The Chinese Language: Fact and Fanstasy: Difference between revisions
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[[:en:The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy]] | [[:en:The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy]] | ||
{{Infobox Book | |||
| name = The Chinese Language | |||
| title_orig = | |||
| translator = | |||
| image = [[Image:Defrancis.jpg|Cover of the paperback edition]] | |||
| image_caption = Cover of the paperback edition | |||
| author = [[John DeFrancis]] | |||
| illustrator = | |||
| cover_artist = | |||
| country = | |||
| language = English | |||
| series = | |||
| subject = | |||
| genre = Nonfiction | |||
| publisher = University of Hawai'i Press | |||
| release_date = 1984 | |||
| english_release_date = | |||
| media_type = Hardcover, Paperback | |||
| pages = 330 | |||
| isbn = ISBN 0-8284-0866-5, ISBN 0-8248-1068-6 (paperback) | |||
| preceded_by = | |||
| followed_by = | |||
}} | |||
'''''The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy''''' is a book written by [[John DeFrancis]], published in 1984 by University of Hawaii Press. The book describes some of the concepts underlying the [[Chinese language]] and [[writing system]], and gives the author's position on a number of ideas about the language. | |||
==Main points== | |||
* There is not a unique "[[Chinese language]]". There is a group of related ways of speaking, which some may call [[dialect]]s, others call [[topolect]]s (a [[calque]] of Chinese [[wikt:方言|方言]], fāngyán; DeFrancis uses the term "[[regionalect]]s"), and still others would regard as separate [[language]]s, many of which are not [[Mutual intelligibility|mutually intelligible]]. One such variant, based on the [[Beijing dialect|speech]] of the [[Beijing]] area, has been chosen as the [[standard language]] in the [[People's Republic of China]], and is now known as "[[Putonghua]]", or common language. | |||
* The [[Written Chinese|Chinese writing system]] has a heavy [[Phonology|phonological]] basis, shown in the phonetic elements common in more than 95% of [[Chinese character]]s. Unfortunately they are missing from many common characters, and were removed from numerous "simplified" characters, causing many scholars to miss the point that they are a necessary resource for Chinese readers. It is not a brilliant [[Ideogram|ideographic]] script; it is a poor [[Phoneme|phonetic]] script. | |||
* Although there are characters in the [[Written Chinese|Chinese writing system]] that visually represent concepts, such as 一 二 三 for ''one'', ''two'', and ''three'', Chinese writing is not ideographic in the sense that the symbols represent ideas divorced from language. There can be no such thing as a completely ideographic writing system, where there would be [[symbol]]s to stand for all possible individual concepts and where [[morphemes]] or [[phoneme]]s would play no significant role in writing individual words. For instance, most Chinese words are written as [[Chinese character#Phono-semantic compounds|phono-semantic compounds]] that include a non-ideographic, phonetic element. | |||
* The Chinese script, with its huge number of [[Chinese character|characters]], its complexity and its irregularities, is harmful to the [[literacy]] improvement efforts of the [[Chinese people|Chinese society]], and needs to be replaced by a more efficient [[writing system]] if China is to achieve the benefits of modernization. | |||
==Six myths== | |||
A good portion of the book is devoted to debunking what DeFrancis calls the "six myths" of Chinese characters. The myths are: | |||
* '''''The Ideographic Myth''''': Chinese characters represent ideas instead of sounds. | |||
* '''''The Universality Myth''''': Chinese characters enable speakers of mutually unintelligible languages to read each other's writing. (Also, to the extent this is possible, this is due to a special property that only Chinese characters have.) Furthermore, Chinese from thousands of years ago is immediately readable by any literate Chinese today. | |||
* '''''The Emulatability Myth''''': The nature of Chinese characters can be copied to create a universal script, or to help people with learning disabilities learn to read. | |||
* '''''The Monosyllabic Myth''''': All words in Chinese are one syllable long. Alternatively, any syllable found in a Chinese dictionary can stand alone as a word. | |||
* '''''The Indispensability Myth''''': Chinese characters are necessary to represent Chinese. | |||
* '''''The Successfulness Myth''''': Chinese characters are responsible for a high level of literacy in East Asian countries. (A weaker version of this myth is simply that despite the flaws of Chinese characters, East Asian countries still have a high level of literacy.) | |||
All of these are dealt with in separate chapters, at length, in the book. | |||
== See also == | |||
* [[:en:Varieties of Chinese]] | |||
== External links == | |||
* [http://www.alvestrand.no/books/chinese-language.php A review of the book] <!-- (note that the review author inserted the text above, so this is NOT a copyright violation) --> | |||
* [http://www.pinyin.info/readings/chinese_language.html Table of contents of the book and a sample chapter] | |||
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