Re: intrinsic advantage of Latin alphabet over bopomofo (for Chinese)??

On Tue, 6 Mar 2007 08:41:51 -0000, "Dylan Sung"
<dylanwhs.tsktsktsk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


. . .
There is a slight advantage the Vietnamese have over Chinese Mandarin. If
you compare the phonemes of Mandarin putonghua to Vietnamese, Vietnamese has
a richer set of vowels, and endings conpared to Mandarin. The standard
Vietnamese language is transcribed to distinguish 6 tones. All in all, there
are far greater numbers of distinguishable syllables in Vietnamese than
there are in Mandarin. The success of quoc ngu may be because their language
is rich in phonemes that Mandarin doesn't possess.

I refer you to John Defrancis' The Chinese Language, Fact and Fiction in
regards to the use of Chinese as a pan-european writing system.


Lee Sau Dan later turns the argument on its head: Latin letters work
badly for Vietnamese because it's phonemically rich, work well for
Bahasa Indonesia because it's phonemically poor.

Maybe a few of the major languages should swap writing systems for a
year or so. It'd probably be pretty interesting.

Thanks, yes, I was thinking of John DeFrancis.
.

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