Talk:The Chinese Language: Fact and Fanstasy

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Received this yesterday and am part way thru it. See the basic problem and will write it up either here or on the obverse. In summary, a lot of it comes across as petty and pedantic. For example, on the essential matter of whether or not the Hanzi carry meaning, stated as the negation of the "myth" 'Chinese characters represent ideas instead of sounds', DeFrancis grants both that the characters have meaning and are intermediate between phonemes and words being closer to the latter. The rest is like that, it's all basically a lack of perspective, some valid points being made, most but not all of which will be already known to knowledgeable readers, but a lack of a bigger picture, in particular to the matter of whether a universal script should be logographic or alphabetic, etc. Root 14:44, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The first talk thread at the English wiki gives a criticism of the work, I think someones thesis. In any cae, it the English article, and ATM the obverse of this page, don't present any dissenting opinion to its (the book's) thesis which is a pretty contentious and significant one. 32.137.23.19 16:06, 30 January 2010 (UTC)