Re: Chinese writing systems

>>I don't think it would make them much more distant, expept for those who
>>want to learn the language.
>
>You said it yourself, it would make them more distant from "other asian
>nations". Did you actually read what you wrote?
>
>Here it is again:
>
>"
>>It would get china closer to some part of the world, but again, more
>>distant with some other asian nations which have had strong relations
>>with china for hundreds (thousands?) of years.
>"
>
>
>You keep overanalyzing things and not answering the question. SO again, i
>ask you, how does China using Pinyin make it more distant with some other
>asian nations? You never specified learning, but again, how does someone
>learning Chinese in Pinyin make China "More distant with some other asian
>nations"?
>
>Remember, that's YOUR quote.
>
>>
>>
>>But i also don't belive it would make them closer to the roman writing
>>world.
>
>I never said you said this and that's not what i'm asking.

actualy what i do not prepare what i say, so i may not always be perfectly clear, and
being not very clear in many different postings can come out to apparent
contradiction. Let's (try to) make clear of this one.

I was first answering someone who told that giving up hanzi for roman letters
would make china closer to other nations, since every body is familiar to roman
letters. Answering this one, i was not debating the point that choosing a
writing system can make countries closer or not. I meant that IF common writing
system can make closer, choosing roman instead of hanzi would get china close
to nation who use roman letters, but on the same time it would make it more
distant to nations who use hanzi. "If common writing can make nation closer".
that is probably what i forgot to say at that time. What i said in a later post
is i am actualy not so sure that it was actualy the case.

And i don't think that using pinyin can cause problems of any kind. As long as it
is used the way it is now: giving phonetic explanations about hanzi when you
need to do so, that is in dictionary, children's book, or such.

I think there would be problems if you try to use pinyin INSTEAD of hanzi, for
common use to write every thing.
Learning chinese in pinyin does not make any one distant to anything. My point is it is
just impossible to write chinese in pinyin, if you want your text to be
understadable.

So in short:

Pinyin is unsuitable for writing mandarin, it can only be use as a phonetic explanation.

It would be very hard to devise a coherent and usable writing system based on an
alphabet, due to the large number of homophones. And if possible, there is
still the problem of the high number of dialects. No system based on phonetic
represntaton can match them all, and devsing as many system as needed to match
all dialect families would lead to breaking the current situation of global
understanding through writen language.

More over(but it is secondary), the use of hanzi is helpfull for people from some
other countries who also use hanzi. It does not let them understand every
thing, but gives a strong help.

I hope my point of view is more clear this time. If not, or if you have doubts
about something else, don't hesitate to ask again.