Re: Optimum number of symbols

Thomas R. Wier scripsit:

> In China, I feel it has less to do with any sense by speakers that it
> is somehow "better" (according to some set of abstract criteria) than
> alternatives, rather than simply more convenient in the short-run.
> Unlike Europe, China has had since antiquity a largely continuous
> class of literati in whose interest it was to perpetuate the study
> of the Chinese classics which... were all written in the traditional
> logographs.
If that were really true, China wouldn't be using simplified characters
today.  There was a considerable movement, 1910-1958, for complete
romanization, but Zhou En-lai's speech in that year completely squelched
it as a reform (as opposed to the use of pinyin as a teaching method
and for communication with the non-hanzi world) in favor of character
simplification.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_