Customer Reviews

Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning

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If you take a romantic view of Chinese characters as the embodiment of pure meaning, and if you want to remain in a state of innocence, then this book is not for you, because J. Marshall Unger will call into question everything you thought you knew about the nature of Chinese writing, and he will do it so convincingly that you will never think in the same way again.

Unger is concerned with a whole series of myths about Chinese characters that have grown up in the west (and to some degree even the countries that use them): they primarily represent ideas rather than sounds; they are universal, so that they allow speakers of mutually unintelligible languages in China to communicate perfectly by writing; that applying ideographic ideas to western languages would help to solve the problem of dyslexia; that each character represents a monosyllabic word; that an alphabetic system for writing Chinese would fail because it could not distinguish between homophones; and that Chinese characters produce a supremely successful writing system that has led to very high levels of literacy in far-eastern countries. He argues that all of these of these ideas are false.

As a Professor of Japanese, Unger is particularly concerned with the use of Chinese characters, or "kanji", in Japanese, but he also discusses their use in Chinese and Korean. In the past they were also used in Vietnamese, but the successful adoption of the Roman alphabet in Vietnam has led to higher degree of literacy than existed before. In a telling example, Unger quotes a remark of the Japanese educator Nitobe Inazo to the effect that blind Japanese people may have an advantage in education because they only need to memorize 47 symbols to be able to read anything at all in Japanese Braille, whereas sighted people need to memorize more than 2000 characters just to read a newspaper.

This is an astonishingly varied book, unlike any other. Its 200 pages deal not only with the Chinese and Japanese languages and how they are written, but also with techniques used by conjurers, Plato's ideal universal essences, the meaning of probability, the Gregg system of shorthand, the history of the Great Wall of China, computers and computing, and even the theory of comic pictures. All these are skilfully woven into a coherent argument, and by the end Unger's case seems overwhelming.

Parts of the book are easy and amusing to read, such as the humourist Dave Barry's account of Chinese writing where he explains that a slight mistake in drawing a character can convert its meaning from something like "man holding broom" to "sex with ostriches". Others are quite demanding, such as the discussion of the meaning of probability, with subtleties that are often poorly understood even by professionals.

This is an excellent book, highly recommended. The 2 reviews immediately above should be ignored. They probably haven't even read the book but regardless, it's obvious that neither one of them knows what he's talking about. Of the 3 prior reviews, only the first one is valid. I have an M.A. & Ph.D. in Japanese linguistics & I can definitely say that Unger knows what he's talking about. It's not the easiest book in the world to read but it's most definitely worth reading. The myth of the Chinese character as ideogram has needed debunking for many years & this book does an outstanding job of it.

Unger went to great lengths using flawed and exagerated reasonings to promote his view that Chinese characters are difficult and should be scrapped in favour of an alphapetic system. The reader who dislikes Chinese characters and favours them being scrapped for a romanised writing system might enjoy Unger's whimsical fairy tales, but for the reader who truly wants to learn/understand Chinese characters this book will set you back years in your learning.

For someone who has little knowledge of Chinese characters (or someone who hates them as much as Unger) his arguments may seem plausible, scientific even, as he goes to great lengths to apply various theories (i.e. the probability theory) to the Chinese language.

It may have been a humorous read were it not for the fact that he is considered an expert in the field and many might actually believe the drivel he put on paper, page after page, chapter after chapter. I am truly surprised that a scholar would take his own clearly biased views, twist most of the facts, conjure up fiction and publish them in a book that is presented as an enlightening sholarly work.

Unger didn't refute any myths about Chinese characters that DeFrancis did not cover in 'The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy' and he really only used these as a springboard for the mythological journey he takes the reader on. I believe that he has potentially created a whole new set of myths about Chinese characters.

If you want to see the Chinese writing system scrapped then this is probably the book for you. However, if you are serious about studying Chinese characters then don't waste your time with this pathetic drivel. You would be spending your money and time more wisely reading;

DeFrancis 'The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy'

and if you are wanting to actually learn the characters then;

McNaughton's 'Reading and Writing Chinese: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Chinese Writing System'

available in both Simplified and Traditional versions.

Wow, someone going through such details just to say another language is imperfect. How enlightening!! The point that the author misses is that written Chinese has over time united over thousands of dialects and tribes in China. It's not the most efficient language by all means but the fact that each written word can conjure up a meaning for the reader without any context for the most part is pretty expensive; unlike the so called bastardized modern Vietnamese that was forced on the natives by the French caucasians. The system is simple phonetics emulating sounds much like modern Japanese where the reader pretty much has to read in context and at times have to guess at the spoken word that the written word is trying to sound like. Gee thanks, taking away a people's own language is such a great achievment; kind of like imposing a western democracy onto a highly tribal and hierarchal middle eastern country. That's working out just swell, isn't it? And which language in this world can be written and be appreciated as art. So please, top patting yourselves on your backs if this book makes you feel so superior. Use knowledge not as a sword but as free food for all to share. Smuggness is really NOT a virtue, it may give you a temporary sense of smartness but in the end it blinds you to all the beauty outside of your pitiful lonely self.