为什么中国成为少数几个不转换为字母书写系统的国家之一？ [美国媒体]

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Why does China remain one of the few countries to not switch over to an alphabet-based writing system?

为何中国是少数几个未转换到基于字母的书写系统的国家之一？


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Alex McCutcheon Presenter at HKSTV
Answered 12h ago
Chinese characters are by far the most elegant writing system humans have produced. It's not without its quirks but its information density speed of reading and general beauty is in my opinion unmatched. The concept of a pictogram decoupled from pronunciation means that as phonetics changed over the years as they do in every language the characters didn't have to be redesigned. And as regional varieties diverged written texts remained accessible to speakers of all the dialects providing a direct lix to history and a common thread throughout what was only a few decades ago a disparate nation. Imagine asking your average English speaker to read anything older than Shakespeare or something written in Danish or Icelandic. This is the beauty of Chinese characters. Even Chinese Japanese and Koreans (depending on age and level of education) can have a basic conversation using a pen and some scrap paper without knowing a lick of each other's spoken language simply due to the consistency and stability of their common writing system. Oh and it's not THAT hard to learn but it does take some time if you're an adult and perhaps a whole lifetime of you're not at all interested in how it works. But for most kids the symbolism and the elegance of the system are more than enough to ensure smooth acquisition along with the spoken language.

汉字是至今人类创造的最为优雅的书写系统。它不是没有缺点的，但是其信息密度、阅读速度、和整体美感在我看来无比伦比。所有的语言的语音在时间长河中都会改变，而与发音脱钩的象形文字系统意味着汉字无须重新设计。尽管地域间千差万别，书写下来的文字仍可为所有不同的方言提供一条主线的直观历史，贯穿这个数十年前还是四分五裂的国家。试想一下要一个普通英文读者去阅读比莎士比亚还要古老的作品抑或是用丹麦语、冰岛语写的东西会是怎样的情况。这正是中国汉字之美。书写系统的持续性和稳定性甚至可以让中国人、日本人、韩国人(取决于年龄和教育水平)用一支笔和几张纸进行基本的对话，而不用对彼此的语言有一点的了解。哦，学习它没有那么难。作为成年人，学习汉语确实需要一些时间，而如果你对汉语不感兴趣的话，那可能需要一辈子的时间去学习才可能学会。 但是，对大多数孩子来说，系统的象征性和优雅性足以保证其能与口语同样顺利的学会。

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Some other respondents have suggested that speakers of other languages might adopt characters over an alphabetic system but I don't agree. To transcribe non-Chinese words and names using Chinese characters is an absolute nightmare and not worth the effort (for example my full name of twenty English letters takes a full ten Chinese characters to transcribe and even then you need a lot of knowledge of convention to have a hope of translating it back to English). But the increasing push by the Chinese government to stamp out foreign writing within the Chinese language (eg no longer on sports news do presenters say “NBA” or “F1” instead they use the translated full name or a Chinese-language abbreviation instead) suggests that even in those special situations where Chinese characters really don't work the vast majority of the Chinese speaking population will be using them.

其他一些答主认为其他语言可以用汉字构建文字系统，但是我不同意。用汉字转写非汉语单词和名字绝对是恶梦而且不值得花费功夫（比如我的全名有20个英文字母，需要10个汉字转写，而且你需要许多关于翻译惯例的知识才有希望将其转写回英文）。但是中国政府与日俱增的杜绝汉语内部使用外文书写的努力（比如体育报道中主持人不再说NBA或者F1，替之以汉字全名或者缩写）表明即使在一些汉字表述效果不好的特殊场合，大部分汉语使用者仍然会使用汉字。

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Robert Maxwell
Answered 17h ago
Because there’s no real reason to aside from ancillary romanization systems like Zhuyin (a semi-syllabary) and Pinyin. I’m assuming this is talking about moving from a system where only an alphabet-based writing system is used.
Chinese students learn characters perfectly well. Areas dominated by Chinese characters (like Hong Kong and Taiwan) have high rates of literacy and other areas where Chinese characters are heavily used (Japan) have some of the highest rates of literacy in the world. Mainland China’s literacy is relatively lower not because of the use of characters but because education on the current scale is relatively new. Even then literacy has been increasing sharply. So there’s no real argument for an alphabet-based writing system on a literacy basis.

因为除了注音（半音节）和拼音这样辅助性的罗马字母系统 没有什么真正的理由值得这样去做。 我假设这是在谈论从仅使用基于字母的书写系统。
中国学生可以非常好的学习汉字。 汉字使用占主导地位的地区（如香港和台湾）有很高的识字率，汉语使用较多的地区（日本）有世界上最高的识字率。 中国大陆的识字率相对较低，不是因为使用了汉字，而是因为当前规模下的教育水平相对较新。 即使如此识字率也已大幅增加。 因此在就识字率而言，不一定要转换为基于字母的书写系统

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The various arguments that Chinese characters “keep the Chinese sedate” or “impede free thought” or other such inanity is just patent Orientalist nonsense.
As a foreigner who learned Chinese after he became an adult I can also tell you that learning characters isn’t an impossible task. It’s hard at the beginning sure and there’s more of a learning curve perhaps than learning to sound out say Russian or Greek but still. So I don’t think a case exists for foreign learners—and that’s not even touching the fact that it’d be fairly bizarre for a country to change its language to make it easier for foreigners.

汉字“使中国人麻木”或“阻碍自由思想”或其他各种浅薄的论断显然是”东方学”的胡扯。
作为一个成年后学中文的外国人，我也可以告诉你，学习汉字不是一个不可能的任务。 一开始确实很难，而且可能比起学习俄语或希腊语来要学习得更多，但最终是可以学会的。 我认为对一个外语学习者来说不存在学不会的情况。再说一个国家为了让使外国人更容易学习而改变其语言，这事太奇怪了，并不现实。

-------------译者：lybrel-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------

Chinese characters are pretty good overall I think. They have a high information density they disambiguate well they (more often than not) signal both phonetic and semantic values. And I’m not even going to get into the fact that maintaining Chinese characters as the prime mode of communication allows significant backwards compatibility: to read anything beyond perhaps the Late Qing you’d have to learn characters anyway since an alphabetic representation just wouldn’t work with Literary or Classical Chinese—in those registers you require the visual disambiguation of characters.
And then we need to get into the years of total chaos there’d be in switching writing systems wholesale.
There’s just no reason to.

我认为汉字在整体上是相当好的。汉字具有高信息密度，很好的消除了歧义，(通常情况下)可以同时表达语音和语义。更不用说这样的事实：使用汉字作为交流的主要方式具有明显的向后兼容性。要阅读晚清年代之前东西，你无论如何得学习汉字，因为字母在表达汉语的文学性和经典着作时毫无作用。阅读那些记录需要有识别汉字的能力。
整体转换书写系统，那么很长一段时间内我们将陷入混乱。
就是没什么理由这样做。

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Sadao Ikebe lives in Japan
Answered 22h ago
Because Chinese writing system is actually better than phonetic alphabet system.
"Switch to phonetic alphabet" is an obsolete idea. The current trend is opposite. We are encouraged to use MORE Chinese characters in daily life. If current trend continues Chinese character will never be abolished instead some languages will adopt Chinese characters.
In the past we had computers or machines with very limited computing power and couldn't handle thousands of characters. Some countries had very limited education resource so they thought their children cannot afford to learn thousands of characters. So it's understandable that some people wanted to abolish use of Chinese characters.
These days situation is completely different. Machines have no problem to handle Chinese characters. Education system has became mature and is capable of achieving near 100% literacy. So there is no reason to move to phonetic one.

Sadao Ikebe ，生活在日本
因为中文书写系统实际上比语音字母系统好。
“转换到语音字母系统”是一个过时的想法。 目前的趋势是相反的， 我们被鼓励在日常生活中使用更多的汉字。 如果现在的趋势继续下去，汉字将永远不会被废除，相反一些语言会采用汉字。
过去我们的电脑和机器计算能力非常有限，无法处理数千个字符。 一些国家的教育资源非常有限，所以他们认为自己的孩子无法学习数千个汉字。 所以有些人想废除汉字的使用是可以理解的。
当今的情况完全不一样。 机器处理汉字已经没有问题。 教育系统已经成熟，能够实现近100％的识字率。 所以没有理由转向语音字母系统。

-------------译者：lybrel-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------

People are increasingly becoming aware of the advantage of Chinese characters. These are the some of the advantages of Chinese characters:
1) Chinese characters can be understood almost instantly because they are logograms which is not so different from pictograms. Given this picture:
What came up in your mind? This pictogram has lots of information. With chinese characters everything is apparent like this pictogram once you give a glance on the characters. We have equivalent of "Pictogram common language which has the ability to describe almost all possible ideas on humanity"
For example Japan employs both Chinese characters and phonetic alphabet in their writing system at the same time. However road signs in Japan are mostly in Chinese characters because reading speed is crucial. They know Chinese characters are faster to understand. Their phonetic alphabet isn't widely used in road signs.
人们越来越意识到汉字的优势。 以下是汉字的一些优点：

1）汉字几乎可以被立刻理解，因为它们是与象形系统差别不大的符号系统。 请看这张照片：
你脑海里出现了什么？ 这个象形图包含了很多信息。 一旦你瞥了一眼汉字字符，一切就像这个象形图一样。 我们可以说“象形体系语言能描述人类几乎所有可能的想法”
例如，日本在书写系统中同时使用汉字和假名字母。 然而日本的道路标志大多是汉字，这是由于阅读速度至关重要。 他们知道汉字可以更快地被理解。 他们的假名字母在路标中没有广泛使用。

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2) The characters contain meanings not sounds so we can communicate beyond the language boundaries. It's another advantage of pictogram and humanity use it everywhere like airports etc.
3) People have access to their own history.
4) Far less need to consult dictionary when it comes to technical medical jurisdictional terms. Elementary learners cannot understand the word “felony” or “diabetes” while “重罪(=heavy crime)” or “糖尿病(=sugar urine disease)” only contain fairly basic characters. It's crucial for Korean native speakers because once they buy something in drug store they sometimes have to consult dictionaries when they want to read medical descxtion. In China or Japan it never happens because chinese characters have meaning. Dictionaries of native tongue is exclusive to scholarly usage in China or Japan.

2）汉字字形本身而不是发音具有含义，所以我们可以超越语言的界限进行沟通。这是象形系统的另一个优点，人们广泛地使用它，如在机场等地方。
3）人们可以借此了解自己的历史。
4）在技术、医疗、司法领域，需要查阅字典的时候要少得多。只有小学文化的人不能理解“felony”或“diabetes"这些词 ，但“重罪（=严重的罪行）”或“糖尿病（=尿里含糖的疾病）”只包含了相当基础的汉字。 这对于母语是韩语的人而言至关重要，因为他们在药店买东西，有时就需要在阅读药用说明的时侯查字典。 在中国或日本，就不会这样，因为汉字本身就具有含义。 在中国或日本字典仅仅会作学术使用。

-------------译者：lybrel-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------

5) Chinese characters are easier to learn if you start learning it younger. Because each characters have meanings kids actually acquire them very quickly than the meaningless phonetic one. My 2 year old son reads around 1500 characters already. In fact Japan has higher literacy than neighbors thanks to the characters with meaning.
South Korea is reviving chinese character education in their elementary school system. Currently educated Korean are able to read some 500 to 1000 Chinese characters. In the future it's predictable that the number increases to 1500 or so because they start learning younger. 1500 is sufficient for daily life use. North Korea has never stopped Chinese character education because Kim Il-Sung wanted to do so. Mainland China proposed to switch to pinyin writing system which failed. They wanted further simplification of hanzis which was also failed. Japan has been expanding their "Ordinary used character list (Joyo Kanji list)" again and again. This means they are using actually more Chinese Characters than before. Hong Kong Taiwan etc ... Still using traditional system and has no intention to switch to simplified one. Nowadays thanks to computer systems typing traditional characters requires exactly same amount of time compared to simplified one. Clearly trend is to use more Chinese characters not less.

5）在年轻的时候学习汉字将更容易。每个汉字都有含义，因此实际上比起无意义的语音来说，小孩子能更快地学会汉字。我2岁的儿子已经可以读大约1500个汉字。事实上，日本的识字率比邻国们的更高，这要归功于具有含义的汉字。
韩国正在小学系统中恢复汉字教育。目前受过教育的韩国人可以读500到1000个汉字。因为在更小的年龄开始学习，未来可以预见这个数字将增加到1500左右。 1500个汉字在日常生活中使用已足够。由于金日成的想法，朝鲜从来没有停止过汉字教育。中国大陆曾提出转向拼音书写系统，但失败了。他们希望进一步简化汉字，但也失败了。日本一直在扩大他们的“常用汉字列表（Joyo Kanji list）”。这意味着他们比以前使用更多的汉字。香港、台湾等地仍在使用繁体，并无意转向简体。现在要感谢电脑系统，打字时输入繁体和简体字符所需的时间相同。明显的趋势是更多而不是更少地使用汉字。

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Theoretically humanity needs better writing system. What is better one? The better writing system should bring out human's ability into use. Chinese characters requires several tables in your mind: "picture <-> meaning" "picture <-> phonetics" "writing stroke <-> meaning" so it's a huge investment. Humanity is capable of doing this. The return on the investment is really high. In the developed countries we can afford that investment. Humanity has reached a point where we can afford complex table for every citizen to accelerate faster and deeper communication. Why don't we do this? Chinese character have exactly every aspect of what we need on "next generation's writing system."
TL;DR Stop arguing of abolishing Chinese characters. It's time to argue how we can utilize more out of Chinese characters.

理论上人类需要更好的书写系统。 哪个是更好的？ 更好的书写系统应该能够发挥人类的能力。 汉字需要你的头脑中建立这样几张表：“图片< - >含义”“图片< - >语音”“笔画< - >含义”这是一个巨大的投资。 人类是有能力做到的。 这个投资的回报真的很高。 在发达国家，我们可以负担得起这样的投资。 人类已经达到这样的阶段，我们可以为每个人提供这样复杂的表，来加速更快更深入的沟通。 为什么我们不这样做？ 汉字作为“次世代书写系统”，在每一个方面都正好符合我们的需要。
简而言之，停止争论废除汉字的问题。 现在是时候来讨论我们如何更多地利用汉字了。