Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Strong Critique of Chinese Character-based Writing, December 25, 2002
Traditionally, four major East Asian languages have used Chinese characters for their writing systems: Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and, of course, Chinese. Wm. C. Hannas knows all of them, and in this book he uses that extensive knowledge to deliver a broadside against the Chinese characters' lack of efficiency as a writing system.Anyone familiar with John DeFrancis' work on the Chinese language will recognize some of Hannas' arguments (DeFrancis writes the forward for this book and was clearly an inspiration for Hannas' work). But Hannas is more wide-ranging in his scholarship and goes further with his arguments. The first part of the book introduces the four major languages that have used Chinese characters for their writing systems, introducing them in order of the frequency they presently use the characters. Thus, Chinese -- which is comprised entirely of characters -- is introduced first and Vietnamese -- which no longer uses any characters -- is introduced last. This part describes the history of each languages' writing system and is highly readable. After the languages have been introduced, the second part of the book critiques the Chinese character-based writing system. This part varies between highly readable sections and some more abstruse sections that deal with linguistic, analytical, and even psychological arguments that require close readings by the layman who doesn't have an expertise or at least a strong interest in those areas. But these arguments are the meat of Hannas' book as he looks at what Chinese characters represent, reading and literacy in Chinese character-based scripts, and even whether those writing systems are really appropriate for East Asian languages as some people have argued. The third and final part winds down with a look at why reform of the Chinese character-based writing system fails (as Hannas argues it does) as well as what the future is likely to hold for it. One chapter alone is dedicated to the effect computers are having on characters. I found this part the least plausible of the three and also somewhat repetitive as arguments made earlier were restated. While I agree with most of Hannas' general arguments and found his book both highly interesting and entertaining, I also think he greatly overstates his case. Hannas seems to actually believe that characters are on their way out. The growth in education and wealth, as well as the general social vibrance found in so many of the societies which still use Chinese characters suggests, at the very least, that perhaps inefficiency in a writing system is simply not an important aspect to a well-functioning, modern society -- that whatever impact it has is more negligible than Hannas imagines. But disagreements over some of its points shouldn't be a reason not to read this outstanding book. Hannas' scholarship, lucid writing, and forceful exposition will give anyone who has experience with any of the East Asian languages that use Chinese characters a wonderful read.
|
|
|
10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Interesting, February 22, 2001
By A Customer
I found this book to be a well written and interesting look at the use of Chinese characters. It uncovers some of the commonly held misconceptions about the use of the characters. It does a very thorough job of examining the differences between them and phonetic alphabetic scripts. The book covers the use of characters in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The view of Hannas is that the characters are "on their last leg". I have discussed this book with several of my Chinese, Japanese, and Korean friends and they all seem to disagree with Hannas and are not in favor of abolishing the use of the characters. Hannas claims that he is not writing from the point of view of a disgruntled Westerner, but sometimes this is hard to believe. The introduction by John DeFrancis states that Hannas is one of the few people (Western or Asian) to have mastered Chinese (several "dialects")Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. I would highly recommend this book for anyone curious about East Asian languages. As an aside, I'm sure that an Asian could find plenty of things about English that do not make sense and should be changed!
|
|
|
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
a biased view about Hangul and East Asian people, March 4, 2009
As you can imagine from other reviews, Hannas argue that (a) the Chinese writing system is ineffective and (b) it is an obstacle to genuine scientific creativity. I suspect that (a) is quite uncontroversial but (b) is an unsupported, biased claim. However, my primary complaint is not these points. Rather, I find out that his discussion on Hangul (the Korean writing system) is, sorry, quite ridiculous.
Here are his most problematic claims: (c) "... Hangul, while alphabetic, was like every other writing system in East Asia unable to escape the Sinistic paradigm that accords prominence to syllables and not words." (d) "Replacing Hangul with a Romanized Script would, moreover, solve certain problems associated with the former, such as (e) its non-use internationally; its (f) incompatibility with much foregin, alphabet-based computer software; (g) the relative inefficiency of Hangul computer input and output; and, (h) most important, the syllabic mentality that frustrates genuine writing reform and leaves the Korean language to the sinistic paradigm."
Let me focus on (c). I agree to Hannas' claim that the Chinese writing system is ineffective; for, you don't want to memorize tens of thousands of characters to write anything. However, this is mainly because it is not phonetic. Hannas claims that although phonetic, Hangul is somehow bad because it focuses upon syllables, not phonemes. But why? If there are too many syllables to memorize, then it can be ineffective for the same reason as the Chinese writing system is. But each Hangul syllable is parsed into phonetic characers, selected from only twenty four. Hannas seems to think that the syllabilistic structure itself is somehow intrinsically bad, for which he provides no argument.
His suggestion of replacig Hangul with a Roman system is even more laughable. Look at the reasons for his suggestion, (e)-(h). First, (e). It is true that Hangul is not used for any other language than Korean. However, it does a very good job for that langauge, and Hannas does not explain why we have to measure the efficiency of a writing system on the basis of anything other than its working for the intended language.
Second, (f). Hannas seems to have a reversed view about softwares: Rather than making them work for us, *we* should try to go along with them well. However, the truth is that nowadays, every widely used operating system was improved to support Hangul, and so the softwares came to serve the people, not the opposite.
Third, my last point also covers (g): In recent operaring systems, displaying a Hangul letter has become just as easy as displaying an English letter. And, typing Hangul texts is potentially more effective, because it is possible to design the system so that you can input the consonant and vowel at the same time.
Fourth, (h). Again, Hannas complains that somehow, syllabilistic writing system is intrinsically bad. My same objection: He provides no argument for that.
Finally, let me talk about (b), his claim that the Chinese writing system have kept the East Asian countries from scientific creativity. To defend this claim, he points out that historically, those countries have not made lots of contribution to science. But compare the following arguments:
Premise 1. Not many East Asian people have been good scientists.
Premise 2. If Premise 1, it is because of their poor writing system.
Conclusion. Not many East Asian people have been good scientists because of their poor writing system
Premise 1. Not many African Americans have been good scientists.
Premise 2. If Premise 1, it is because of their poor intelligence.
Conclusion. Not many African Americans have been good scientists because of their poor intelligence.
If you accept the first argument, why don't you accept the second?
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Christopher Seeley
by S. Robert Ramsey
by Daniel Kane
