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== Local Lede ==
{{TOCleft}
[[:en:The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy]]
'''''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.
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== Local Lede ==
{{TOCleft}
[[:en:The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy]]
'''''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.
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== See also ==
== See also ==
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