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Re: Sidestepping Spelling Reform - Monosyllabic Characters

From:Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
Date:Monday, February 2, 2004, 4:35
Steve Cooney wrote:
> > Yes, Han is not *purely* ideographic - > (symbolproject.org glyphs avoids phonetic (mis)uses > for characters) but to say "it's not ideographic" is > disingenuous. It's is all at the same time - depending > on the origin of the character - pictographic, > logographic, and ideographic.
It's not ideographic at all! It's logographic. Each character represents a WORD in Chinese. Just because some characters had abstract origins, doesn't mean that the character is an abstract "idea".
> "Monosyllabism" seems to go hand in hand with > characters being logographic --presumably, over time, > the use of pictograms move a language toward > monosyllabism.
Ancient Egyptian used many polysyllables but used a logographic writing system. And Japanese kun-yomi are mostly 2 to 4 syllables. Writing systems have little or no effect on the basic structure of a language. I can't see how using a logographic system would make a language more monosyllabic.
> So, just because Chinese uses monosyllabic words in > combination like "mei-guo" ("Great country"-America), > it seems disingenuous to say that Mandarin (as a > specific example) is not "monosyllabic".
I think you're using "word" in a rather non-standard usage. From what I understand, most independent words in modern Chinese languages use 2 syllables, 2 morphemes which were historically independent words. However, to say that, for example, Meiguo is two words is like saying "earthworm" or "icicle" is two words. (And isn't the character for Mei "rice"?) -- "There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd, you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." - overheard ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42

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Steve Cooney <stevencooney@...>