttocks, toilet, and the like as well as the standard terms for metal container, to be able to, and so forth.

Yes, the homophones bogeyman that is often trotted out by advocates of characters is an imaginary problem, because in reality, people generally don’t talk in continuous strings of ambiguous homophones (different words that sound the same) because that would be stupid, when the goal of talking to people is generally to communicate understandably! In reality, Mandarin speakers just use sufficient context to clarify the meanings of any homophones and get on with their lives.

DeFrancis continues regarding the second way in which it is in error to question whether Mandarin, with all its homophones, can be written with an alphabet instead of with characters:

The second error in this approach stems from the fact that many entries in Chinese dictionaries, in general contrast to those in English, are not even words. Most of those thirty-eight entries pronounced yĂŹ are not real words. YĂŹ is simply a transcription for thirty-eight characters, and characters in Chinese dictionaries are at best morphemes and at worst might mean nothing at all—as in the case of the two characters 珊瑚 in shānhĂș (“coral”) if we follow Chao and Yang (1962:140) in refusing to give separate meanings to each of the characters. To cite yĂŹ as a problem in Chinese is therefore even more nonsensical than tearing one’s hair over the problem of “can” in English.

Many thus use the Monosyllabic Myth to support the Indispensability Myth, and fall deeper into error. In contrast, as the Bible says at Proverbs 4:18, “the path of the righteous is like the bright morning light that grows brighter and brighter until full daylight.”

Another thing that we can note is that while many have gotten into the habit of using characters as a crutch to disambiguate Mandarin homophones (different words that sound the same), characters have the corresponding problem of homographs, characters that look the same, but that represent different words with different meanings and pronunciations. For example, as the MEotW post on “zhĂĄole huǒ ((zhĂĄo·le {having caught} · {to completion} 着äș† 著äș†) (huǒ fire 火) → [having caught fire; burning; being on fire])” pointed out,

the characters “着/著” can represent 5 different expressions, each with its own pronunciation and set of meanings:

  • zhāo – add; put in | measure word for tricks, devices, moves in chess or martial arts, etc.
  • zhĂĄo – touch; come in contact with [→ [feel; be affected by]] | catch; ignite; light (fire); burn | hitting the mark; accomplishing; succeeding (This is the one used in this week’s MEotW.)
  • zhe – being (indicating continuing progress/state)
  • zhĂč – prominent; outstanding | book; work
  • zhuĂł – apply | put on/wear (clothes)

“Unspeakable Chinese”

What about written Chinese that doesn’t pass the Speakability Test? DeFrancis continues:

Taking up next the somewhat broader and more legitimate question [of] whether “Chinese” defined as written Chinese or as the Chinese language written in characters can be written alphabetically, here too we can apply our simple Speakability Test to discover whether such “Chinese” is intelligible if read aloud. Much of Chinese writing incorporates many elements alien to speech—at times to such an extent as to make it incomprehensible when read orally. For more reasons than one this might be called unspeakable writing. In the case of such unspeakable Chinese, the Chinese characters are indeed indispensable. Only if written Chinese really conforms to the definition of spoken Chinese written in characters is it possible for the characters to be replaced by alphabetic writing.

Why are many Chinese scholars so hung up on “unspeakable Chinese”? DeFrancis goes on to discuss what they really mean when they say that Chinese “cannot” be written alphabetically:

There are doubtless many purists who would insist on the original regardless of whether or not the hoi polloi [the common people] are capable of handling it.




A dilemma exists in the fact that the work of Pinyinization must be undertaken by people who are already literate—which means literate in characters—and Chinese literati, even of the newer generation, have displayed even less capacity than their Western counterparts to write in a style capable of ready comprehension by ordinary people. The contention that materials written in Chinese characters cannot be written alphabetically therefore has a certain sad validity because to date most Chinese scholars cannot accept the notion that the written style should be determined by its capacity for Pinyinization. They cannot bear the thought of the cultural upheaval involved in the transition from character-based to alphabet-based writing.

CANNOT = SHOULD NOT

With these attitudes the notion that Chinese cannot be written alphabetically has now shifted ground to “should not.” It is this interpretation of “cannot” that forms the basis for much of the contention that Chinese characters are indispensable. The shift in emphasis is not always apparent to unwary readers who fail to note that the approach is often based on unwillingness to place speech before writing and to consider the needs of people who might be unable to master the character-based system of writing.

Latin Bibles and Horses

Making an interesting comparison, DeFrancis writes:

Karlgren’s elitist defense not only of characters, but of the classical style as well, has the musty odor of a defense of Latin against such a break with the European cultural past as upstart writing in Italian and French and English.

If we compare traditional Chinese writings to see if they pass the Speakability Test, and to see if they measure up to the Bible-provided standard of corresponding to easily understandable speech, we’ll find that they often don’t. Indeed, because of not a little cultural and nationalistic snobbery and pride, many Chinese scholars, and even many regular Chinese people, like it that way!

However, even if many traditional Chinese writings are revered and highly valued in the world for their cultural or historical value, they show themselves to be of limited or even negative value among us fellow workers with Jehovah in today’s Mandarin field. As an object lesson on this, consider how Jehovah’s organization depicts the false version of Christianity that insisted that Latin Bibles were indispensable, and that viciously persecuted those who tried to translate the Bible into languages like English that the common people could read, and that corresponded well with how they usually spoke.

In contrast to classical Chinese writings and even many modern ones, it is evident that modern Mandarin versions of the publications of Jehovah’s organization seek to represent easily understandable modern Mandarin speech. In fact, much writing that appears in our publications, such as writing from Mandarin versions of The Watchtower and the Bible, is regularly read aloud at our meetings and easily understood. That could not be the case if it were made up of what DeFrancis calls “unspeakable Chinese”!

It’s no wonder then that Jehovah’s organization is evidently successfully proceeding at maximum practical speed to add PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) to its Mandarin writings, since, as DeFrancis points out, writing that corresponds to understandable Mandarin speech can be written in an alphabetic writing system like PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł). Also, the unofficial PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) Plus material based on certain Mandarin publications of Jehovah’s organization achieves functional success in using PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) as the default full writing system instead of characters, rather than as just a pronunciation aid for the characters.

Even while it is diligently adding PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) to its Mandarin writings, we can observe that Jehovah’s organization is not getting rid of its writings written in Chinese characters, just as the world in general is not anytime soon getting rid of Chinese characters, an extreme scenario that many supporters of Chinese characters seem to fear. In reality, such an extreme scenario is extremely unlikely to come to pass—people can even still read Latin Bibles if they really want to, and also, people have not killed all the horses even though most now prefer cars. 🐮

Anyway, we can see that when it comes to representing the actual key, indispensable factor for spiritual communication in the Mandarin field—understandable Mandarin speech—and when it comes to the writings that really matter to us Mandarin field language learners, the Indispensability Myth about Chinese characters is
BUSTED!

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Culture History Language Learning Science Technology

pĂștao

pĂștao (grape è‘Ąè„) đŸ‘ˆđŸŒ Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

As part of a series of posts about some common myths about Chinese characters, this post discusses the Monosyllabic Myth. So, this week’s MEotW is pĂștao (grape è‘Ąè„)”, since the very existence of this simple, well-known Mandarin word, with its two inseparable syllables that together express a single meaning, handily disproves this myth.

A bunch of grapes hanging on a vine

Creative Commons Public Domain logo Michael Pardo [source]

Monosyllabic?

In the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, linguist and sinologist John DeFrancis thus introduces the chapter entitled “The Monosyllabic Myth”:

“In this language there is neither an alphabet nor any definite number of letters, but there are as many characters as there are words or expressions.” So said the sixteenth-century Catholic missionary Michele Ruggieri, one of the first Westerners to undertake what he called the “semi-martyrdom” of studying Chinese (quoted in Bernard 1933:149). Ruggieri’s views were similar to those of his superior, Father Matteo Ricci, as paraphrased by Father Nicola Trigault, who also transmitted the opinion that in Chinese “word, syllable, and written symbol are the same” and that the words “are all monosyllabic; not even one disyllabic or polysyllabic word can be found” (Trigault 1615:25-26).

Even these early observations reveal one of the main reasons for the confusion leading to the Monosyllabic Myth—namely, the failure to distinguish between speech and writing. It is the despair of linguists, who insist on keeping the two apart, that they have so little success in achieving their aim and hence must do incessant battle against the practice of using an observation about writing to reach a conclusion about speech.

Just as with the Emulatability Myth, it seems that missionaries of Christendom were involved in spreading the Monosyllabic Myth, the erroneous idea that each Chinese character represents a one-syllable word. Yes, the list of erroneous ideas that Christendom has been involved in spreading is certainly a long one!

As for speech and writing, the article “PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) Was Plan A” says the following about their relative importance:

Jehovah built right into us the specialized equipment we need to directly produce speech, but we can only produce writing indirectly through the general purpose tools that are our hands, which generally must do so using external, man-made tools and media such as pens and keyboards and paper and computer screens. If even us humans can design and build things with screens that can dynamically display writing, then Jehovah certainly could have designed our bodies to be able to do so as well, but he didn’t. Instead, Jehovah himself designed our bodies so that “speech is primary, writing secondary”.

Chinese Characters, Chinese Speech, and Monosyllabism

Having reminded us of the important distinction between speech and writing when it comes to any human language, including Mandarin, DeFrancis goes into some detail about how the views of many about Chinese writing and about Chinese speech have contributed to the pervasiveness of the Monosyllabic Myth:

MONOSYLLABISM DERIVED FROM WRITING

In alphabetic writing systems such as English the separation of graphic units by white space, a relatively late development in the history of writing (Gelb 1963:19), is a popular means of defining a word despite the somewhat haphazard way in which many of the demarcations came about. In Chinese the fact that the characters in a running text are normally set off from each other by the same amount of space between adjacent characters regardless of how closely they may be tied together in meaning is also an important factor in defining characters as words.

It is individual characters that form the basis for dictionary entries. Each character is provided with a dictionary listing which gives its pronunciation, consisting always of a single syllable, and its meaning, which may be single or multiple. The conventional dictionary pronunciation of a character does not always correspond with the sound in speech that the syllable is supposed to represent. 


A more serious objection to the handling of characters in ordinary dictionaries involves semantics. Each character is presented as an independent unit and is defined as having at least one meaning. The assumption that each character represents an independent meaningful syllable leads to the conclusion that each character represents a monosyllabic word.

MONOSYLLABISM SURMISED FROM SPEECH

The notion of monosyllabism derived from the writing system is further reinforced by the generally held view of Chinese speech. The syllable in Chinese is often considered phonologically distinct in that it is more rigidly determined than is the case in many other languages, such as English. Chinese syllables, with some exceptions that can be disregarded here, are invariant in the sense that they do not undergo the kind of internal change exhibited by English man-men, his-him, love-loved. In itself this is not a particularly distinctive or particularly significant feature. It has, however, helped to create a situation in which “the syllable is accorded a special status in Chinese
as a psychological unit” (Arlotto 1968:521). The syllable is held to be the type of unit between phoneme and sentence that in English is called a “word” (Chao 1968a:136). Since the syllable is represented by a character, the latter too is held to represent a word. The equating of syllable with character, the notion that both represent a word, and the fact that each individual character, and hence each individual syllable attached to it, has individual meaning, all combine to characterize both speech and writing as “monosyllabic.”

Commenting on the extent to which the Monosyllabic Myth has spread because of factors such as those mentioned above, DeFrancis speaks of

the popular view that the syllable always has meaning and is not a mere morpheme [e.g., the “er” in “teacher”] but a full-fledged word.

He goes on to say:

The popular misconception of the Chinese speaking entirely in words of one syllable is reinforced by some specialists who exaggerate
either because they lack
understanding or because in the interest of popularization they oversimplify to the point of error.

Sweet Grapes

Providing a well-known example of a Mandarin word which definitely has more than one syllable, DeFrancis discusses “pĂștao (grape è‘Ąè„)”, this week’s MEotW:

Assiduous scholarly research may sometimes succeed in tracing the provenance of a specific term, such as pĂștao (“grape”). The usual dictionary handling of this term, similar to that for “butterfly,” presents a two-character expression meaning “grape” under both the character è‘Ą (pĂș) defined as “grape” and the character 萄 (tao) also defined as “grape.” In fact, however, the two syllables are inseparable and meaningless in themselves. They actually constitute a phonetic loan derived from an Iranian word *badag(a) that entered into Chinese when the grapevine was brought back from Ferghana in Central Asia by the Chinese general Zhang Qian in 126 B.C. (Chmielewski 1958). This precise dating of the origin of a disyllabic expression in Chinese further illustrates how misleading is the dictionary procedure that gives independent meanings for each of the characters used to write the two syllables in such terms.

Not Created Equal

It’s true that in the Chinese characters writing system, each character represents a Mandarin syllable. However, all Mandarin syllables are not created equal. DeFrancis gives us a breakdown about the different types of Mandarin syllables:

There are thus three types of Chinese syllables:

1. F: free, meaningful
2. SB: semibound, meaningful
3. CB: completely bound, meaningless

These three categories are roughly comparable in English to the free form teach, the semibound form er in “teacher” and “preacher,” and the completely bound forms cor and al in “coral.” The first two categories are morphemes, the third is not, as is the case also with their counterparts in Chinese.




A random sample of two hundred characters reveals the following distribution:

44% free (includes 7% literary)
45% semibound
11% completely bound
100%

So, while the Monosyllabic Myth holds that “each character represents a monosyllabic word”, the reality is that, as shown above, fewer than half of characters stand on their own as free, monosyllabic words—the rest are bound as components of multisyllable words. DeFrancis goes on to share what Zhƍu Yǒuguāng ((Zhƍu {Circumference; Circle (surname)} 摹 摹/週) (Yǒu·guāng Has · Light æœ‰ć…‰) (Chinese linguist, etc., known as “the father of PÄ«nyÄ«n”)), who led the team that developed PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł), had to say on the matter:

Zhou Youguang, using a different corpus of characters than the approximately 4,800 of the Chao and Yang dictionary, and also perhaps having a different opinion as to whether a specific character is free or bound, says that “44 percent free is too much!” In his opinion, only 2,000 or so, or about 30 percent, of the 6,800 “modern standard characters” needed to write contemporary Chinese are free words (Zhou 1982:personal communication).

Where’s the Harm?

Is the Monosyllabic Myth merely of academic concern? Has it resulted in any real, practical harmful effects? Note how DeFrancis concludes his chapter on the Monosyllabic Myth:

HARMFUL ASPECTS OF “MONOSYLLABIC”

As in the case of the Ideographic Myth, the Monosyllabic Myth has fostered a kind of clichĂ© thinking about Chinese. Because of its application to both speech and writing it has helped to obscure the difference between the two. Moreover, it has distracted scholarly attention from pursuing certain meaningful lines of research, such as a closer examination of the possible relationship between speech and writing as revealed in China’s voluminous literature.

But the worst aspect of the myth is when it is taken up in a distorted version by the public at large, as for example by the illustrious and authoritative Oxford English Dictionary, in which “monosyllabic” is glossed as a philological term “used as the distinctive epithet of those languages (e.g., Chinese) which have a vocabulary wholly of monosyllables.”


For the impact of the term “monosyllabic” on the general public has been generally bad. The notion of speaking wholly in words of one syllable, or of reading and writing in the same fashion, in many minds carries with it a connotation of inadequacy and backwardness or at best of childish simplicity. 






This is unfortunate because, apart from denigrating a language and a script of enormous complexity and sophistication, it reveals our failure to get across to the public at large the idea that the real world of Chinese speech and writing is much more fascinating than the mythological world of Chinese monosyllabism.

Reverberations Beyond Characters

The Monosyllabic Myth about characters has even reverberated in the world of PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł), which some have insisted on writing as if each syl la ble was a sep a rate word, in slav ish de vo tion to the sup pos ed ly mon o syl lab ic na ture of the char ac ters.

At the other extreme, in their efforts to properly move past the erroneously perceived monosyllabism of the Chinese characters when they write PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł), some seem to have overcompensated for the Great Wall of spaceless, faceless, seemingly monosyllabic text written in characters by often smooshing multiple syllables together into long, unbroken, hard-to-read expressions. For example, some would write “dānyÄ«njiĂ©â€ as one continuous string.

However, breaking up long, multisyllable expressions with spaces or hyphens can often significantly improve readability, as in the case of “dān‐yÄ«njiĂ©â€ ((dān single 捕 於)‐(yÄ«n·jiĂ© sound · node; knot → [syllable] éŸłèŠ‚ 音節) → [monosyllabic | monosyllable]) compared to “dānyÄ«njiĂ©â€, “wĂčlǐ‐xué‐jiā” ((wĂč·lǐ things’ · {logic → [laws]} [→ [physics]] 物理)‐(xuĂ© studying ć­Š ć­ž)‐(jiā -ist 柶) → [physicist]) compared to “wĂčlǐxuĂ©jiā”, or “wĂč‐rĂč‐qĂ­tĂș” ((wĂč {by mistake}; mistakenly; {by accident} èŻŻ èȘ€/悞)‐(rĂč enter; {go into}; join ć…„)‐(qí·tĂș {fork; branch → [different; divergent | wrong]} · road; route; journey; way 歧途) → [go astray; be misled; take a wrong step in life]) compared to “wĂčrĂčqĂ­tĂș” or even “wĂčrĂč‐qĂ­tĂș”. So, PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) Plus material now often uses spaces and hyphens as appropriate to enhance readability when rendering multisyllable Mandarin expressions, especially those with three or more syllables.

Anyway, to conclude, the Monosyllabic Myth about Chinese characters is
BUSTED!

Categories
Culture Language Learning Science

gĂČngtƍng

gĂČngtƍng (gĂČng·tƍng shared · {through → [connecting | [in] common]} [→ [applicable to both/all; shared; common; universal]] 慱通) đŸ‘ˆđŸŒ Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

As part of a series of posts about some common myths about Chinese characters, this post discusses the Universality Myth. So, this week’s MEotW is “gĂČngtƍng (gĂČng·tƍng shared · {through → [connecting | [in] common]} [→ [applicable to both/all; shared; common; universal]] 慱通)”, an expression that seems to express well the supposed universality that is the subject of this myth.

In “gĂČngtƍng (gĂČng·tƍng shared · {through → [connecting | [in] common]} [→ [applicable to both/all; shared; common; universal]] 慱通)”, “gĂČng (share | common | together | altogether ć…±)” means “share | common | together | altogether”. This morpheme also appears in other well-known expressions such as “gĂČngtĂłng (gĂČng·tĂłng shared · {same | together} ć…±ćŒ)”, “gĂČnghé‐guĂł ((gĂČng·hĂ© shared · harmony → [republic] ć…±ć’Œ)‐(guĂł country; nation; state ć›œ 朋) → [republic])”, and “GĂČngchǎn (GĂČng·chǎn {Commonly Possessing} · {Produced (Things) → [Property]} → [Communist] ć…±äș§ 慱甹)‐Dǎng (Party 慚 黚/慚)”.

As for “tƍng ({[(going)] through[(out)]; open [to]} [→ [common; general | connecting/communicating [to/with] [→ [logical; coherent]]]] 通)”, it here literally means “through”, and effectively means “connecting” or “in common”. It also appears in well-known expressions such as “gƍutƍng (gƍu·tƍng {(through) channel} · {(going) through → [communicating]} → [communicating; communication | linking up] æȟ通 æșé€š)”, “jiāotƍng (jiāo·tƍng crossing; intersecting; meeting; joining · {(going) through → [connecting; communicating]} → [traffic; communications; transportation] äș€é€š)”, “pǔtƍng (pǔ·tƍng common; general; universal; widespread · {through(out) → [general; common]} → [ordinary; common; average; general] æ™źé€š)”, and “tƍngguĂČ (tƍng·guĂČ through · passing → [passing through] → [through] é€šèż‡ 通過)”.

When put together, the morphemes in “gĂČngtƍng (gĂČng·tƍng shared · {through → [connecting | [in] common]} [→ [applicable to both/all; shared; common; universal]] 慱通)” can effectively mean “shared; common; universal”, which in itself can generally be good. In fact, in our ministry, we look for “gĂČngtƍng (gĂČng·tƍng shared · {through → [in common]} → [common] 慱通) diǎn (points ç‚č 點)” (common ground) with those with whom we speak. How universal, though, are Chinese characters? Are they really more universal than, say, alphabets?

Basis and Beliefs

In the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, linguist and sinologist John DeFrancis writes the following in the chapter entitled “The Universality Myth”:

The Universality Myth is the logical extension of the Ideographic Myth. It is based on the threefold belief that:

1. Chinese characters enable a speaker from Beijing and another from Canton to communicate in writing even though they cannot understand each other’s speech. 

2. Chinese characters make it possible to read today’s newspapers as well as poems written a thousand years ago and philosophical essays written long before Christ. 

3. Chinese characters can function as a universal means of communication among people speaking totally unrelated languages. 





Implicitly or explicitly, the statements are meant to contrast Chinese characters with the familiar alphabetic scripts of the West. Chinese characters, it is believed, can do all these things, whereas alphabetic scripts cannot.

In other words, the Universality Myth regarding Chinese characters is that these visible, supposedly ideographic (representing meaning visually, without dependence on speech sounds) symbols of worldly Chinese culture can function across barriers of space, time, and language as universal enablers of communication. That seems amazing, if true. But, is it true? And, is it any more true for Chinese characters than it is for alphabets?

Testing the Relative Universality

DeFrancis goes on to test the Universality Myth by examining what it would take for an illiterate Mandarin speaker and an illiterate Cantonese speaker to learn how to communicate with each other by writing in characters, compared to what it would take for an illiterate French speaker and an illiterate Spanish speaker to learn how to communicate with each other by writing in French (which, as is widely known, is written using the Latin alphabet):

My Chinese colleagues estimate on the basis of their own experience and direct contact with the Chinese educational system that it takes seven to eight years for a Mandarin speaker to learn how to read and write three thousand characters and another year or two for a speaker of Cantonese to reach the same level in Standard Chinese. 
My colleagues in French and Spanish estimate it would take the two imagined European illiterates less than half the time to reach a comparable level of proficiency in French.


The overall picture is clear. It seems incontestable that both Europeans will find it easier to learn to read and write French than it be for either Cantonese or Mandarin speakers to learn to read and write Chinese. If we could add up the combined number of hours needed for the two members of each group to accomplish the same thing, the total would be enormously greater in the case of Chinese written in characters than in the case of French written in an alphabetic script. Even more significant, it would also be enormously greater for Chinese written in characters than for Chinese written in Pinyin. That is to say, it would be much easier for illiterates from Peking and those from Canton, even if the latter remain incapable of speaking Mandarin, to acquire the ability to communicate with each other by learning to read and write Standard Chinese written in Pinyin rather than in characters. Where, then, is the vaunted marvel of tongue-tied Chinese o’er-leaping barriers in speech by communicating with each other by means of those magical Chinese characters?

So, it’s possible for speakers of Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, English, French, Spanish, etc. to learn Chinese characters and use these as a means of communication. However, they could also do this with PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł)! Also, it would actually be much faster and easier to do this with PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) than it would be to do it with the crazy complex characters!

Going Back in Time

What about the claim that characters allow us to still be able to read Chinese writings from long ago? Concerning this, DeFrancis writes:

Apart from learning the characters in their current meanings, Chinese must also learn the frequently different meanings of characters in earlier usage and the definitely different syntactical structures of classical versus contemporary written Chinese. This ability involves considerable training in tasks notorious for their difficulty—tasks that involve mastering differences at least as great as those between current English and the language of Chaucer. Without going into great detail, it should be readily apparent that an illiterate Chinese, regardless of whether he speaks Cantonese or Mandarin, will have a much greater task in learning to read classical Chinese than will an illiterate European, regardless of whether he speaks Spanish or French, in learning to read Latin. In the case of those already literate in current Chinese or French, it is doubtful that Chinese readers would enjoy any advantage over Europeans in respect to the amount of additional effort required to read classical Chinese in contrast to Latin.

So, it would probably be harder for a Chinese person to learn characters and then learn classical Chinese, than it would be for a European person to learn the Latin alphabet, and then learn Latin!

For us Mandarin field language learners specifically, since Jehovah’s organization is continually moving forward with ever broader, deeper, and clearer understandings of various truths, we in contrast seek to use the newest, most up-to-date writings from the organization whenever possible. Even with regard to the Bible itself, first written long ago, we seek, as a rule, to use the most up-to-date translations available. For specific examples in this regard, Appendix A2 (English, Mandarin) of the New World Translation Bible lists ways in which the current version of this Bible has been carefully revised to be more beneficial for modern readers.

It’s worth noting that the Chinese versions of the organization’s publications used to be written only in Chinese characters, but the most recent versions of the organization’s important writings generally have PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) available for them as well now.

Sunk Costs and Future Investments

Of course, those who have already spent years of hard work learning characters wouldn’t have to start that particular long and difficult process from zero (although, tĂ­bǐ (tí·bǐ {carry (hanging down from the hand) → [raise; lift]} · pen; pencil; {writing brush} [→ [start writing; write]] æçŹ” 提筆)‐wĂ ng (forget 濘)‐zĂŹ (character 歗) (character amnesia) is real thing that takes constant ongoing effort to ward off). And, if they happen to meet others, even others who don’t speak the same language, who have also already spent years of hard work learning characters, then, yes, they might be able to use characters to imperfectly communicate with these others, to a limited extent—that is indeed one imperfect benefit arising from the massive sunk costs they have incurred in the process of learning characters.

However, those who have not already poured enormous amounts of time and effort into learning characters still have the opportunity to objectively weigh how much time and effort it is reasonable and worthwhile to sink into the characters going forward. As they consider this, they can keep in mind the inescapable reality that, due to the inherent extraordinary complexity of the characters, and due to the way that Jehovah actually designed us humans to use language, PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) and other sound-prioritizing writing systems (like Hangul, for those learning Korean) offer much greater ROI (return on investment) than characters do for those considering investing time and effort into learning how to actually communicate with others. Dedicated servants of Jehovah should also keep in mind that the time and energy they have are not theirs alone to spend or waste—their time, energy, etc. actually belong to Jehovah, and should thus be used and invested accordingly.

Anyway, to summarize, the Universality Myth regarding Chinese characters is
BUSTED!