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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Korean: Odd man out?
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References: <4kd461$hr1@juliana.sprynet.com> <SDLEE.96Apr14112142@champion.cs.hku.hk> <Dpuyzu.zM@midway.uchicago.edu> <4krq90$ckh@news1.panix.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 03:32:01 GMT
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In article <4krq90$ckh@news1.panix.com>, Dave Lewis <mambo@panix.com> wrote:
[snip]
>Anyway, the multiplicity of phonetics (or whatever they are) is just a
>technique for generating a large number of distinct graphic forms that
>are still fairly easy to remember.  (And if anyone wants to object that
>they're *not* easy to remember, I would suggest that they use a different
>language than English, which, as we all know, is an orthographic 
>nightmare, with a huge number of spellings that have to be memorized 
>(including singular and plural verb forms where singularity and plurality
>usually have nothing to do with the meaning of the verb).)

You almost had me agreeing with you until your parenthetic comment.
What do singular and plural verb forms have to do with the arbitrariness
of English spelling?  The only verbal number inflection is /-s/ in the
present tense third person singular, which is, orthographically, as
straightforward as the nominal plural /-s/.  I can only thing of two
exceptions--is and has (and "to be" and "to have" are highly irregular
in a great many languages).

As for the genius of Chinese in "generating a large number of distinct
graphic forms that are still fairly easy to remember", well, a similar
motivation is responsible for much of the arbitrariness of English
orthography.  In fact, Ekki (a sci.lang regular) has held up English
with its "irregularities" as a model for the romanised Hoklo he intends
to help create.

>Written Chinese, as far as I know, is unique in that it can be considered
>to be made of a couple of layers of "alphabets": the characters can often
>be broken down into anywhere between two and four "subcharacters" which
>in turn are made up of recognizeable (or not!) components, all ultimately
>reducible (again with some arbitrariness) into the six(?) fundamental
>brush-strokes.  

An alphabet is *not* just any graphical system for representing language.
Nothing about the Chinese writing system is remotely alphabetic.  More-
over, other non-alphabetic scripts (notably hieroglyphics) can be broken
down into "subcharacters" and "recognisable components" the way Chinese
can (though obviously those that were seldomn, if ever, put on paper 
cannot be further broken down into "brush strokes").

>Maybe this is more time-consuming to learn than a single
>alphabet, but the main purpose of a language is not to be learned, but
>to be used.  

It's also more time-consuming to use, as anyone who's ever tried to
take dictation or type in Chinese knows.

>By the time you learn to read an alphabetic language fluently,
>you're reading more like word by word than letter by letter.  Once you get
>used to it, it's probably marginally easier to read relatively compact
>Chinese characters than alphabetic words trailing across the page.

Recent cross-cultural studies of reading comprehension have shown this.
They've further shown that writing systems with distinct spelling variants
for homophones (like English) are slightly easier to read than those with-
out.

>>	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
>>	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
>>				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
>
>(Speaking of ideograms, what is that thing anyway?  Railroad tracks?  An
>inverted "gay pride" emblem?  A Masonic symbol?  A Christmas tree?)

All of the above.

More fundamentally, it is a combination of two common alphabetic letters.


-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
