Re: The origins of writing

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 06/19/04 

Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 12:12:11 GMT

alexB wrote:
>
> "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:40D33123.4261@worldnet.att.net...
> > AlexB wrote:
> The idiographic writing by
> >
> > true
> >
> > > Chinese has nothing to do with that. It is not phonetic. Like Egyptians they
> >
> > false

I mark the relevant passage from your quotation (though an author and
date would have been more useful than a URL):

> "One major difference between Chinese concepts of language and Western
> concepts is that Chinese makes a sharp distinction between written language
> (wen) and spoken language (yu). This distinction extends to the distinction
> between written word (zi) and spoken word (hua). The concept of a distinct
> and unified combination of both written and spoken forms of language is much
> less strong in Chinese than in the West. There are a variety of spoken
> Chinese, the most prominent of which is Mandarin. There is however only one
> uniform written script. (See section below.)
>
> "The Chinese written language employs the Han characters (?? pinyin hànzì),
> which are named after the Han culture to which they are largely attributed.
> Chinese characters appear to have originated in the Shang dynasty as
> pictograms depicting concrete objects. The first examples we have of Chinese
> characters are inscriptions on oracle bones, which are occasionally sheep
> scapula but mostly turtle plastrons (lower shells) used for divination
> purposes. Over the course of the Zhou and Han dynasties, the characters
> became more and more stylized. Also, additional components were added so
> that many characters contain one element that gives (or at least once gave)
> a fairly good indication of the pronunciation, and another component (the
> so-called "radical") gives an indication of the general category of meaning
> to which the character belongs.

*****
> In the modern Chinese languages, the
> majority of characters are phonetically based rather than logographically
> based. An example would be the character for the word ? àn that means "to
> press down." It contains ? an (peace), which serves as its phonetic
> component, and ? shou (hand), that indicates that the action is frequently
> one that is done using one's hand.
*****
 
> "Chinese characters are understood as morphemes that are *independent* of
> phonetic change. Thus, although the number one is "yi" in Mandarin, "yat" in
> Cantonese and "tsit" in Hokkien, they derive from a common ancient Chinese
> word and still share an identical character: ?. Nevertheless, the
> orthographies of Chinese dialects are not identical. The vocabularies used
> in the different dialects have also diverged. In addition, while literary
> vocabulary is often shared among all dialects (at least in orthography; the
> readings are different), colloquial vocabularies are often different.
>
> "The complex interaction between the Chinese written and spoken languages
> can be illustrated with Cantonese. There are two standard forms used in
> writing Cantonese: formal written Cantonese and colloquial written
> Cantonese. Formal written Cantonese is very similar to written Mandarin and
> can be read by a Mandarin speaker without much difficulty. However, formal
> written Cantonese is rather different from spoken Cantonese. Colloquial
> written Cantonese is more similar to spoken Cantonese but is largely
> unreadable by an untrained Mandarin speaker.
>
> http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinlng2.html
>
> At the link below there is a picture of a Chinese typewriter.
>
> "The tray contains over 2,000 characters, with several thousand more being
> available on other trays. The typist first aligns the tray, then presses a
> key, which makes an arm pick up the required character and strike it against
> the paper.
>
> It is a little monster.

Um, have you ever seen a computer? If such typewriters were ever
actually used, they aren't any more.

> The point I am trying to make is that the number of ideographic elements
> (characters) vastly exceeds the number of sounds in any Chinese dialect.
> Notwithstanding the quotes above I do not believe the Chinese has a phonetic
> system of writing. It seems to me that the abovementioned phonetic elements
> are simply pictures of many basic words whose pronounciation is considered
> well know and they may serve as a reference or a cue as to how to say this
> and that. It is logical since the need for compound characters has been
> rising over the years anyway.

And for how many months have you studied Chinese, to be able to draw
this conclusion for yourself?

Similarly, how much Egyptian have you studied? 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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