pluiepoco

Hi, everybody here on the forum,

I'm sorry to bother you on this topic.

But in China itself, we Chinese are arguing about changing our own Chinese characters, you know, Chinese writting is magic and of course looks very difficult, but that does not seem to be hard to native Chinese at all!

Even though, many native technologists, and linguists, want to reform our own writtings of Chinese language, some want to latinise it, some what to produce new phonetic letters like Korean, and so on.

They hold a saying that, Chinese characters impede Chinese language to be acknowledged by all the world, especially when the most part of world are in latin writting system; and Chinese characters are hard to learn, are impossible to be displayed on a foreign network terminal, and so on. They just want to say that, Chinese characters don't use letters like Roman, which can indicate the pronouciation of words themselves, but Chinese characters are to showing the meanings of words directly, so when a foreigner does want to type Chinese or browse Chinese information on computer on Internet, it's impossible unless his/her computer is installed with a Chinese program or system, (sorry for my bad descriptions, I don't know technique norms),

Despite their claims of changing Chinese characters, most Chinese including me don't think so, because I have seen some friends here from Europe, Australia, Africa, Russia, America, and other places of the world, they can type into the forum real Chinese characters like“谢谢Thank you”, "再见Goodbye", so if anyone of you here, can type Chinese in your own computer, please tell me the truth, whether you need a special program to be installed into your computer before finnaly being able to write in Chinese not pinyin?

Or if you have some knowledge of Chinese or are interested in this language or anything in relation, please do not hesitate to let me know, and share your opinions under this post.

Thank you for your time and consideration!

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刘晓雨 pluiepoco
Home of Asia, 中国语言论坛(Chinese Forum of Languages), 西瓜村

The_FD

Well that's true we don't have to own windows or any OS in chinese to operate chinese characters, a single small software installation is required. I can perfectly read and write chinese characters on my computers.

Though China is not the only country that wants to change the writing. Despite Germany and France for example are not facing such heavy arguments as computer compatibility problems, lots of people in those countries want to get the spelling simplified. And it is is really argued.

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L'histoire de la famille Bourdillon
Les fêtes d'Hébé
The flying dancer dancing

chinoise

I object.....

Nadine

Hello Pluiepoco,
Hi everyone,

Obviously, the reason for changing the chinese characters into latin script is economical. I suppose it would make communicating easier, if it were written in latin script...

But : in my point of view, Chinese is Chinese and one should not change the characters. It wouldn't be chinese anymore. It would loose its beauty and authenticity.
The same for any other language, for that matter.

Nadine

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In the summer I stretch out on the shore and think of you. Had I told the sea what I felt for you,
It would have left its shores, its shells, its fish, and followed me.Nizar Qabbani.
When I drown my eyes in your eyes, I glimpse the deepest dawning and see the ancient times;
I see what I do not comprehend and feel the universe flowing between your eyes and mine. Adonis.
You're beautiful, you're beautiful... But it's time to face the truth. I will never be with you. James Blunt.

pluiepoco

Thank you for all your kind replies.

I really object to this campaign of reforming Chinese characters.

I hope it's only a small group of academics who are pursuing their personal scholar honors, which would not finalise a social compaign.

Yet the absolutely most part of Chinese people are still living in an ordinary life, with too many traditional and cultural deposit.

We can be internationalised, but we cannot lose our roots that we are a independent nation of specific identity. That is why we are called "中国人".

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刘晓雨 pluiepoco
Home of Asia, 中国语言论坛(Chinese Forum of Languages), 西瓜村

Jean Fred

Well Pluiepoco, this has been a serious issue for many decades with such prominent writers as Lu Xun pushing real hard.
The very nature of chinese makes romanization an at least doubtful enterprise. One han si, one sound, one meaning, the basic logics of the language and its writing can't be twisted into the combinatory gym of an alphabet or syllabary.Plus the tones (not speaking of cantonese).
Otherwise pinyin would have been the answer which it's definitely not.
Furthermore changing the readers apprehension from global to analytical
would take several generations to come to achievement if any.
As a pretty awkward reader in chinese an japanese I'd like things to be different, but it wouldn't be in the best interest of a country that has to cope with a number of languages which at least share a common writing.So I support your standpoint which I believe is sound and realistic.

pidr1nhu

I think that for the world to learn chinese is so much complicated, it involves much time, I mean at least 10 years, in order to build a solid base and began to discover the secrets of chinese language. In this globalized world, it would be better for the companies to hire a chinese native who speaks english very well instead of supporting foreign chinese learners. Regarding the ideas from many native technologists and linguists who want to produce new phonetic letters and therefore link the chinese writing to the latin one, it's well thought, I mean you don't need to forget the chinese traditional writing ( with all those characters ) but create another means to non-asian learners to be able to communicate and get into the china world. So the final conclusion would be, create and establish the 'latinised' chinese language, easing the communication and those who still wants to familiarize yourself with all those characters, GO AHEAD!