Re: Mixed writing systems (WAS: Newbie says hi)

>From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
>
>Wait till you hear what children have to go through to learn how to
>read/write Mandarin...
>
> > How
> > much longer does it take to learn an ideographic system, how much
>education
> > time does it eat up?
>[snip]
>
>If you're counting years, probably equivalent to English. (No, I'm not
>kidding. There may be a LOT more ideographs to learn, but once you have a
>basic set, learning the rest is just the same as learning more arcane
>words in English once you mastered the basics. I.e., learning to write new
>ideographs once you grasped the basics is essentially the same as learning
>to spell a new word.)
>
>But if you're counting *hours*, then I agree, it's a lot more. When you
>first start learning to write Chinese characters, you basically have to
>sit down every day, and copy a set of about 5-10 characters about 50-100
>times. Yep, we have exercise books with pages divided into squares, with
>characters written across the top row. Our daily task is then to copy
>these characters down the columns. Initially, you actually have to fill a
>page or half a page with the SAME character until you can produce a
>decent-looking copy (as determined by the teacher). Later, you're assumed
>to be able to learn new characters more easily, so you only have to fill
>the columns for each character. (But then there will be more characters
>per day to learn, so that doesn't make it any easier.)
>
>And if you know anything about Chinese characters, you know that this is a
>very non-trivial task, as some characters take so many strokes to produce
>that you could've written a 10-page English essay in the number of strokes
>it takes to fill a page. (I had the (mis)fortune to learn the traditional,
>non-simplified Chinese writing. Unfortunately, I found the ordeal too much
>for me, and so did not learn very much at all. Now, to my great regret, I
>can no longer read/write Chinese beyond the grade 1 level.) Not to mention
>the additional exercises the teacher will give you (for the SAME
>characters) if she thinks your writing isn't good enough. Or if you didn't
>draw the strokes in the right order. (Somehow the teachers could always
>tell the difference. Go figure.)
>
>And I haven't talked about writing with ink & brush yet. We had to fill
>pages upon pages of characters written with ink & brush. Now I'm sure you
>know how agile children are at drawing those delicate thick-to-thin,
>thin-to-thick strokes, complete with serifs, the right thickness, right
>amount of curvature, etc., etc., etc., all the while managing to not spill
>ink all over themselves, the table, the chair, and on top of a precious,
>almost completed page of painstakingly painted characters. (And did I
>mention the ink stinks? And the brushes are so delicate that there is no
>way a child can handle one without completely ruining the bristles, making
>it impossible to produce writing of the demanded quality until the poor
>parents shell out more cash to buy a replacement. Thank goodness that
>toward the end of primary school, people started inventing sponge-tipped
>brushes, which are a LOT more manageable for kids who aren't going to
>become professional Chinese calligraphers. Those bristles sure were a
>hairy affair.)
>
>
>T
This is clearly a major ordeal. Is there not a case for saying ideographic
systems are a more primitive form of writing system than syllabaries, and
syllabaries than alphabets? An ideographic system is not too bad if not too
many people have to learn it, such as in ancient Egypt where (AFAIK) it was
the language only of the special scribes. Probably that was the case once
with Chinese, but in modern times people believe in universal education, and
if you are still using an ideographic that means trying to teach *all*
children the same cumbersome, intricate corpus of symbols. That's clearly a
lot of struggle and heartache.

How much is the Roman notation for Chinese being used these days?

Mat


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