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chĂ©nggƍng

chĂ©nggƍng (chĂ©ng·gƍng {becoming [of]}; {accomplishing [of]} · {meritorious service/deed}; achievement → [succeed | success | successful[ly]] æˆćŠŸ) 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 Successfulness Myth. So, this week’s MEotW is “chĂ©nggƍng (chĂ©ng·gƍng {becoming [of]}; {accomplishing [of]} · {meritorious service/deed}; achievement → [succeed | success | successful[ly]] æˆćŠŸ)”, which can effectively mean “successful”.

Success?

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

Success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. No other aspect of Chinese characters is so much a matter of subjective judgment. I focus on such modern concerns as mass literacy and see failure. Others, concentrating on other aspects, see great success.

From some perspectives, Chinese characters have unquestionably been a great success. “We all agree,” said Premier Zhou Enlai (1965:7), “that as a written record they have made immortal contributions to history.” They have indeed made immortal contributions to a civilization deserving of superlative tributes that would extend Edgar Allen Poe’s “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome” to include also “the splendor that was China.”

Given this esteem for the past role of Chinese characters, it seems almost sacrilegious to suggest that because of their difficulty they have failed, and will continue to fail, in meeting some of the major needs felt by modern society. Nevertheless, in the case of one such need, that for mass literacy, I believe that success via characters must be characterized as a myth.

Speaking of the eye of the beholder, what can we deduce about how Jehovah God sees Chinese characters? A case can probably be made that characters are a leading contender for being the most widespread and deeply entrenched human cultural tradition in all of human history, which is a kind of success, I guess. However, while imperfect humans of this system may find that impressive, is that the kind of thing that impresses Jehovah God, whom the Bible calls “the Ancient of Days”? (Daniel 7:9) From Jehovah’s point of view, are characters a successful and effective tool for helping to glorify his great name and spread the good news of his Kingdom? Or, have they been a Great Wall impeding the preaching and teaching work that Jehovah wants accomplished in the vast worldwide Mandarin field? When Jesus, who perfectly reflected God’s qualities, encountered successfully entrenched human traditions that got in the way of doing what was good in God’s eyes, how did he respond?—John 14:9; Mark 3:1–5; 7:13.

“To Jehovah, for whom ‘a thousand years is as one day’, Chinese civilization has only been around for a few days.


“
we should boast in Jehovah, not in needlessly and self-indulgently complex knowledge relating to a mere worldly human culture” troubadourworks.com/tiandi/meotw…

#MEotW #PīnyīnPlus

[image or embed]

— tiandi, Links News (@tiandilinksnews.bsky.social) Dec 2, 2024 at 3:40 PM

The Great Wall of China

Does Jehovah see Chinese characters as a successful writing system? Or does he see characters as a Great Wall obstructing his vital preaching and teaching work in the worldwide Mandarin field?

“Success” Through Definition and Denial

Regarding how some have defined successful literacy through the learning of characters, DeFrancis says:

If literacy sights are set low enough it may be possible to claim great success for the characters both in the imperial era and at the present time. Illiteracy can be eliminated by defining it out of existence, which is apparently what the “Gang of Four” did when, according to Zhou Youguang (1980e:21), it proclaimed that China no longer had any illiterates. The picture becomes less rosy, however, if we insist that literacy should be defined as the ability to accomplish such relatively elementary tasks as corresponding about family matters and reading newspapers and instructions in various matters. For this, a knowledge of about four thousand characters is required, and even then Chinese, unlike their poorly educated Western counterparts, will be unable to express in writing everything they can express in speech.

After offering some thoughts on how solid information could be obtained on actual rates of maintained literacy among the people of China, DeFrancis says:

Until solid information like this becomes available, all we can do is speculate. My own speculations lead me to share the profound skepticism of many Chinese, including Lu Xun, who doubted that the people as a whole could achieve an acceptable level of literacy on the basis of the traditional script, even in its simplified form. Here it must be pointed out clearly that this skepticism has never taken the form of a belief in the absolute impossibility of achieving literacy with a character-based script. The skepticism takes the form, rather, of the belief that the nature of the script and the material conditions of life for the vast majority of people, especially the 80 percent comprising the peasantry, are such that in the not too distant future there is little possibility of their becoming literate in the full sense of the term. This is the only timetable and the only definition of literacy acceptable to many people interested in the ability of the masses to raise their cultural level (DeFrancis 1950).

It is possible, however, that others may count achievements in literacy based on characters a success because they do not accept the emphasis on the importance of mass literacy. 



And radio and television may indeed reduce the need for literacy in the areas of mass indoctrination and information. In the light of these considerations, success in an educational system may well be measured, as it is at present in China, less by the ability to solve the problem of mass literacy than by the success in producing a body of technicians and specialists in science and technology.

Concerning how some claim success for the characters by denying that they are difficult, DeFrancis writes:

LITERACY THROUGH MODEST EFFORT

The assertion that the difficulty of the Chinese characters is a prime reason for the lack of success in achieving mass literacy evokes several kinds of responses. One, already noted, is to deny the lack of success. Another is to deny the characters are difficult, which automatically removes one explanation for any failures. Karlgren (1929:40) has expressed the following view:

Even very learned Chinese do not encumber their memory with more than about six thousand characters. Four thousand is, as we have said, a tolerably high figure, and even with three thousand some progress can be made. For a receptive child this is a modest task, and an adult foreigner in the course of a year’s study masters without difficulty from two to three thousand characters.

Karlgren’s view of mastering large numbers of characters “without difficulty” is not supported by the experience of those involved in teaching reading either to foreigners or to the Chinese themselves. His estimates may be right for someone like himself, who probably had a photographic memory, and for others, especially Chinese intellectuals, whose lifestyle, not to mention livelihood, is characterized by almost full-time involvement in reading and writing, so that they often fail to appreciate the difficulty that ordinary people who spend long hours at hard physical labor encounter in finding the time and the energy to attain and retain literacy. As a more observant writer, George Jan (1969:141), has noted:

Another serious deficiency in mass education in the communes was the tendency for peasants to lapse back into illiteracy because of their failure to practice their newly acquired skill. According to the statistics of Wan-jung County [Wanrong County in Shanxi], of the 34,000 people who had received instruction in reading by October 1958, one-third had again become illiterate, and the other two-thirds were unable even to read newspapers. If this was generally true, the qualitative significance of the illiteracy-elimination program in the communes must be questioned.

Regarding how some, including Chinese officials, have sought to “move the goalposts” by defining literacy as knowing a limited number of characters, DeFrancis says:

A limited number of characters cannot possibly serve (unless they are used as phonetic symbols) as a medium of free expression to convey the thousands of concepts the average Chinese commands in speech.

Yet this idea of literacy through a limited number of characters is widely held and forms the basis for official policy. In 1952 the official definition of “basic literacy” increased Yen’s figure of 1,000 characters to 1,500 for peasants and 2,000 for workers (Zhou Youguang 1979:329). Attempts to reach this goal initially placed much emphasis on Mao Zedong’s instructions to proceed by searching out in each village the characters locally needed to record work points and to write down names of people, places, implements, and so on. He thought two or three hundred characters would do. Next another few hundred would be learned to handle matters beyond the village. There would be successive additions of characters for a total of 1,500, the mastery of which was considered the test of literacy (Mao 1956: 165; Hu and Seifman 1976). Although 1,500 characters unquestionably have some utility, their mastery can hardly be equated with achieving literacy in the full sense of the term, and even this limited success, as the Wanrong case shows, has tended to be ephemeral.

How About Simplification, Etc.?

DeFrancis proceeds to go over several different methods and approaches that have been tried to help improve the literacy situation in China, including the simplification of the characters. Regarding this, he says:

The true extent to which simplification has eased the burden of learning characters must remain a matter of subjective evaluation until there is firm supporting evidence. Such evidence must take two forms. First is a survey along the lines previously indicated to find out the exact state of literacy among different segments of the population. Second is research to disentangle how much of whatever advance in literacy that has been achieved, and there undoubtedly has been some, is due to simplification itself and how much to other factors, such as improved living conditions and more widespread schooling, especially in urban centers.

My own view is that simplification was a distinctly secondary factor and that high-level decision makers like Mao Zedong, who as members of the educated elite were of course already quite familiar with the simpler characters, through infomal use, were mistaken in thinking that just because they themselves were able to save much time and effort by using the abbreviated forms, therefore illiterates would also find it significantly easier to learn to read and write if the simplifications were officially adopted as part of the writing system. No doubt illiterates thought so too and, according to the official line, clamored for the change. As far as language reformers are concerned, however, many place little stock in extravagant claims of success and reject the ability of simplified characters to contribute to the elimination of illiteracy among the masses. Zhou Youguang (1978a) has expressed the view that the time needed to master characters has not been significantly reduced by simplification. Wang Li (1980:13–15) has dismissed simplified characters as a solution: “Simplified characters are simply a transitional stage. Strictly speaking, they are not even a transitional stage. They are far removed from a basic reform.” This comment is in line with the statement attributed earlier to Liu Shaoqi that simplification “will turn out badly in the future” (Wang Boxi 1974:22–23). Although it is by no means certain that Liu actually made this statement, the fact that the criticism was attributed to him suggests that many people have been skeptical of the value of character simplification. Such doubts, which have been echoed directly or indirectly by many advocates of reform, suggest the need for a blunt and harsh conclusion: A whole generation, both of people and of time, has been uselessly sacrificed in a timid, bumbling, and predictably unsuccessful attempt to achieve mass literacy through simplification of characters.

How About the Examples of Japan and Taiwan?

Continuing on, DeFrancis discusses how relevant or not the examples of Japan and Taiwan are to the matter of successful literacy in China through the learning of characters:

JAPAN AS A MODEL FOR LITERACY

This conclusion is rejected by those who advance a final argument against the idea that the difficulty of the characters, even in simplified form, makes them unsuited for mass literacy. It is argued that although this was true of the old society, the new order initiated in 1949 will eventually make it possible for everyone to learn to read and write. Expression of this view is frequently supported by the contention that Japan with its high rate of literacy in a character-based script provides proof of what China too can accomplish. The superficiality and irrelevance of this argument becomes apparent if we look a little more closely at the true state of literacy in Japan.




More recently Sato Hideo, head of the Research Section for Historical Documents, National Institute for Educational Research in the Japanese Ministry of Education, has estimated that public school graduates, who now receive nine years of compulsory schooling, retain a recognition knowledge of the 1,945 kanji but soon forget how to write all but 500 or so (1980: personal communication). As far as this limited kanji orthography is concerned, they may possibly be considered literate in reading it but must surely be considered illiterate in writing it. More precisely, their literacy in reading consists in reading the mixture of partly phonetic kanji and purely phonetic kana, whereas their literacy in writing is largely limited to writing phonetically. Such is the concrete reality of what NeustupƄy calls “the myth of 99 percent literacy” in the character-based writing system of Japan.

Moreover, apart from the use of kana by Japanese illiterate in writing kanji, the simple syllabic script is also used, even by those literate in kanji, in many aspects of Japanese life, such as computer technology, and has general application in informal writing because kana is so much quicker and easier to handle than kanji. There are even areas, such as Telex, where romaji is the preferred or exclusive medium of communication. Thus the Japanese policy of limiting the number of kanji in the writing system has resulted in consolidating a narrowed use of characters in such obvious activities as schooling while expanding the role of kana and rƍmaji in less publicized fields.

The character-based Chinese writing system as presently constituted does not permit the Japanese option of limiting the number of characters in the basic system or of dispensing with them entirely in some areas. It is not clear how much support there would be for the idea of developing a Japanese-like writing system by using a limited number of characters interspersed with alphabetic symbols such as Zhuyin Zimu or Pinyin. Zhou Youguang (1979:337-338) thinks worthy of serious consideration the suggestion made by a fellow language reformer that interspersing Pinyin with characters could serve as a means for effecting a gradual transition to Pinyin. On the other hand, an American delegation to China reported that “when we raised this question, it was glossed over by our Chinese hosts” (CETA 1980:23). This means that the all-character Chinese writing system must be recognized as incomparably more difficult than the mixed writing of Japan. Apart from the greater difficulty in determining what goes with what in a given text, a knowledge of twice the number of characters is essential for an equivalent level of literacy. And all this in turn means that it is superficial in the extreme to view Japan’s “success” as providing any sort of model of what China too can accomplish.

TAIWAN AS A MODEL FOR LITERACY

Taiwan has also been advanced as a model for achieving literacy via Chinese characters. There is more relevance to this contention, but not much more, since it needs to be qualified by noting the special conditions that set Taiwan apart from Mainland China. In Taiwan, speakers of Min or Taiwanese and Hakka are intermixed with speakers of Mandarin in a fashion quite different from the situation on the mainland with its huge blocs of regionalect speakers only thinly diluted by speakers of Putonghua. The small size of the island and the ease of communication, both physically and by radio and television, contribute to continual contact among members of different linguistic groups. A relatively efficient educational system, based in part on the fifty-year experience under Japanese occupation, made it easy to shift the medium of instruction from one foreign-imposed language to another form of speech imposed by the dominant group of Mandarin speakers, the majority quite well educated, who took over control of the island in 1945. The latter, in order to survive as an intrusive minority, were forced to promote their own speech among the whole island population with an intensity that is utterly beyond the capacity of the PRC. One result of this situation is that after only a few decades “more than 80 percent of the population is bilingual, speaking both Taiwanese and Mandarin” (Cheng 1978:308). This successful promotion of Mandarin in Taiwan has provided the means to promote literacy in a system of writing based on this standard language. The much higher standard of living in Taiwan, which is unlikely to be matched on the mainland for many years to come, is a major cause of whatever success has been achieved in literacy based on characters. Finally, although the conditions peculiar to Taiwan have undoubtedly aided literacy in characters, a careful assessment of success in more specific terms of level of achievement and particularly of retention of literacy would be desirable before making projections elsewhere, especially in view of the reality behind the myth of 99 percent literacy in Japan.

“Time and Cost”

In his book, DeFrancis thus concludes the chapter on the Successfulness Myth:

TWO CRUCIAL FACTORS: TIME AND COST

It is essential to give special consideration to the two crucial factors of time and cost in considering the potential for success in Mainland China. One major cost—the added time necessary for literacy in characters—has been a constant theme in discussion of Chinese writing reform and is receiving new emphasis in connection with China’s drive for the Four Modernizations. It is frequently remarked that Chinese children must devote at least two more years than do their Western counterparts to the task of learning to read and write. In an article pointedly entitled “We Can No Longer Waste Time,” one writer cites the frequently mentioned calculation that “if we do not change our Chinese characters, with our population of close to a billion people, if each person wastes two years, then in every generation 2 billion [man-] years are lost” (Li Yisan 1979:4). The Declaration of the Chinese Language Reform Association of Institutions of Higher Learning adds to this wastage another three years in each lifetime due to the inefficiency of characters relative to alphabetic writing (Association 1981:284). For a population of a billion literates this would bring the total wastage to 5 billion man-years in each generation, a figure which is probably a gross underestimation.




Some people give optimistic answers to these questions. They minimize the difficulties that need to be overcome to achieve success. Literate themselves, and forgetful of the generally favored circumstances which enabled them to become literate, they feel little sense of urgency in pressing for an effective policy that would enable others less favored also to become literate. Wang Li (1981:4–5) is highly critical of such attitudes. He takes to task literates who point to their own command of characters as evidence that these are not difficult, charges them with disregarding the needs of the masses in emphasizing their own need for access to China’s literary heritage, and calls on intellectuals to think of the masses by promoting Pinyin. Such views have been expressed repeatedly. The inability of Chinese characters to meet modern needs has been apparent to many Chinese for almost a hundred years. Beginning in the 1890s, and increasingly in recent years, the demand has been growing for what the Chinese call wĂ©nzĂŹ gǎigĂ©: language reform.

A View from the Mandarin Field

For what it’s worth, in the corner of the worldwide Mandarin field that I have been in for decades, where there is a significant minority of publishers who were educated in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, etc., I have observed that it is indeed a common view that of course the characters are a successful writing system, and of course they are not too difficult to learn.

However, while many who have spent many long years to learn the characters “the hard way” have successfully used them to learn about or teach Bible truth, I have also seen many Mandarin field language learners, many of whom were ordinary people just trying to help out in the Mandarin field, struggle to learn and also remember the characters. (One estimate I have heard is that only about 1 in 10 Chinese field language learners seem to get along just fine with the characters—the rest struggle.) Sadly, many of them eventually left the Mandarin field, citing difficulties with the language, even though spoken Mandarin is actually not especially difficult to learn compared to other spoken languages. That leaves the characters writing system as the evident actual main difficulty.

While it is not impossible to use Chinese characters to read and write Mandarin, and while the literacy situation in China has according to official figures improved significantly since DeFrancis’ book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy was published in 1984, the inherent unnecessary extraordinary complexity of the characters has obviously made it much more difficult and time-consuming than it should be to learn and to remember how to read and write Mandarin. Really, it’s apparent that any real success that the characters have had as a learnable and usable writing system (as opposed to phony success resulting from lowered standards and expectations, etc.) in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, etc. has been in spite of the characters, not because of the characters, and has only been achieved with great, unnecessary difficulty through heroically persistent efforts. However, something as basic as reading and writing shouldn’t universally require such heroic efforts to achieve. As pioneering computer scientist Alan Kay said, “simple things should be simple”. Also, as well-known jazz musician Charles Mingus said, “Making the simple complicated is commonplace. Making the complicated simple—awesomely simple—that’s creativity.”

Common things should be easy. Complex things should be possible.

To illustrate, consider that it was not impossible to use punched cards to control computers, and that it could be said that punched cards could successfully be used to accomplish the goal of controlling computers. However, who would agree that punched cards were so successful that they are the ultimate way of controlling computers, and that they should be enshrined as the only way in which people should ever control computers? If such an attitude had ever become entrenched in the culture, would anyone have ever invented or been allowed to distribute the personal computer or the smartphone, with their far more intuitive and easy-to-use graphical user interfaces?

Unfortunately, instead of allowing for the adoption of an easier-to-use writing system more suitable for ordinary people, China’s approach to literacy has been to just force everyone to continue learning the basic existing system that the educated elite had already invested much time and effort into, but that unfortunately is the writing system equivalent of punched cards for controlling computers.

Punched card used to load software into an old mainframe computer

Creative Commons Attribution License logo BinaryApe [source]

Chinese characters are the punched cards of writing systems. Punched cards were not totally impossible to use, but there are now much better and easier-to-use ways to control computers.

This is not a question of mere convenience—recall the vital role our personal computers and mobile devices played during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which these devices allowed the vast majority of Jehovah’s people to continue attending and participating in meetings through Zoom videoconferencing. In that trying situation, computing devices that had to be controlled by punched cards just would not have worked successfully! (Imagine having to fill out a stack of punched cards, and then having to put them through your card reader, just to tell your mainframe computer that takes up most of your living room to invoke the Zoom command that would indicate to your Watchtower Study conductor that you want to make a comment. Just, NO! Okay then, how about using the newer, slightly simplified punched cards? 
)

Similarly, how well we can communicate with and give spiritual assistance to Mandarin-speaking sheeplike ones can have a big impact on their spiritual health and welfare. So, whether Chinese characters help or hinder our ability to learn how to successfully communicate in Mandarin, or whether a simpler system like PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) would enable us to be more successful in this regard, are questions of vital importance.

The ZT Experiment

The article “PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) Was Plan A” has a section about the ZT experiment, an experimental program that “encouraged students to read and write in pinyin for longer periods than was stipulated by the conventional curriculum.” How successful was using more PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) found to be, compared to the traditional method of focusing on characters?

It is actually not necessary to rely merely on personal opinion when considering whether or not it would be a good idea for Mandarin-learners to use Pīnyīn more than it has traditionally been used. For one thing, many of us have seen and experienced much evidence for this ourselves in recent years, during which Jehovah has blessed the worldwide Mandarin field with explosive growth as Pīnyīn has been used more and more for training and helping Mandarin-learners. This is in striking contrast to the agonizingly slow growth experienced in the Chinese field in earlier years, when Chinese language training was more focused on characters.

Strong additional evidence was provided by an experimental program that was conducted in many elementary schools throughout China to explore what would result from expanded use of PÄ«nyÄ«n. Under the Z.T. subheading there, the article “The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform”, mentioned above, discusses this interesting experimental program. 





Basically, compared to those in the standard program who were just taught Pīnyīn for a couple of months or so purely as a phonetic aid for pronouncing characters, the students who were allowed to use Pīnyīn on its own as a writing system for a couple of years or so not only did significantly better in learning the language and in learning the Chinese characters, they also did significantly better overall academically. This is not surprising to me, since language is needed to learn and progress in any and every other field of learning.

So, the ZT experiment has shown that while those who focused on characters as per the traditional “hard way” had some success, those who used more PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) had more success in various ways!

Considering all the above, it can be seen that while Chinese characters have been successful in some ways, the myth of the complete, unqualified, incomparable, overwhelming successfulness of the inhumanly numerous and complex Chinese characters is
BUSTED!

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Culture History Language Learning Science

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?

æ±‰ć­— / æŒąć­—? PÄ«nyÄ«n?

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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fǎngxiào

fǎngxiĂ o (fǎng·xiĂ o imitate; copy · imitate; {follow the example of} [→ [emulate]] ä»żæ•ˆ 仿/ć€Łæ•ˆ/悚) 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 Emulatability Myth. So, this week’s MEotW is “fǎngxiĂ o (fǎng·xiĂ o imitate; copy · imitate; {follow the example of} [→ [emulate]] ä»żæ•ˆ 仿/ć€Łæ•ˆ/悚)”, an expression that seems to express well the emulating that the Emulatability Myth claims is a good thing.

The first morpheme in “fǎngxiĂ o (fǎng·xiĂ o imitate; copy · imitate; {follow the example of} [→ [emulate]] ä»żæ•ˆ 仿/ć€Łæ•ˆ/悚)” means “imitate; copy”, and other expressions in which it appears include “fǎngshēng‐xuĂ© ((fǎng·shēng {to imitate; copy} · {life → [living things]} ä»żç”Ÿ)‐(xuĂ© studying ć­Š ć­ž) → [bionics | biomimetics])”, “fǎngfĂș (resembling; {[is] like}; {as if}; seemingly ä»żäœ› ćœ·/é«Ł/ä»żćœż/é«Ž/䜛)”, and “mĂłfǎng (mó·fǎng imitating · imitating; copying [→ [imitation; model]] æšĄä»ż)”.

As for the second morpheme in “fǎngxiĂ o (fǎng·xiĂ o imitate; copy · imitate; {follow the example of} [→ [emulate]] ä»żæ•ˆ 仿/ć€Łæ•ˆ/悚)”, it here means “imitate; follow the example of”, and it also appears in the well-known expression “xiĂ ofǎ (xiĂ o·fǎ imitate · {follow the model of} æ•ˆæł•)”.

When put together, the morphemes in fǎngxiĂ o (fǎng·xiĂ o imitate; copy · imitate; {follow the example of} [→ [emulate]] ä»żæ•ˆ 仿/ć€Łæ•ˆ/悚)” can effectively mean “emulate”. According to the Emulatability Myth, it would be good for other writing systems to emulate Chinese characters when it comes to (supposedly) representing meaning directly, without depending on speech sounds. Is this really a good thing to seek to emulate?

A Good Example?

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

The caveat sounded at the end of the preceding chapter is no tongue-in-cheek turn of phrase intended merely to amuse. It is a sober warning of the consequences, some of them quite serious, resulting from the fact that just as the Ideographic Myth leads logically to the Universality Myth, so does the latter lead to the Emulatability Myth—the idea that Chinese characters provide a model to be followed in one way or another in writing without regard to sound.

The Emulatability Myth, then, is the idea that because Chinese characters supposedly represent meaning visually, without dependence on speech sounds (the Ideographic Myth), they are supposedly exceptionally good at functioning across barriers of space, time, and language as universal enablers of communication (the Universality Myth), and thus are able to serve as “a model to be followed in one way or another in writing without regard to sound”. How so? DeFrancis continues:

The reports of missionaries from the sixteenth century onward firmly established the idea that Chinese characters already served as a common written language among the peoples of the East and therefore could be further extended as a universal language for Europe and the rest of the world.




Chinese characters can indeed be extended beyond their present use to replace alphabetic writing in the case of English, French, Russian, Hindi, Arabic and all other languages, but at such an astronomical cost that this venture can only be envisaged by those so blinded by their view of Chinese characters and so lacking in responsibility that they feel no need to look below the surface and confront reality. Small wonder that the idea of directly emulating the Asian use of Chinese characters has received little serious consideration in the four centuries that the subject of Chinese as a universal script has been under discussion.

Much more attention has been devoted to the idea of developing a new “Universal Language” and “Universal Writing” based on “Real Characters” or “Universal Characters” that would adapt what were generally considered to be the underlying principles of Chinese writing—namely, that the characters represented meaning without regard to sound and that a single character was ascribed to a single thing, whether concrete or abstract. The supposed one-to-one correspondence between thing and symbol was seized upon for two reasons. The first was the tendency, against which linguists still have to inveigh, to overemphasize the role of vocabulary compared to grammar and other linguistic aspects in the working of language. The second was the need to find a means of labeling and classifying the vast amount of new scientific and technological knowledge that was coming into being. The concept of a universal set of written symbols dovetailed neatly with the concept of a universal taxonomy of nature (Slaughter 1982).




In a more recent expression of the emulatability thesis we find the well-known anthropologist Margaret Mead calling on scholars in various fields to put aside their parochial differences and unite in seeking to create

a written form of communication independent of any languages of the world, but dependent upon the concepts essential to high-level philosophical, political, and scientific communication. We have, of course, many such partial artificial languages now in the Arabic numeral system, in chemistry and physics, in engineering diagrams. But the most complete model we have of a written language that is independent of particular languages is the classical Chinese system of writing through which two educated men, who cannot understand a word the other speaks, may nevertheless communicate fully with each other by writing. [Mead and Modley 1968:62]

So, missionaries of Christendom were involved in spreading the idea that Chinese characters could show us how to create a universal language (i.e., a universal writing system) for the world. As we who have learned Bible truth know, this wouldn’t be the first thing that members of Christendom have gotten wrong! Additionally and unfortunately, even people such as the well-known anthropologist Margaret Mead got on board with this particular train of thought.

“Humanly Quite Impossible”

What, in particular, is wrong with the seemingly appealing idea of universal writing? DeFrancis has this to say:

One of the basic reasons for the failure of the proposed schemes is the now obvious impossibility of classifying all things known in tables so devised that each item would be assigned its own universal character. These attempts to invent a universal language based on a universal nomenclature were inevitably incomplete, impossibly clumsy, and wholly impractical (Knowlson 1975; Slaughter 1982). Even more fundamental, such attempts are doomed to failure at the outset because, as pointed out in the earlier discussion refuting the notion of Chinese as an ideographic script, any system of writing not based on actual speech would require feats of memory that are humanly quite impossible.

This reminds us of one of the fundamental flaws of Chinese characters as a writing system for us imperfect humans. While Jehovah in his wisdom designed us to communicate with speech based on the relatively few basic sounds used in any particular human language, combined in various ways to potentially abstractly represent anything one may think or feel, different Chinese characters represent the different syllables (which are the highly numerous combinations of a language’s few basic speech sounds) with meaning that are used in a language, which can theoretically be as infinite in number as are all the things humans may want or need to talk about.

As experience has plainly shown, this high, theoretically potentially infinite number of different Chinese characters, many of which are quite complex, is simply beyond the ability of our limited, imperfect human brains to manageably deal with. The character amnesia that’s common even among native Chinese speakers who have been learning characters for decades is clear evidence of this.

To illustrate the problem of trying to be too direct in representing a large number of things, with too little abstraction, consider an example that many of us in the Mandarin field are quite familiar with:

JW Library app, Library tab (iPad)

The Library tab in the JW Library app

As shown above, a relatively manageable number of categories are used to abstract and organize the many individual items that are available in the Library tab. Alphabets like the Latin alphabet used in English, French, Spanish, PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł), etc. similarly use a relatively mentally manageable number of symbols to basically represent the sounds of a language, which in turn are combined in various ways and used to abstractly represent the various and hugely numerous meanings that can be expressed in that language.

In contrast, using Chinese characters is more like trying to directly use a single unorganized list of all the many items available in the JW Library app’s Library tab, every book, brochure, tract, video, etc., without the abstraction and organization provided by the categories, or even by consistent sorting. (Imagine if a developer on the JW Library app team actually implemented such a usability nightmare. It’s highly doubtful that this developer would be allowed to remain on the team!) And actually, the situation with Chinese characters is really much, much worse than that, because even the many items available in the JW Library app’s Library tab are few in number compared to the practically infinite number of things and concepts that human language can represent, that Chinese characters seek to represent relatively directly.

Myths and Consequences

Continuing on, DeFrancis highlights a serious harmful effect of the Emulatability Myth about Chinese characters, that reaches beyond those who are trying to learn a Chinese language:

CHINESE INFLUENCE ON READING THEORY

It is not enough, however, to note shortcomings in the aspect of the Emulatability Myth that seeks to create a universal language while still advancing the notion of “the special learning that characterizes a logographic system such as Chinese.” Pursuit of the will-o’-the-wisp of a universal language has the result merely of wasting countless hours of time. Much more serious is the result of the thesis, which underlies Kolers’ reference to “special learning,” that “there are two major systems of writing in the world today, the semantic and the phonetic” (Kolers 1970:113). This belief in the semantic nature of Chinese writing leads Kolers to argue that all research into reading—that is, how we read and how children should be taught to read—should be based on the alleged existence of two completely disparate systems of ideographic and phonetic writing. Kolers’ assumption that readers of the Chinese “semantic” script go directly from print to meaning leads to the conclusion, as Gough points out (1972:335), that “if they can do it, so can we.” And on this conclusion of emulatability is based a pedagogical approach to reading that affects millions of little victims of the Ideographic Myth.

There is an enormous literature on the teaching of reading. For present purposes, at the risk of oversimplifying the complexities involved in this literature, we can say that there are two main schools of thought on the subject: one arguing for the use of phonics [Wikipedia link] in teaching reading, another arguing against the use of phonics and for an approach in which readers go directly from writing to meaning. Adherents of the second approach constantly buttress their argument by reference to the “ideographic” or “semantic” nature of Chinese writing. So widespread is this aspect of the Emulatability Myth, and so serious are its consequences, that the whole question merits a thorough and long-overdue airing.

We can begin by observing that the line of reasoning espoused by adherents of the emulatability approach can be summarized as “Since A is true, therefore B is true.” Since readers of “semantic Chinese” read without regard to sound, therefore readers of “alphabetic English” can read without regard to sound. But what happens to this line of argument if it turns out that A is false? Does this mean that B is also false? Not necessarily. Proposition B may still be correct, but the proof of its correctness must be sought elsewhere than by citing the false proposition A. The least we can say is that confidence in the truth of B is seriously undermined when it is advanced on the basis of something so patently false. Perhaps it should also be added that specialists in reading, although responsible for the application of the Ideographic Myth to the teaching of reading, can be excused to some extent because they have been misled by specialists in Chinese.

This reminds me of an article I came across a few years ago, about how children are being taught to read English:

Here are a couple of excerpts from the article linked to in the above post:

For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don’t know there’s anything wrong with it.

Goldberg decided to teach some of her students using the phonics program and some of her students using three cueing [Wikipedia link]. And she began to notice differences between the two groups of kids. "Not just in their abilities to read," she said, "but in the way they approached their reading."

Goldberg and a colleague recorded first-graders talking about what makes them good readers.

One video shows Mia, on the left, who was in the phonics program. Mia says she's a good reader because she looks at the words and sounds them out. JaBrea, on the right, was taught the cueing system. JaBrea says: "I look at the pictures and I read it."

Courtesy of Margaret Goldberg, Oakland Unified School District

It was clear to Goldberg after just a few months of teaching both approaches that the students learning phonics were doing better. "One of the things that I still struggle with is a lot of guilt," she said.

She thinks the students who learned three cueing were actually harmed by the approach. "I did lasting damage to these kids. It was so hard to ever get them to stop looking at a picture to guess what a word would be. It was so hard to ever get them to slow down and sound a word out because they had had this experience of knowing that you predict what you read before you read it."

Goldberg soon discovered the decades of scientific evidence against cueing.25 She was shocked. She had never come across any of this science in her teacher preparation or on the job.

This problem is real, and it has really affected us Mandarin field language learners. I remember that a few years ago, I talked to a brother who was learning Mandarin, and who insisted that PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) was bad, just like learning how to read English with phonics was bad. Unfortunately, the actual, verified cognitive science shows that he was completely wrong! I wonder how many other Mandarin field language learners have been similarly misled by the ripple effects of the linguistic idolatry of the Ideographic Myth and the Emulatability Myth


Writing Is Not Pictures

Another interesting point that DeFrancis touches on is:

A fundamental error made by psycholinguists who uphold this type of investigation is the belief that since we can recognize many objects in the physical world around us we can equally well memorize the meanings of thousands of Chinese characters or the meanings of English words approached as ideographs. Thus Smith (1973:75) states that

we can both recognize and recall many thousands of words in our spoken vocabulary, and recognize many thousands of different faces and animals and plants and objects in our visual world. Why should this fantastic memorizing capacity suddenly run out in the case of reading? It is surely no more difficult for a person to remember that 柶 or the printed word house is called “house” than that 🏠 (or an actual house) is called “house.” Unfortunately, we tend to believe that the alphabetic form house is read in an exclusive manner, simply because it is composed of letters.

This is an astonishing statement. How can the cognitive impact of little two-dimensional black-on-white symbols be compared with that of three-dimensional, multicolored, multitextured, and otherwise differentiated objects in our visual world? Smith has apparently not bothered to acquaint himself with the well-known difficulty of mastering Chinese characters. A modicum of inquiry would have revealed to him the sad but incontrovertible truth that this “fantastic memorizing capacity” does in fact run out for most Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, not to mention Western students, when they are confronted with what actual experience has clearly shown to be the much more difficult task of recognizing and remembering many thousands of different characters.

While Chinese characters have taken some inspiration from the visual world that we humans see around us, which can be represented in pictures, characters are just characters (a type of writing), not actual pictures. So, while we humans are designed to be able to naturally connect speech and pictures of physical objects with meanings, abundant actual experience shows that connecting the inhumanly numerous and crazy complex (for writing) Chinese characters with meanings in our minds requires a long, hard, unnatural struggle. It follows, then, that no, Chinese characters are not a good model to follow by attempting to design a hypothetical universal writing system for use by us limited, imperfect humans, nor are they a good system to take inspiration from when it comes to teaching children how to read writing written in an alphabet, like English writing is.

Yes, since the Ideographic Myth and the Universality Myth are just myths, the Emulatability Myth that is based on them is also
BUSTED!