Re: Optimum number of symbols

John Cowan wrote:
>
>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.
Just out of curiosity; By what splendid arguments did Mr Zhou convince the
romanizers of the faultiness of their position, or was it a case of the
time-honoured Communist explanation "'Cos the party sez so!"?

                                                           Andreas

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