Tag: Writing Systems

Categories
Culture History Language Learning

Zhùyīn

Zhùyīn+ (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) 👈🏼 Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

The last imperial dynasty of China was the Qing dynasty. We call it the last dynasty, though, because it ended, and it was not followed by another dynasty. Towards the end of the Qing dynasty’s rule, China was in a bad way. Wikipedia provides this summary of the situation:

The dynasty reached its high point in the late 18th century, then gradually declined in the face of challenges from abroad, internal revolts, population growth, disruption of the economy, corruption, and the reluctance of ruling elites to change their mindsets.

One of the ways in which some sought to help with the deteriorating situation in China is described by American linguist, sinologist, author of Chinese language textbooks, lexicographer of Chinese dictionaries, and Professor Emeritus of Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa John DeFrancis, in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy:

…toward the end of the nineteenth century…The obvious disintegration of Chinese society and the inability to cope with foreign aggressors led some reformers in contact with missionaries to conceive of carrying out a reform of the writing as part of a general educational reform that would help revitalize the country and save it from extinction.1

Professor DeFrancis goes on the describe the development and naming of an early result of the efforts of these reformers:

Official resolution of these issues was effected by the decisions reached by the Conference on Unification of Pronunciation that was held under government auspices in 1913. …The majority members of the conference reached the decision to adopt a set of thirty-nine phonetic symbols derived from Chinese characters, to use them as an adjunct to the characters, and to confine their scope to representing the Mandarin pronunciation as the national standard. The symbols were initially called Zhùyīn Zìmǔ (“Phonetic Alphabet”); later they were also called Guóyīn Zìmǔ (“National Phonetic Alphabet”). The fear that they might be considered an alphabetic system of writing independent of characters led in 1930 to their being renamed Zhùyīn Fúhào (“Phonetic Symbols”).2

Bopomofo in Regular, Handwritten Regular, & Cursive formats

Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音), or Bopomofo, in regular, handwritten regular, and cursive formats

This week’s MEotW, “Zhùyīn+ (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音)”, is a commonly used name for this system. It’s also commonly called “Bopomofo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ)”, after the first four symbols of the system. This is similar to how in English we use “ABCs” to refer to the alphabet, and to how the word “alphabet” itself comes from alpha and bēta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.

The Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) system continues to be used in elementary schools in Taiwan for teaching reading and writing, with the system’s symbols often appearing as ruby characters over Chinese characters in textbooks.

Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) / Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)

ㄓㄨ`ㄧㄣ? Pīnyīn?

In mainland China, Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) has largely been replaced by Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音), which was adopted by the mainland Chinese government in 1958. This was possible because Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) and Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) both do the same job of representing in alphabetic writing the sounds of Mandarin speech—they just use different symbols.

Around the time that Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) was introduced, Premier of the People’s Republic of China Zhōu Ēnlái ((Zhōu {Circumference (surname)} 周 周/週) (Ēn·lái Kindness · Comes 恩来 恩來) (the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China)) wrote the following comparing the different practical effects of using these different sets of symbols:

Although [Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音)] has been in existence for forty years and was popularized in primary schools by governments in the past, it has been forgotten by most of its students. Now only a few people know the phonetic transcript. In future, we shall adopt the Latin alphabet for the Chinese phonetic alphabet. Being in wide use in scientific and technological fields and in constant day-to-day usage, it will be easily remembered.

Some Mandarin field language learners prefer not to use the Latin alphabet-based Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) system, claiming that it makes them think of English sounds rather than Mandarin sounds. Perhaps those who feel this way could instead get the benefits of a phonetic alphabet by using Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音). However, they would first have to learn and remember the rarely-used symbols of Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音), which for almost everyone these days is going to be significantly harder than remembering the familiar Latin alphabet letters of Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音).

Regarding associating language sounds with a writing system (which both Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) and Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) qualify as), once a Mandarin learner passes the very beginning stage and gets familiar with Mandarin sounds and gets used to the Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) system, he or she will actually have no more problem associating Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) with Mandarin sounds than an English-speaking non-beginner student of French has associating French words with French sounds.

For more information on how Zhùyīn (Zhù·yīn {Annotating of} · Sounds → [Zhuyin] 注音 註/注音) compares to Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) for Mandarin field language learners, please see the tiandi.info post “Pinyin and Zhuyin”. (If you need login information for the parts of tiandi.info that require it, request it by email, and include information on who referred you and/or what group/cong. you are in.)

1. John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), p. 241. ^

2. Ibid., p. 242. ^

Categories
Culture History Language Learning Names Technology

fántǐ‐zì

fántǐ+ (fán·tǐ complicated; complex; difficult · {body → [style] → [typeface; font]} → [traditional Chinese] 繁体 繁體)‐zì+ (characters 字) 👈🏼 Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

For a long, long, long time, Chinese characters were just Chinese characters. Then, in 1956, the Communist government of mainland China issued what came to be known as the First Chinese Character Simplification Scheme (a second round of Chinese character simplification was later attempted and ultimately rescinded), and official simplified Chinese characters came into the world. (Some characters had been unofficially simplified and used for various purposes, both everyday and artistic, before that.)

Name?

To distinguish these newfangled official simplified Chinese characters from the Chinese characters that had existed before, and that continue to be used by many people in many parts of the world, retronyms were coined to refer to these pre-existing Chinese characters, just as the term “acoustic guitar” was coined to refer to a regular non-electric guitar after electric guitars came along.

In the English-speaking world, the pre-official simplification characters have come to be called “traditional Chinese characters”, as opposed to the “simplified Chinese characters”. In the Chinese-speaking world, as is true of many things regarding Chinese characters, the situation is…complicated. Wikipedia summarizes the situation thusly:

Traditional Chinese characters (the standard characters) are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially calls traditional Chinese characters standard characters or orthodox characters (traditional Chinese: 正體字; simplified Chinese: 正体字; pinyin: zhèngtǐzì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄓㄥˋ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ).[source] However, the same term is used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard, simplified and traditional characters from variant and idiomatic characters.[source]

In contrast, users of traditional characters outside Taiwan, such as those in Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities, and also users of simplified Chinese characters, call them complex characters (traditional Chinese: 繁體字; simplified Chinese: 繁体字; pinyin: fántǐzì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄈㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ). Users of simplified characters sometimes informally refer to them as “old characters” (Chinese: 老字; pinyin: lǎozì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄌㄠˇ ㄗˋ).

Users of traditional characters also sometimes call them “full Chinese characters” (traditional Chinese: 全體字; simplified Chinese: 全体字; pinyin: quántǐ zì; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄑㄩㄢˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ) to distinguish them from simplified Chinese characters.

In my experience in the Chinese fields in Canada, I have always heard traditional Chinese characters referred to using this week’s MEotW, “fántǐ+ (fán·tǐ complicated; complex; difficult · {body → [style] → [typeface; font]} → [traditional Chinese] 繁体 繁體)‐zì (characters 字)”. For reference, this is also the term used on jw.org when referring to Mandarin written using traditional Chinese characters:

jw.org referring to Mandarin written using traditional Chinese characters

jw.org refers to traditional Chinese characters as “fántǐ+ (fán·tǐ complicated; complex; difficult · {body → [style] → [typeface; font]} → [traditional Chinese] 繁体 繁體)” characters.

Beloved by Traditionalists and Purists, But Complicated

Many feel that traditional characters are the best characters of all, since, in their estimation, the official simplified characters have lost some of the heart and soul of characters. As a symbolic example, some point to how the simplified character for “love”, “爱”, omits the “heart” radical (“心”), which is appropriately in the traditional character for “love”, “愛”.

Yes, as the above post mentions, the obvious, glaring issue with traditional characters is—aggravated by the fact that there are tens of thousands of them—their extreme, extraordinary complexity, the result of their problematically complex basic nature, along with thousands of years of accumulated occasionally arbitrary design decisions and developmental cruft. For example, note the below excerpt from p. 82 of the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis:

In the case of the rendition for the huáng meaning “sturgeon” we have two variants, one written with the “yellow” phonetic and the other with the “emperor” phonetic, both combined with the semantic element for “fish”:

魚 “fish”
鱑 “fish” + huáng “yellow” = huáng “sturgeon”
鰉 “fish” + huáng “emperor” = huáng “sturgeon”

While etymological research might succeed in clarifying the basis for some of the variation, in many cases, as one specialist in Chinese paleography concludes, “it is simply a matter of the whim of the writer” (Barnard 1978:203).

Scribal whim goes far to explain a diversity bordering on chaos in the forms of the Chinese characters as they evolved in the Shang dynasty and during the long years of political and administrative disunity in the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1028–221 B.C.). The situation was aggravated by the fact that characters were created by writers living in different historical periods, which inevitably meant changes in sounds over the years, and speaking different dialects, which inevitably affected their choice of phonetic elements in the creation of new characters.

Their inherent extraordinary complexity, exacerbated by an accumulated millennia-long history of design decisions made on a whim, out-of-date phonetic elements, etc., causes especially the traditional characters, and even the (moderately) simplified characters, to be extremely difficult for us imperfect humans to learn and to remember. This has lead to character amnesia and the Great Wall of unfamiliar characters being real things, even among those who have been studying characters for decades. How complex can traditional characters get? Theoretically, there is no upper limit!

The extreme, extraordinary complexity of traditional characters undoubtedly contributed greatly to illiteracy having been widespread in China for much of its history. Even for those who are privileged to be able to devote the extraordinary amount of time and effort needed to learn traditional characters, it’s a long, hard slog, compared to learning a comparatively simple and compact alphabetical writing system. It’s little wonder, then, that there have been serious, concerted efforts to simplify and even replace traditional Chinese characters.

Categories
Culture History Language Learning Names Technology

Hànzì

Hànzì+ (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

“Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字)” is what Chinese characters are called in Mandarin. Actually, “Hànzì+ (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字)” literally means “Han characters”, but as discussed in the MEotW post on “Hànyǔ (Hàn·yǔ {Han (Chinese)} · Language [→ [(Modern Standard) Mandarin]] 汉语 漢語)”, the Han are by far the largest ethnic group in China, and they are the dominant cultural force in China. Thus, Han characters are, in effect, Chinese characters.

漢字 汉字

Han culture has affected not only China, but also many of the surrounding nations. The words used by some of these nations to refer to “Chinese characters” are obvious echoes of “Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字)”:

  • Japanese: kanji
  • Korean: Hanja
  • Vietnamese: hán tự

Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) are still used a lot in modern Japanese writing. However, although Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) used to be the dominant writing system in Korea and in Vietnam, those nations have moved on to mainly use alphabetic writing systems.

The Korean Connection

Regarding the situation in Korea, the Awake! article “Let’s Try Writing in Hankul!” says:

BEFORE Hankul [or Hangul] was created, the Korean language did not have its own script. For more than a thousand years, educated Koreans wrote their language using Chinese characters. Over the years, however, various attempts were made to devise a better writing system. But since all of them were based on Chinese characters, only the well-educated could use them.

…

King Sejong spearheaded the creation of an alphabet that would both suit spoken Korean and be easy to learn and use.

…

Sadly, some scholars opposed Hankul, precisely because it was so easy to learn! They derisively called it Amkul, meaning “women’s letters.” They disdained a system that could be learned even by women, who back then were not taught to read in the schools. This prejudice against Hankul persisted among upper-class Koreans for some time. In fact, more than 400 years elapsed before the Korean government declared that Hankul could be used in official documents.

The Chinese Conundrum

How about the writing system situation in China itself? Do the Chinese languages need to be written using Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字)? Chinese traditionalists have influenced many people to assume so, but there is actually no technical linguistic requirement that any Chinese language be written using Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字)—writing Chinese languages using Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) is purely and merely a deeply embedded tradition.

Proof that the use of Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) is merely a tradition and not a technical requirement comes from the fact that Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音), a phonetic alphabetic system designed by a Chinese government team, is a good, workable full writing system for Modern Standard Mandarin.

Why has China held on to its traditional use of Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) when other nations have moved on to alphabetic writing systems? As mentioned in the MEotW post on “Zhōngguó (Zhōng·guó Central · Nation → [China | Chinese] 中国 中國)”,

Some wonder why China has held on to its archaic characters writing system instead of moving on to using a modern alphabetic writing system like almost every other nation does, even though outstanding native sons like Lǔ Xùn+ ((Lǔ Stupid; Rash (surname) 鲁 魯) (Xùn Fast; Quick; Swift 迅) (pen name of Zhōu Shùrén, the greatest Chinese writer of the 20th cent. and a strong advocate of alphabetic writing)) have advocated strongly for that. Perhaps the proud self-centredness of the only nation to name itself the centre of the world provides a clue….

When the Communists took over China a few years after World War II, their Plan A for China’s writing system situation actually did involve eventually moving on from the characters to an alphabetic writing system that would be developed, which turned out to be Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音). However, the government needed the help of the people already educated in Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字), and many of these people opposed this plan that they feared would involve leaving behind, or at least de-emphasizing, a cultural tradition that they were very proud of, that they had invested very much time and effort into mastering, and that gave them much prestige in the existing environment.1 In other words, the pride and prejudice of those who had already been educated in the Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) caused them to disparage and oppose the idea of a simpler alternative writing system, just as had been the case in Korea, as noted above. So, the simplification of the Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) is the farthest China has gotten so far with regard to official writing system reform, and even that has only been achieved in the face of much criticism and opposition.

Chairman Máo Zédōng+ ((Máo Hair (surname) 毛) (Zé·dōng Marsh · East 泽东 澤東) (the founder of the People’s Republic of China)) (Wikipedia article) himself supported continuing to move on, from simplification of the characters to actually adopting Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) as a writing system. In a letter to an old schoolmate, he wrote:

…Pinyin writing is a form of writing that is relatively convenient. Chinese characters are too complicated and difficult. At present we are only engaged in reform along the lines of simplification, but some day in the future we must inevitably carry out a basic reform.2

Letter from Mao endorsing a transition from Chinese characters to alphabetic writing

(The above picture is from near the beginning of the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis.)

While obviously what Máo ((Máo Hair (surname) 毛) (abbr. for Máo Zédōng, the founder of the People’s Republic of China)) foresaw regarding a writing system “basic reform” in China has not yet come true, American sinologist and University of Pennsylvania Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Victor H. Mair wrote in a blog post:

So, those who are in favor of HP [Hànyǔ (Hàn·yǔ {Han (Chinese)} · Language → [(Modern Standard) Mandarin] 汉语 漢語) Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音)] don’t need to be concerned, and those who are opposed to HP don’t need to be frightened. HP is ineluctably playing a greater and greater role in the educational, cultural, social, political, and every other aspect of the lives of Chinese citizens, and this is occurring without regard to anyone pushing it as a governmental program. It is happening because of the wishes of those who actually use it for a wide variety of helpful purposes.

Digraphia [the use of more than one writing system for the same language, in this case the use of both Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) and Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) for writing Modern Standard Mandarin] is emerging before our very eyes, enabling people to use the alphabet and the characters for whatever purposes they deem suitable. Nobody needs to take a vote or carry out a survey for this to happen.

Tourists or Missionaries?

Regardless of how worldly Chinese people view the Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字), how should we dedicated Mandarin field language-learners view them? It would be easy to fall back on the commonly accepted view, the tourist’s view, that the Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) are an integral and fascinating part of China’s precious cultural heritage that we should duly respect and even heap adulation upon.

However, as Mandarin field language-learners, we are not in the Mandarin field to be tourists just enjoying the exotic foreign culture. On the contrary, we must be more like missionaries or spiritual rescue workers involved in an urgent life-saving work, because lives are indeed involved. As ones involved in an urgent, life-saving work, we need tools, technologies, and systems that efficiently and effectively help us to get this work done without wasting time and effort when people’s everlasting lives are at stake. From this sober and pragmatic angle, the extraordinarily difficult-to-learn-and-remember Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) are far from ideal. Thus, while there is obviously value in learning as many Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字) as one is reasonably able to, it is fortunate that Pīnyīn (Pīn·yīn {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] 拼音) exists and is available as a simple, effective alternative writing system for Mandarin, for the many times when it is not necessary to use Hànzì (Hàn·zì {Han (Chinese)} · Characters 汉字 漢字).

 

1. John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), p. 258. ^

2. Ibid., p. 295. ^