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Why are Chinese characters still used?
It's a cultural heritage and frankly Hanzi/Kanji are darn interesting! When I look at scripts (and there are many beautiful ones, maybe even more beautiful than Chinese), I can see some of them as art. For me
English is practical and it can be made into beautiful poetry, but it is not art with meaning.
Obviously this thread has been dead for over a month, but I'm going to make some remarks on the relationship between Korean and Hanzi, Kanji, or Hanja(in Korean pronunciation).
Basically, Hanja is to Korean as Latin(or Greek) is to English/French/German/etc. For example, "transportation" is derived from Latin "transportare," which is a mix of "trans(across)" and "portare(to carry)." More than half of Korean vocabulary is constructed by multiple Hanja letters(usually two). Take 이동(transportation)for example. 이(移: to transfer, shift) + 동(動: to move) But the difference is, the way of mixing two letters is much more useful. See the words that ends in 동(動): 부동(不動): Not moving 미동(微動): Moving slightly 진동(振動): Moving shakily(Shaking) So, although if someone knows just about a thousand Hanja, he/she can understand about ten thousand words that are composed of multiple Hanjas. And even when I see a word that I've never seen before, I can very often guess what it means, because I know the individual letters that consists it. And even the individual words are made of simpler words. For example, 動 = 重 + 力. This is because movement is related to power(力), and they combined it with 重, to signify how it should be pronounced. Yes, Koreans do not write in Hanja, for the sake of convenience. But Koreans DO learn it in school because they have to know it to 1) better understand the etymological origins of the vocabulary, 2)know the difference between thousands of homonyms in Korean that consists of different Hanjas. For exampe: 최고(最高, 最古) 유인(誘引, 有人) 신임(新任, 信任) In short, knowing the Hanjas will make you a more intelligent Korean speaker, to a much farther degree than knowing Latin making a better English speaker. And Hanzi might make it hard for Westerners to learn Chinese or Japanese, but it does make it very easy for Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, or even Vietnamese or Korean to learn the languages of one another. And that's the way it has been for thousands of years: Even when Korean noblemen went to China, they still could communicate with Chinese people(those who could write, of course) by writing. But in Europe, you just had to learn multiple different languages when Latin lost its status as the lingua Franca. Finally, in my opinion, Hanja and literacy aren't really relevant. No one can say that Japanese are more illiterate than Koreans and Vietnamese. -Native South Korean, fluent in Japanese
South Korean
Is it true that Hanjas are being revived in South Korea? Will Hanjas be seen all over Korea one day, like Kanjis are seen all over Japan? I heard that Korean students are required to learn Hanjas in high school but not in elementary school. Is that true? I think it's better to learn Hanjas in elementary school like we do here in Malaysia. It's more difficult when you start learning it in high school as mental blocks are more likely to get in the way. Incidentally, I came across this text written in Hangul and Hanja, and although I don't know anything about the Korean language, I'm able to make some sense of it. It's amazing! 前文 悠久한 歷史와 傳統에 빛나는 우리 大韓國民은 3·1 運動으로 建立된 大韓民國臨時政府의 法統과 不義에 抗拒한 4·19 民主理念을 繼承하고, 祖國의 民主改革과 平和的統一의 使命에 立脚하여 正義·人道와 同胞愛로써 民族의 團結을 鞏固히 하고, 모든 社會的弊習과 不義를 打破하며, 自律과 調和를 바탕으로 自由民主的基本秩序를 더욱 確固히 하여 政治·經濟·社會·文化의 모든 領域에 있어서 各人의 機會를 均等히 하고, 能力을 最高度로 發揮하게 하며, 自由와 權利에 따르는 責任과 義務를 完遂하게 하여, 안으로는 國民生活의 均等한 向上을 基하고 밖으로는 恒久的인 世界平和와 人類共榮에 이바지함으로써 우리들과 우리들의 子孫의 安全과 自由와 幸福을 永遠히 確保할 것을 다짐하면서 1948年 7月 12日에 制定되고 8次에 걸쳐 改正된 憲法을 이제 國會의 議決을 거쳐 國民投票에 依하여 改正한다. 1987年 10月 29日
TO: South Korean Fri Jul 10, 2009 12:35 am GMT
Yes, I agree with you. Actually Chinese characters are still very important for our Vietnamese people, though we have already used Latin alphabet. And Chinese characters may be regarded as the soul or spirit of Sinosphere (Chinese cultural sphere), such as China, Japan, Taiwan, Korean, and Vietnam. Vietnam does not only use Chinese characters, but also use some historical Chinese phonology (Tones derived from ancient China). So we need some remarks which are above Latin alphabet, though we almost don't use Chinese characters in daily life, but the tones still remain completely in Vietnamese language. Unfortunately, now, many Vietnamese people cannot understand what those characters really mean. China, Japan, Taiwan, have been always using Characters, but Vietnam changed the writting system, some people like Latin alphabet, but I don't. And in Korea, Characters are still used in some important places, such as government documents, classical literature, 국어 사전, and so on. In fact, some Korean professors have wanted to persuade government to recover the education of Chinese characters, perhaps, in future, we can see more Chinese Characters in Korean or Vietnam.
Chữ Nôm （字喃）is an obsolete writing system of the Vietnamese language. It makes use of Chinese characters (known as Hán tự in Vietnamese), and characters coined following the Chinese model. The earliest example of chữ Nôm dates to the 13th century. It was used almost exclusively by the Vietnamese elites, mostly for recording Vietnamese literature (formal writings were, in most cases, not done in Vietnamese, but in classical Chinese). It has now been completely replaced by quốc ngữ, a script based on the Latin alphabet.
http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E1%BA%ADp_tin:Tu_duc_thanh_che_tu_hoc_giai_nghia_ca.jpg
South Korean:
Your posting shows why it is so easy for Koreans to learn Japanese and the other way around. The pronunciation of the characters you wrote is so close to Japanese!! I do agree that kanjis/hanja/hanzi can be useful AFTER you learned them but it takes TOO much time to do it. Recently I have been thinking why some people in Asia have such a difficult time learning western languages and think that using characters makes it more complicated to learn one's native language (Japanese and Chinese for instance). As a result a person will only know his/her language well (at least in Japan) after graduating high-school and I believe that's a hindrance to learn foreign languages which are not related to his/her native language. I believe Koreans learn English better because of their attitude towards foreigners (I felt very comfortable in Korea and NOBODY would point at me saying "foreigner" like many people still do in Japan) and also because they learn their language more easily due to the hangul writing system, which allows them to learn their language faster, i.e, they have prompt access to vocabulary that a Japanese or Chinese person will only learn after finishing school. "But in Europe, you just had to learn multiple different languages when Latin lost its status as the lingua Franca." South Korean씨:Well, I believe that Latin is as useful as Chinese characters if you know them. If people use a Latin-based word when talking to me chances are I will guess what they are saying because I'm a speaker of a Latin language and studied Latin in college. Even without knowing kanjis/hanjas it's a no-brainer to figure out that haksen/gakusei, hakkyo/gakkou, sonsenin/sensei, yuhaksen/ryuugakusei, kyohe/kyoukai, huisa/kaisha,etc...are related. Cheers
Mr. J.C.
Chinese characters play an important role in Chinese languages, it's not only the Classical Latin of China, but also Modern style of China, even a person don't want to learn anything about old China, he still needs to learn Characters to keep Chinese language effectively, without any errors while writing articles, yes, in daily informal conversation, of course, we can talk in colloquial style, don't need to read characters, but it only relates to some frequent words which are spoken almost everyday, but if you write Chinese in Latin alphbet, we have to guess what they actually mean based on context, on the contrary, we can understand them right now while reading Characters.
Mr. J.C.
Recently I have been thinking why some people in Asia have such a difficult time learning western languages and... -------------------------------------------------- I'm afraid that I don't think so, as a Chinese, I feel that, it's not very difficult for us to learn European languages, such as English, German, French, or Italian. Also, maybe it wouldn't be much too hard to learn Arabic, Persian, or Turkish, if people tried their best to learn it as an interest, instead of a mission, in fact, I've never learned German, except having a glance at it, but my German friend told me that I speak it very well, just like another Chinese friend of mine, he studied Russian hard by himself, and a few years later, he went to Russia to fulfill his dream. In my humble opinion, agglutinative languages, such as Turkish, Uygur, Finnish, Hungarian, Mongolic, seem more difficult than Indo-European ones. Of course, perhaps the most difficult one should be Arabic. From the viewpoint of Chinese, Japanese and Korean aren't so hard to learn, though they also belong to agglutinative group, because Japan and Korea, together with Vietnam, all borrowed a lot of vocabularies from ancient China, just like what that Vietnam friend wrote above.
"but if you write Chinese in Latin alphbet, we have to guess what they actually mean based on context, on the contrary, we can understand them right now while reading Characters."
Tionghoa: Thank you so much for your interesting comments and please don't use Mr. since I'm not so old yet (我是35岁）. What you said is also true in western languages but I guess that words based on Latin are easier to understand than homophone words in Chinese. The problem with characters is that you must SEE them to make sense out of them whereas western languages allow us to hear and understand RIGHT AWAY. I don't know if this example is easy to understand but when I started studying German back in 1992 I had the opportunity to talk with a German professor while I studied in Okinawa in 1994. I wanted to tell him that Okinawa was very "isolated" from mainland Japan but couldn't remember the word "entfernt" at the time so I just thought about "isolado" (isolated in Portuguese), took the main stem, which I think is "isol" and added the German ending "ieren" to form the word "isoliert" and this professor understood me RIGHT AWAY. Let's say you are trying to talk to a Japanese and think of 远, which already has a problem since the Japanese character is 遠. But anyway, let's suppose you try to say "yuan" (In Japanese the reading based on Chinese is "en" )like you say in Chinese. I guess NOBODY is going to understand you. Maybe I crossed the line with this example because the characters aren't the same. How about 「去」, which means to "go" in Chinese and "to leave" in Japanese or 「喝」, which means "to drink" in Chinese but in Japanese must be represented by 「飲」 or 「说」 for speaking in Chinese that has to be represented by 「話」 in Japanese. I guess there's a limitation for a communication based on characters. I'm really thankful that I know some Chinese and can write Japanese characters but feel that a REAL communication should be based on spoken words only. I felt weird writing characters in the air...
Mr. J.C.
Recently I have been thinking why some people in Asia have such a difficult time learning western languages and... -------------------------------------------------- "I'm afraid that I don't think so, as a Chinese, I feel that, it's not very difficult for us to learn European languages, such as English, German, French, or Italian. " Tionghua: I guess I should only have quoted the Japanese and Koreans since Chinese isn't an agglutinative language and, therefore, uses the SVO structure. That fact alone must make western languages easier to learn. "Also, maybe it wouldn't be much too hard to learn Arabic, Persian, or Turkish, if people tried their best to learn it as an interest, instead of a mission, in fact, I've never learned German, except having a glance at it, but my German friend told me that I speak it very well, just like another Chinese friend of mine, he studied Russian hard by himself, and a few years later, he went to Russia to fulfill his dream." I agree with you about trying hard, which can be a wonderful factor when combined with motivation to learn a language. I don't know about Persian, which I believe is a indo-european language but Turkish is also agglutinative and is apparently easy to learn. "In my humble opinion, agglutinative languages, such as Turkish, Uygur, Finnish, Hungarian, Mongolic, seem more difficult than Indo-European ones. " I guess we speak from the same point of view since our native languages are NOT agglutinative. I confess I struggled for a while learning Japanese but that effort turned out to be a boost when I started learning Korean. Do you mind if I ask which languages you have studied so far? 拜拜
J.C.:
In China, many people are good at recognizing Traditional Characters (正體字), and some people, such as me, are proficient in Tradi. Characters, as much as Taiwaners and Hongkongers, sometimes, when I read Japanese or Korean articles, I don't have to master their pronunciation in Jap. or Kor., the more Characters are written, the more clearly I understand, Japanese has a few self-made Characters, but it doesn't matter at all, I can still recognize what it should be in Chinese. Conversation, of course, is very important for everyone to communicate with others, but in those formal articles, we shouldn't make readers have a guess at some ambiguous and critical places, they have little time and energy to make kinds of imagination according to context or the aim of the writers. In brief, "While seeing the characters, then instantly understanding the meanings, even no need to master its pronunciation", of course, one should know clearly the pronunciation, if he really wants to learn them well and practise colloquial languages in public. In fact, I don't like Simplified Characters, because it cuts some necessary relations with ancient China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and if Chinese only learn Simplified ones, they won't be able, at least very difficult, to comprehend the articles of Chinese Wenyan, Japanese, Korean, maybe as well as Vietnamese (sorry, I don't know Vietnamese at all). Chinese characters might be a little difficult for Western learners, but it does match the demand of Chinese language itself, it's absolutely not the real best writting system for all languages, but no doubt, it was, is, and will be the best style which always fits Chinese languages most, at least, much better than Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hangul, or Arabic alphabet. If a Westerner has studied Chinese very well, he'd be able to understand what I'm trying to explain. Finally, I'd like to reply to your question "Do you mind if I ask which languages you have studied so far? ", as follows: Mandarin (native), Cantonese (a little), English (a little), Japanese & Korean (a little), French &Italian (a little), the language what I've wanted to learn (but no chance), might be Persian (Farsi). OK, thank you very much again. And wish you all the best. BTW, I've been using Ubuntu OS for a few months, would you like to have a try in future?
A, 远 (Simplified), 遠 (Traditional, Japanese, Korean)
B, 喝 (Mandarin), 飲 (Ancient Chinese, Nowadays Cantonese, Japanese, Korean) C, 说 (Mandarin), 話 (Ancient Chinese, Nowadays Cantonese, Japanese, Korean) D1, 去 (Mandarin) = go to ...... D2, 去 (Ancient Chinese) 1, leave, 2, get rid of, 3, (~miles/kilometers) apart from somewhere, 4, go to (the same as modern Mandarin). |