UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE -- REVISITED, 3RD TIME
The rise in literacy rate among the Chinese has been due to the
communist government's policy on universal education. Some want
to give the credit to the simplification of the Chinese
characters. But the truth of the matter is that the difficulty of
the language is only reduced very marginally by the
simplification. Being pictorial, the chief difficulty lies in the
particular character's referral. So, in the reading and
computer-aided writing, simplification really has no effect. It's
only in the manual writing the abbreviation of the strokes does make a
difference. But that has been done without the simplification was
introduce anyway.
More than anything, the simplification was a frontal assault on the
Chinese traditional culture. It's a culture of enjoying the
fullness of life's journey, rather than seeing how fast one can live
it, as the modern Western culture. The characters are living
embodiments of the various aspects of culture itself. Through
thousands years of evolution, the character words have been refined to
it's optimally esthetic forms. Some brushworks of Chinese
characters have become among the most treasured paintings of the world.
The simplification, in a way, is really causing teaching of mispelled
words
to the public.
One excuse for not going with this proposed universal language is
Esperanto. Well, go Esperanto, if you don't mind an instant
disruption in global communication.
And for those who want to retain both the simplified and traditional
Chinese languages, their aim seems to be to further de-universalize
language, not universalize it.
Appendix Language for Cultural Revival and Technology Catchup
The ethical
beauty of Chinese calligraphy, like music and dance, transgresses
language barriers. One may appreciate the visual impact of the
composition in its entirety, or feel the continuous flow of "Qi" of the
strokes in a balanced contrast of rhythmic movements. Nevertheless,
knowing the language may offer a better understanding.
(by S.L.Lee of Asiawind.com)
the real task before china today is the revive her chineseness, or
the asian roots that we share among others with korea and japan. this
reqire first reverse the westernization process. then try to seek out
common values in buddism and
confuciunism among all people of asia. one concrete program could be
the unification of the 3 languages in china, korea and japan.(the fact
that china has
two on her own may be viewed as an opportunity, since we can kill two
birds with
on stone).
my main intention is to shift our attention from what the 10% of the
aggresive population is doing in each country to the true aspiration of
the peace loving 90% who may very well want to erase the stupid
national boundaries.
Last time I counted, China has two languages. While this happens at
a time
when China is in desperate need of another language for her technology
development.
I am referring to the two types of written characters,
and the adoption of English for technology catchup with the developed
nations.
I consider myself to be in a unique position to commend on this
topic, since
I don't write Chinese and the little English I know has been the single
most
important factor in my success in technology as a Chinese.
Not being able to write in Chinese, what I see from the outside is a
very
wasteful, if not laughable, situation. Is China going to pass down to
all her
future generations two different written languages, pitting against
each
other to serve the same identical function? Is the simplied one here to
stay just for the purpose of trashing the most precious of all Chinese
culture, that is her written characters?
Simplifying the language sends a signal to the people to simplify
the culture.
Yes, I agree that on the other extreme of the issue of the
non-cultural
technology, we do need to simplify. But it's the technology-oriented
English,
not Chinese, which has historically been the single greatest obstacle
to
China's technological advancement. English as a alphabet or
representative
language lends better to abstract thinking and presentation.
We need to include as a subset of our Chinese language a
grammarless,
non-spoken, filtered, truncated(to 6 letters), 1000-words English
vocabulary,
geared specifically for technical application on the computer.
Such a set could also serve as a universal language for all other
non-English-speaking countries, who like China has been economically
discriminated from entering the English-dominated technology market
places.
A big bonus of learning this simplified English is that it
automatically turns
a person into a computer user. This will erase the digital divide.
This is high time to put words into action. And long pain not,
rather short pain.