Asia's Orthographic DilemmaWilliam C. Hannas
Asia's Orthographic Dilemma
by William C. Hannas · first published 1997
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Read Asia's Orthographic Dilemma by William Hannas. Apparently, not only is there a ridiculous number of symbols to learn, the dogma that all the spoken versions share the same written language is not true. Also, writers commonly make…
on “'They say Chinese is difficult - European languages are more difficult'” ↗…time/money. And so, at least in China, all the literati went into civil service jobs, and had little incentive to publish books which would shake up the status quo. You may be interested in the book Asia's Orthographic Dilemma by William Hannas.
on “Why Japan didn’t create the iPod” ↗…but there are translations, and if you're really into it, you can still go and learn it, see a). Great resources on these issues, btw: * "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy", John DeFrancis * "Asia's Orthographic Dilemma", Wm. C. Hannas, extract available here http://www.pinyin.info/readings/orthographic.html * Pinyin Info, http://www.pinyin.info/ * Language Log, http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/ , in particular…
on “Zhou Youguang, creator of the Pinyin writing system, has died” ↗…of what are usually called "dialects" but, since they are mutually unintelligible, might better be considered parallel to the various languages that make up the Romance group of languages." 2. From "Asia's Orthographic Dilemma" by Wm. C. Hannas: "some eighty million or more people living in China [...] speak non-Chinese languages written in alphabetic or indigenous systems. [...] If we ignore this inconvenient phenomenon and…
on “Zhou Youguang, creator of the Pinyin writing system, has died” ↗On this issue, see also "The Homonym problem", in Wm. C. Hannas, Asia's Orthographic Dilemma: http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/east_asian_languages.html#...
on “Kenya will start teaching Chinese to elementary school students from 2020” ↗…resources: * Pinyin Info, http://www.pinyin.info/ * Language Log, http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/ , in particular Victor Mair's posts * "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy", John DeFrancis * "Asia's Orthographic Dilemma", Wm. C. Hannas, extract available here http://www.pinyin.info/readings/orthographic.html
on “Zhou Youguang, creator of the Pinyin writing system, has died” ↗…own regional pronuncia- tions. But, far from unifying Chinese, this practice only perpetuates differences that would have been leveled out long ago under the influence of a phonetic script." — Hannas, Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, Ch.8, Appropriateness to East Asian Languages
on “Mass Retraction of unethical Chinese Forensic Genetics Papers” ↗