The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy
The Chinese Language  
Cover of the paperback edition
Cover of the paperback edition
Author(s) John DeFrancis
Language English
Genre(s) Nonfiction
Publisher University of Hawai'i Press
Publication date 1984
Media type Hardcover, Paperback
Pages 330
ISBN ISBN 0-8284-0866-5, ISBN 0-8248-1068-6 (paperback)

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.

Contents

Main points

  • There is not a unique "Chinese language". There is a group of related ways of speaking, which some may call dialects, others call topolects (a calque of Chinese 方言, fāngyán; DeFrancis uses the term "regionalects"), and still others would regard as separate languages, many of which are not mutually intelligible. One such variant, based on the 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 Chinese writing system has a heavy phonological basis, shown in the phonetic elements common in more than 95% of Chinese characters. 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 ideographic script; it is a poor phonetic script.
  • Although there are characters in the 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 symbols to stand for all possible individual concepts and where morphemes or phonemes would play no significant role in writing individual words. For instance, most Chinese words are written as phono-semantic compounds that include a non-ideographic, phonetic element.
  • The Chinese script, with its huge number of characters, its complexity and its irregularities, is harmful to the literacy improvement efforts of the 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

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Chinese language — Unless otherwise specified, Chinese texts in this article are written in (Simplified Chinese/Traditional Chinese; Pinyin) format. In cases where Simplified and Traditional Chinese scripts are identical, the Chinese term is written once. Chinese… …   Wikipedia

  • Chinese character classification — Chinese characters Scripts Precursors · Oracle bone script · Bronze script · Seal script (large, small) · Clerical script · Cu …   Wikipedia

  • Varieties of Chinese — Chinese Geographic distribution: mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore and other areas with historic immigration from China. Linguistic classification: Sino Tibetan Sinitic …   Wikipedia

  • Written Chinese — Chinese characters Scripts Precursors · Oracle bone script · Bronze script · Seal script (large, small) · Clerical script · C …   Wikipedia

  • Romanization of Mandarin Chinese — National language (國語; Guóyǔ) written in Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters, followed by Hanyu Pinyin, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, Tongyong Pinyin and Wade Giles romanizations. Chinese romanization Mandarin for Stand …   Wikipedia

  • Spoken Chinese — (zh st|s=中国话|t=華語 [The distinction here is made because areas where Traditional Chinese is still the legal standard, notably Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, people usually avoid calling spoken language Zhongguo Hua to avoid implicit connections with …   Wikipedia

  • The Final Fantasy Legend — This article is about the 1989 Game Boy game. For the similarly named 2010 mobile game, see Final Fantasy Legends: Hikari to Yami no Senshi. The Final Fantasy Legend Developer(s) Square Publisher(s) …   Wikipedia

  • The Diamond Age —   …   Wikipedia

  • The Saint of Dragons — is a fantasy novel by Jason Hightman. It is his first book and the first of a series, the second of which is called Samurai. PremiseThe premise of the novel is that Dragons (also known as Serpents, Serpentines, Pyrothraxes or Draconians) are in… …   Wikipedia

  • The End of Evangelion — Theatrical release poster Directed by Episode 25 : Kazuya Tsurumaki Episode 26 : Hideaki Anno …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”