One problem that I have with 中文 is that there’s too many kanji that have to be learned. While this doesn’t make it impossible for it spread beyond East Asia, it does slow it down substantially. A system that uses a smaller inventory of radicals, and generates all characters by combining them according to the meaning of each radical (as opposed to the phonetic wordplay that currently underlies the combination of radicals, which does not translate well into cultures not influenced by Chinese pronunciation) will be able to spread much faster than any current form of 中文.
Yeah - there’s a huge amount of characters that are the combination of some logogram with a phonetic marker. Memorizing these is about as hard as memorizing a short English word’s meaning purely from its shape if you disregard the sound.
In a vacuum, yes. But the implementation is harder. Requiring everyone to simultaneously change pronunciation and writing is more difficult than changing one or the other first. In Chinese, these two things can be separated.
And in a vacuum, yes. But if you think a global language is worthwhile, you’d settle for pronunciation or writing first, rather than demanding both. So while it is a desirable feature of a global language, it is not a necessary feature.
Alphabets are easy to learn, requiring perhaps two hours of studying to learn and apply the basics, plus a period of semi-passive absorption to more fluently master. Any language that uses an alphabet, especially one which uses the Latin Alphabet (which is widely known, even among people who don’t primarily communicate using it) will have minimal extra work to go between written and spoken forms of the language, especially if the language is designed with the goal of a global language in mind.
The statement “Chinese is more suitable as a global written language” (i.e. 中文) is one I agree with, but “Chinese is more suitable as a global language” without specifying written is one that I’m inclined to disagree with, since spoken languages are still just as important as written languages, and I do not endorse Mandarin as a universal spoken language.
University of Lyon researchers François Pellegrino, Christophe Coupé, and Egidio Marsico didn’t travel the world, nor did they survey every single language, but back in 2010, they did use the process above to determine the speech information rate of seven of the world’s most spoken languages: English, French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Mandarin, and German.
English came out on top, but not by much. Most of languages grouped pretty closely together, however, Japanese lagged behind the rest.
Interestingly, the languages that conveyed the least amount of information per syllable, like Spanish, Japanese, and French, tended to be spoken at a faster rate. This allowed these languages (apart from Japanese) to deliver a similar amount of information compared to more meaning-dense languages like Mandarin and English.
Chinese is more suitable as a global language because using it does not require everyone to adopt the same pronunciation.
One problem that I have with 中文 is that there’s too many kanji that have to be learned. While this doesn’t make it impossible for it spread beyond East Asia, it does slow it down substantially. A system that uses a smaller inventory of radicals, and generates all characters by combining them according to the meaning of each radical (as opposed to the phonetic wordplay that currently underlies the combination of radicals, which does not translate well into cultures not influenced by Chinese pronunciation) will be able to spread much faster than any current form of 中文.
Yeah - there’s a huge amount of characters that are the combination of some logogram with a phonetic marker. Memorizing these is about as hard as memorizing a short English word’s meaning purely from its shape if you disregard the sound.
I would think that everyone using the same pronunciation would be a desirable feature of a global language.
In a vacuum, yes. But the implementation is harder. Requiring everyone to simultaneously change pronunciation and writing is more difficult than changing one or the other first. In Chinese, these two things can be separated.
And in a vacuum, yes. But if you think a global language is worthwhile, you’d settle for pronunciation or writing first, rather than demanding both. So while it is a desirable feature of a global language, it is not a necessary feature.
Alphabets are easy to learn, requiring perhaps two hours of studying to learn and apply the basics, plus a period of semi-passive absorption to more fluently master. Any language that uses an alphabet, especially one which uses the Latin Alphabet (which is widely known, even among people who don’t primarily communicate using it) will have minimal extra work to go between written and spoken forms of the language, especially if the language is designed with the goal of a global language in mind.
The statement “Chinese is more suitable as a global written language” (i.e. 中文) is one I agree with, but “Chinese is more suitable as a global language” without specifying written is one that I’m inclined to disagree with, since spoken languages are still just as important as written languages, and I do not endorse Mandarin as a universal spoken language.
English is the most suitable as a global language because it conveys more information per syllable than any other language.