汉字有可能在韩国复兴吗？ [美国媒体]

Korean (language): Will Hanja experience a resurgence in South Korea?

汉字有可能在韩国复兴吗？





Dan Kim, I knowKorean history
AnsweredJan 31, 2016
Hanja was always more difficultscript to learn than Hangeul or just about any other phonetic script system forthat matter. It's always been inconvenient to use it over other phoneticscripts. In fact, Koreans invented at least two different phonetic scripts tohelp people learn to read - one of which is Hangeul. Even China itselfcontemplated ditching the script for a phonetic script - Sin Wenz (similar topinyin), an alphabet based writing system. The main reason why it was notadopted is because - "the system was less well adapted to writingregional languages, and therefore would require learning Mandarin."
Fortunately, Korea doesn't havethat problem, so we adopted phonetic language - which we conveniently alreadyhad.
The reason why hanja was used hadeverything to do with China, and little to do with efficiency. In fact hanja'sdeath started as China became less important in Korea's internationalrelations.
Hanja is just no cake walk tolearn, learning of which is completely avoidable because you already knowanother script.
By 1980s it was already dyingout.
I lived through that time inKorea, newspapers back then already contained lot less hanja than in the 60's,but kids still couldn't read newspaper properly until high school. Even earlyelementary kids can read newspapers now. I had seen many adults even askingeach other how to read this hanja character or that back in the days. Even tome, as a third grade kid in elementary school, it made no sense to learn ascript that was completely redundant. Hanja is a beautiful script, and it hasits own set of strengths over hangeul,but ease of learning isn't one of them.Hanja is perfect when you want to have a single unified communication systemfor large number of people that speaks 100 different languages. Not so perfectfor a group of people speaking the same language.
As China becomes morenationalistic, some Chinese resent the fact that Koreans no longer use Chinesescript, but I hope they will wake up and realize one day that not everything isabout them. There's a reason why every other country that used to use Chinesescript ditched it over phonetic script. Even China seriously contemplated it -
A newspaper written in sin wenz.

丹·金 我知晓朝鲜半岛的历史
相比于韩文以及其他任何拼音文字系统，朝鲜汉字是完全不同的。它也比其他拼音文字更难于使用。事实上，韩国/朝鲜人发明了至少2种不同的拼音文字来帮助人们去阅读-其中一种就是韩文。即使中国自己也曾计划抛弃汉字转而采用拼音文字-Sin Wenz（与汉语拼音类似），一种字母为基础的书面语。没有采用的主要原因在于“这种书面语无法适应当地的书面写作要求，包括学习国语的要求。”
幸运的是，韩国/朝鲜不存在这个问题，所以我们采用了拼音文字-这种已经存在的便捷的文字。
汉字在中国无处不在但无助于效率的提升。事实上，汉字的死亡源于中国在韩国的对外关系中变得不再重要。
要学习汉字不是一件容易的事情，而且它也是完全可以避免的，因为你已经有了别的书面语。
20世纪80年代开始，汉字就已经废弃了。
我有经历那段时候，那时候新闻报纸中所使用的朝鲜汉字数已经远少于60年代，但孩子们还是没法很好的阅读报纸，除非上了高中。如今，即便是小学的孩子也能阅读报纸了。在那个年代，我都有见过大量成年人有问别人某个汉字怎么读。甚至对于我来说，作为一个小学三年级的孩子，学习汉字都是没有意义的，它们是多余的。
朝鲜汉字是一种美丽的文字，它有超越韩文的一些固有优势，但它们不是容易学习的文字之一。朝鲜汉字只有在你想要将说100种不同语言的庞大人群统一成一个单一的交流组织的时候才是完美的。对于说同一门语言的人来说，它并不如此完美。
当中国变得更加民族主义的时候，一些中国人开始怨恨韩国人不再使用汉字的事实，但我希望他们能清醒过来，意识到不是所有事物都围着他们在转。这也是所有别的曾经常使用过汉字的国家抛弃汉字转而使用字母文字的原因之一。就算是中国自己也严肃的考虑过这一点。

HongYeu
Feb5, 2016 · 3 upvotes
Hanzi/Kanji/Hanjais difficult to learn, but only initially. Once you get passed the steep partof the learning curve, things become really smooth and you will find itactually provides much advantage over phonetic scripts--logograms are easier tobe combined to construct new words/concepts. Think of how you would need toteach your kid what "schizophrenia" means--while with Han logogramsone could easily understand 精神分裂症 (정신 분열증).

汉字/日本汉字/朝鲜汉字学习起来是困难的，但仅限于刚开始。一旦你渡过了学习曲线中的困难期，你就会真正发现，汉字优于字母文字的事实—语素文字在构建新词汇/新概念上要更加容易。想一想，你要怎么跟你的孩子解释什么是“精神分裂症（schizophrenia）”---然而通过汉字就可以轻易的理解。

Kim
Feb5, 2016
Alphabetworks best with English, Hanzi works best for Chinese, and Hangul works bestfor Korean.  People use whatever writing system that fits their languagebest.  Also, the reason why Koreans  continued to use Hanja almostexclusively while Mongols, Manchus, Vietnam, and Japan preferred to adoptphonetic scripts well before 20th century had nothing to do with merits ofHanja itself, and everything to do with the fact that China used them - meaningplethora of books and knowledge were written in hanzi, not hangul.  It'sthe same reason why English is so useful for Chinese, Koreans and Japanesenow.  Most of modern knowledge is available in English first andforemost.  Language of choice for knowledge in Asia before the rise ofwest was Hanja, as simple as that.  Even the best writing system ismeaningless if there are no books written in it.

字母对于英国人是最好的，汉字对于中国人是最好的，韩文对于韩国人也是最好的。适合自己语言的书面语就是最好的。此外，20世纪之前，在蒙古、满族人、越南人和日本人都已经更喜欢采用语音符号的情况下，要说韩国人要继续使用朝鲜汉字的原因，也只会跟朝鲜汉字本身的优点无关，事实上（只有）中国在各方面都使用着汉字—意味着太多的书和知识都是用汉字写就的而不是韩文。如今英语也基于相同的原因，而它要比汉语、韩语和日语来得更有用。绝大多数现代知识都可以第一时间通过英语来获取。语言的选择基于知识，在西方崛起之前，亚洲选择了汉字，同样，之后的亚洲选择了英语。就算是世界上最好的书面语，如果没有写在书上，那它也什么都不是。

Hong Yeu
Feb6, 2016 · 4 upvotes
Igot your points but I hope you can see my point as well--that logograms aren'tautomatically harder to learn than phonetics esp. if you look at the time andefforts need to achieve "full literacy". Logograms are hard to learnat first but in the long run it provides cognitiveI advantages.
Idon't resent Korean/Vietnamese to do away with Han logograms.  It's justthat people often got the wrong impression that Han logograms were simply toodifficult to learn and would lead to low literacy. But people seem to forgetthat literacy was low in England and France as well before the system ofcompulsory education was implemented.

我已经明白你的意思，但希望你也能同样的理解我的意思—语素文字在机械记忆上并不比语音文字更难。如果你想要努力实现“无障碍的阅读”，语素文字刚开始会比较困难但长远来看它会证明自身的认知优势（ cognitiveI advantages）的。
我没有怨恨韩国/朝鲜人和越南人抛弃汉字。只是因为人们常常对汉字抱有错误印象，认为汉字太难学了，并导致读写水平低下。然而人们忘记了，英语和法语在实施义务教育之前，人们的读写水平一样很低。

Dan Kim
Feb6, 2016 · 2 upvotes
Allvery fair point.
Idon't think hanja is too difficult, But:
Koreanshave hangul, which is easier for us to learn
AND
Chineseis no longer the first source of knowledge, English is.
Ifeither of those conditions didn't exist, we'd still be using hanja.  It'sjust simple matter of practicality.  I'm sure you didn't learn English asyour second language because it was the easiest language to learn, you learnedit because you needed to.  China was the cultural center of east asia backin the day.  It's not just about mechanics of learning hanzi, it's just apart of it.
Inall fairness though, the complaint that hanzi is difficult to learn didn't justcome from other countries, Chinese were some of most vocal critics ofhanzi.  Historical documents abound.  CCP even attempted to replacehanzi at one point. Zhang Wentian wrote an essay where he argues that Chinesescript was remnant of oppression by owner class - by being difficult and timeconsuming to learn, Chinese writing system was suppressive to the farmers andthe working class.
Dan Kim's answer to Why doesn't China reform itswriting system to make it phonetic and hence easier to learn?  

都是很公正的观点。
我不认为朝鲜汉字是难学的，但是：
韩国/朝鲜人有了韩语，这门语言我们学起来更容易。
而且
中文也不再是首要的知识来源了，英语才是。
如果这种状况不曾存在，我们依旧会采用朝鲜汉字。这就是所谓的务实。我相信你没有把英语当作第二语言来学习，因为它是最简单的语言，你学习了它只因你需要它。过去中国曾是东亚的文化中心。这不单是跟学习汉字本身有关，而它只是其中的一部分而已。
平心而论，抱怨汉字难学并不只限于别的国家，中国有一些对汉字最直言不讳的批评家。中国富有历史史料。中国甚至一度试图替代掉汉字。张闻天曾经写过一篇散文，质疑汉字是精英阶级镇压手段的一部分—汉语书面语压迫着这里的农民和工人阶级。

Hong Yeu
Feb6, 2016 · 2 upvotes
Therewas a specific time in history (1910s and 1920s) that a small minority ofChinese scholars advocated the abolition of Hanzi--but their reasoning wasrather naive and mostly based on the perceived weakness of Chinese military andtechnology as compared with western countries. Most of the scholars (includingthe likes of Hu Shi) later reverterd their positions. Basically it was mainlymotivated politically rather than culturally/linguistically.
CCPpeople did hold on to that "revolutionary" viewpoint a little longerthan most of other young scholars. Mao, in particular, was a strong advocate ofreplacing Hanzi with a phonetic script and the simplification of Hanzi was partof his grand plan towards the eventual abolition of Hanzi. Again his effortswere politically motivated.
Interestingly,most people, including Chinese, don't understand how simplified Chinese becamethe standard of PRC. They all think it is much easier to learn than thetraditional one and that simplification had nothing to do with Maoistideologies. They were again very, very wrong--it is not really easier to learnand the current simplification was entirely a product of Maoist politics.
Ibelieve that the decision to switch to Hangul also had a (big) nationalisticand political component; So did the adoption of Quoc Ngu in Vietnam.
Hangulis very easy to learn by the way. It took me half of an hour to memorize it.

那是一个特殊的历史时代（20世纪10-20年代），中国学者中的少数派主张废除汉字----但他们的理由相当的天真，且主要理由是因为相比于西方国家，中国的军队和科技实在太弱了。而绝大多数学者（包括胡适这样的人）之后都重新恢复了汉字的地位。总的来说，这主要是政治上的动机，而不是文化/语言学角度上的。
（删节）……
我相信，换成韩文的决定也是含有巨大的民族主义和政治性成分。而越南语的采用也同样如此。
韩文学起来很容易。我只花了半个小时就记住了它们。

Dan Kim
Feb6, 2016 · 1 upvote
Iagree that simplified Chinese was completely unnecessary, and wasteful evensince historical documents can no longer be read.  But I'm not sure if theQuoc Ngu had anything to do with nationalism since latin script doesn't haveorigin in Vietnam.  In Korea's case, most Chinese mistakenly believe thatKorea abandoned Chinese in 1945 after Japanese rule.  But the truth isthat Koreans abandoned it in 1920's, Japanese outlawed Chinese text in 1923,and Koreans used Japanese script for about 25 years by the time Korean gov'twas set up in 1948.  By this time, even well educated people could notcommunicate strictly in Chinese.  Sure, they knew many characters, butcould only communicate using Japanese alphabet alongside.  Koreans weren'tgoing to continue its use of Japanese even if the hell froze over, so wereplaced it with hangul, which was also practical to boot.  If we werestill using strictly hanja in 1948, I'm not sure if hanja would have beenreplaced, because hanja didn't feel foreign to us - that's what happens afterusing it for over 2000 years.  In fact, the way Hangul was initially usedwas very much like how Japanese script worked, using the same Japanese Chinesewords.  After Korean war where communist China saved North Korea andprevented the unification, Chinese was even less popular, and we started to useit even less.  But the abandonment of Chinese wouldn't have been possibleif hangul was inadequate, but as it turned out, it was a pretty well designedlanguage.  Some Korean scholars in the 50's didn't think Hangul wascapable of replacing Hanja just as some Chinese scholars thought hanzi wasinferior to latin scripts in the 20's.
Howmuch of the decision was nationalist sentiment vs practicality?  Theanswer's subjective, but it's hard to deny that both played a factor. Because part of the reason why Koreans now use hangul is same as why Chinesewish Koreans still used hanja.  It's a matter of national pride. But, that doesn't mean hanja feels very foreign to Koreans.  It may feelold or official, but it really doesn't feel foreign.  It's so natural thatmost traditionally Korean of activities - wedding, funeral, birthdays, etc -feels completely unnatural without hanja.  South Koreans laugh when theyread North Korean replacement words for Chinese words (North Koreans don't useany hanja nor Chinese words in its language).  So, hanja is fine, I don'tthink hangul will be abandoned, but I don't see why hanja can't be widelyaccepted as pseudo second language again if China and Korea becomes reallyclose - but probably not possible with NK.

我认同，简体汉字是完全没必要的，基于历史史料不再能阅读，这也是不值得的。但我无法肯定，越南语字母与民族主义之间能有什么关系，拉丁字符不是起源于越南的。回到朝鲜半岛（译注：之后均采用朝鲜人这称谓表示整个朝鲜半岛的人，之后不再说明。）这边，绝大多数中国人错误的认为朝鲜半岛禁用汉字是在1945年日本统治之后。事实上，20世纪20年代就已经禁用汉字了，1923年，日本人宣布中文资料非法，一直到1948年韩国zf成立，朝鲜人使用日文已有大约25年时间。这段时期，即使是受过教育的人也无法用中文进行正常沟通。当然了，他们知晓很多汉字，但只能放在日文假名中进行沟通。朝鲜人不想再使用日语了即使这困难重重，所以我们换成了韩文，它也是实用的。如果我们在1948年时依然采用纯朝鲜汉字，我不确定它会不会被替换掉，毕竟汉字对我们而言也不感到陌生—它被用了超过2000年了。
事实上，韩文在使用之初，跟日文的形式很像，也用了跟日文一样的汉语词汇。在朝鲜战争之后，中国保护北朝鲜并阻止了统一，中文变得更加不受欢迎了，更不用说开始用它。但在还不知道韩文是否合适的情况下，发布汉字禁令是不现实，不过结果证明，韩文设计得相当的好。一些50年代朝鲜学者不认为韩文有能力代替朝鲜汉字，就如20年代一些中国学者认为汉字劣于拉丁字符一样。
用韩文替换掉汉字的决定，到底有多少是民族主义情绪、又有是多少务实？这个问题过于主观了，不过这种决定映射了一个事儿。那就是朝鲜人如今使用韩文的部分理由与中国人希望朝鲜人依旧使用朝鲜汉字的理由是一样的。这就是民族自豪感。
这不意味着朝鲜汉字对于朝鲜人来说非常陌生。只是感觉它很古老或很正式，但确实不感到陌生。它在朝鲜传统活动中太自然不过了—结婚、葬礼、生日等等-----没有朝鲜汉字是很奇怪的。南韩人会在看到北朝鲜人把汉语词汇替换成别的词而感到好笑（北朝鲜人在其语言中不使用任何朝鲜汉字包括汉语词汇）。所以朝鲜汉字本身没问题，我不认为朝鲜汉字会被禁掉（译注：原文这里是“韩文不会被禁掉”，但依据上下文背景，说不通），但如果中韩关系变得真正的亲密起来，我认为朝鲜汉字有可能再次成为第二语言--—但中国与朝鲜，应该不可能了。

Hong Yeu
Feb9, 2016 · 4 upvotes
1.Simplified Chinese is bad, but it doesn't greatly reduce the ability to readhistorical documents.  Most Mainland Chinese read traditional Chinesefine.
2.A big part of Vietnamese nationalism in the early 20th century was to separateVietnamese history/culture/language from Chinese. Of course, the creation ofQuoc Ngu had nothing to do with nationalism, but its adoption in school andgovernment definitely did. And I'm not saying the nationalistic component wasthe primary factor---but it did play a big role.
3.You are right that written (Classical) Chinese ceased to become the officialwritten language under Japanese rule. But Hanja was in common use until 1970sand even 1980s, in the form of mixed script ( 국한문혼용). I think there's something lost in translation whenyou said most Chinese were mistaken on this issue. By "Chinese", onecould have meant "Hanja/Hanzi/Kanji" or the "written Chineselanguage (i.e. Classical Chinese).
Itseems to me that mixed script had been working well for Koreans--and ifpresident Park Chung-Hee didn't officially abolish Hanja, there's a good chancethat mix script would have persisted to this day.
I'mfundamentally against all form of nationalism. To me Han logograms doesn'tbelong to Chinese alone. Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese and Ryukyuans have allbeen using it for millennia and contributed to its development. In fact, Idon't see it as "Chinese" at all. And if we really think about itcarefully,  the word "Han"汉"doesn't have much to do with modern nation state(s) of China. 汉字 and 汉文 (ClassicalChinese) should be considered the common assets of East Asia.

1.简体汉字确实不好，但并没有显着削弱阅读历史史料的能力。绝大多数中国人能良好的理解繁体字。
2.越南人的民族主义相当一部分行为发生在20世纪早期，它将越南人的历史/文化/语言与中国人进行了切割。当然了，越南语的创造与民族主义无关，但其zf明确的有在学校中采用它。另外我也没有说过民族主义是主要的因素---但扮演了举足轻重的角色。
3.你说的没错，在日本人统治时期汉字不再是官方的书面语。但朝鲜汉字在20世纪70-80年代有广泛使用，作为一种与韩文相混合的书写形式。我觉得在你说出绝大多数中国人错误的看待这个问题的时候，在这个过渡的过程中（译注：不再使用朝鲜汉字的过程中）遗失掉了某些东西。“Chinese”这个英语词汇，可以表示“汉字”的意思，可以表示“朝鲜汉字”的意思、可以表示“日本汉字”的意思，亦或是表示“汉语书面语”的意思（例如。“ClassicalChinese”----文言文）。
如果不是朴正熙总统正式禁掉朝鲜汉字，对于我而言，似乎混合书写形式可以在韩国良好的运作下去，这是混合书写形式得以保留至今天的一次好机会。
我从根本上反对任何形式的民族主义。对于我而言，汉字这种语素文字并不是中国人的专属。朝鲜人、越南人、日本人、琉球人都已经使用汉字上千年，并对其发展做出了贡献。事实上，我甚至完全不视其为“汉”字。如果我们真的谨慎看待它，“汉”这个词与现代中国这个国家的关系并不是很大。“汉字”和“汉文”（文言文）应该被视为东亚共同的资产。

DanKim
Feb9, 2016
Reading Classical Chinese and understanding is twodifferent things.  And knowing hanja and being able to communicate withoutusing Hangul is another matter.   The reason why hanja was droppedfrom Korean is because Hangul didn't need hanja to be able to communicateeffectively. There's simply no need.  People used hanja until 70s becausemost people knew hanja already, but younger people just didn't want to learnwhat they didn't need. I went to school during this time, so I have first handknowledge of how it went down. Curriculum emphasized English over hanja, butteachers actually encouraged learning hanja and you got bonus points for usingdifficult hanja. But it doesn't mean hanja was necessary in communication. In90s with wide spread use of computers, mixing hanja with Hangul became evenmore useless. That's just the way it was. Park Chunghee died in the 70s. Hanjawas dropped in the 90s. 
Japanese would have dropped their use of kanjiif their script allowed for it. Simple as that. It's not about nationalism.Most Chinese don't get this.
The only reason why Koreans used hanja evenafter advent of Hangul was due to agency issues, once it was lifted, hanja wasgoing to be used, there's no going back.

读文言文跟理解文言文是两码事儿。知晓朝鲜汉字与有能力在不使用韩文的情况下用朝鲜汉字来沟通也是两码事儿。
朝鲜汉字在韩国式微的原因在于韩文不需要朝鲜汉字就能高效沟通。就是不需要。70年代人们有使用朝鲜汉字的原因是因为绝大多数人已经知晓朝鲜汉字，但年轻人并不想学习那些他们不需要的东西。那段时期我在上学，所以我有关于朝鲜汉字倒下的第一手资料。课程强调了英语比朝鲜汉字重要，但老师们确实有在鼓励学生学习朝鲜汉字，并且使用汉字能加分。但这不意味着汉字在沟通交流中是必要的。90年代，基于广泛运用的计算机，汉-韩混写模式变得更加无足轻重了。事实上，朴正熙死于70年代。而朝鲜汉字衰退于90年代。
日文假名如果可行，可能汉字也已经衰退了。就这么简单。这无关于民族主义。绝大多数中国人没有理解到这点。朝鲜人使用朝鲜汉字甚至在韩文发明之后也没有改变这点的唯一原因是代理的问题，一旦这个问题得以解决，韩文就会被用起来，没有回头路可走。

Hong Yeu
Feb 9, 2016 · 2 upvotes
Japanese would do just fine without Kanji and even Chineselanguages would do fine without Hanzi as well. There was a very successfulphonetic script for Hokkien, Pe̍h-ōe-jī,that has very similar origin with Quoc Ngu--and it worked fine for over 100,000people. Today a minority of Taiwanese nationalists are promoting Pe̍h-ōe-jī,just as how Vietnamese nationalists did in the early 1920s.
There'shardly anything in written languages that are true necessities that weabsolutely need to communicate effectively and efficiently. But languages aremore than communication, aren't they?

日文假名在没有汉字的情况下也还可以，甚至中文没有汉字也不是行不通了。那儿曾有一种非常成功的字母书面语系统，为闽南语设计的，白话字（Pe̍h-ōe-jī、POJ，台罗拼音：Pe̍h-uē-jī，闽南拼音：Bēhwè zzî），这跟越南语的起源很相似---并且在10万人中运作效果良好。今天台湾一些少数民族主义者正在提倡白话字，就像20世纪20年代越南的民族主义者们曾经做过的那样。
我们当然需要高效的沟通和交流，但书面语本身并不是真正的必需品。语言不止是为了沟通，不是吗？

Dan Kim
Feb 9, 2016
Japanese can't drop kanjiwithout introducing whole new script system - again this can't be done due toagency issues. There's just not enough ways to deal with homophones.
Chinese did try to switch to Latin script, butcouldn't do it due to agency issues.  Koreans didn't have that.

日语在不的引入全新书面语的情况下无法降低汉字的使用—再说一次，这是代理的问题。它们没有足够的办法去解决同音异义词。
中文曾尝试过用拉丁字母来替换掉汉字，但没能成功，也是基于代理的问题。而朝鲜人不存在这样的问题。

Christine Wong
Feb 28, 2017
No. Simplified Chinese Characters were necessary for themajority of the populations since they were illiterate in written Chinese andspoke in dialects that had little commons in Mandarin years ago. The story wentlike the occurrence of Hangul. Simplified characters are much more efficient towrite down than classical one in the writing time. Once you learn thesimplified one, the traditional characters are not that difficult to recognizebecause the rules of simplify are apparent.

你错了。就在数年前，大陆人口的主体还是未受教育的、无法书写汉字的、用方言这种没有普及开来的语言说话的人，简体汉字是必要的。这与韩文出现的故事是一样的。书写简体字的效率要比繁体字来得更加高效。一旦你学习了简体字，要认识繁体字也就不再困难了因为简化字体的规则是显而易见的。