“The belief that the imperial system is worse than metric is not unreasonable”
Is the belief that the logographic system is worse than alphabets (and abugidas, for that matter) unreasonable? You seem to suggest that, arbitrarily, for this case it’s not just unreasonable, but also bigotry…
“It’s time for the Japanese to drop their system” - racism.
“It’s time for the Americans to drop their system” - not racism.
Ok, whatever makes you feel better about yourself. I will still say logograms and imperial units are awful.
Is the belief that the logographic system is worse than alphabets (and abugidas, for that matter) unreasonable?
Lol yes. Both systems have benefits and drawbacks, it’s unreasonable to say either is “worse” than the other. It’s certainly not as clear-cut as the comparison between the imperial and metric systems.
In alphabets you learn a small set of letters. Using those letters you can logically form syllables. With those syllables you can write and read every single word in that language (yeah, through historical processes most languages fucked up the connection between syllables and phonemes, but that’s a different matter).
Meanwhile logographic systems have no logical way to form words (unless they are compound), as lots of words are their own symbol. In current logogram languages you are expected to learn from 2000 to 4000 different characters (compared to an average of 20-something letters in alphabets) just to read most publications - and odds are that if you try to read something from an area you have no expertise in, you are going to stumble upon several words you can’t even read (difference between ability to read and knowing the meaning. One may stumble upon a word they don’t know the meaning of while using an alphabet, but they can still read the word. While if you don’t know the right logogram for a word, even if you know the meaning of it, you can neither write nor read it).
I find the distinction even more clear-cut than imperial vs metrics, as imperial just uses very confusing conversions. Logograms are way more unnecessarily complicated.
Agree you’ve covered some of the pros of alphabet systems and cons of logographic systems, and those are totally valid. You’re neglecting the other sides though, so let’s balance that out:
Here’s some pros of logographic systems:
Higher information density - you can say more with less, and readers can parse it faster
Compound words are intuitive - just put the symbols for the two halves of the words next to each other (or visually combine them in some cases)
Symbols have direct meaning - there is usually no “sounding out” words to figure out what they mean, the symbol by itself fully encapsulates meaning, independent of pronunciation
Because meaning is independent from phonetics, ambiguity is reduced with homophones, in that two words that sound the same still have two different-looking symbols
Written communication can still be understood even across different dialects, and even across different languages altogether, if the same logographic system is used, and even if those logographic symbols have different pronunciations. This separation makes it possible to communicate across language barriers without having to learn a whole other language.
Logographic systems don’t have to adapt to changes in pronunciation over time, they’re stable
Here’s some cons of alphabet systems:
Much lower information density takes longer to read, most people have to internally convert the visual data to sound to understand it, so it physically takes more brainpower/effort to understand written text
Wild inconsistencies in phonetics within a language, requiring rote memorization of spelling “rules” and all of their various exceptions. Makes learning new words difficult as you can’t be sure if you’re “sounding it out” correctly unless you’ve heard the spoken word
Meaning directly depends on phonetics/pronunciation, which can lead to confusion and ambiguity with alternate pronunciations, alternate spellings, and differing dialects (e.g. Canadian French vs. Metropolitan French)
Learning a language that uses an alphabet system means learning it twice - the written language and the spoken language
Homophones and hereronyms? Good luck
Also here’s some food for thought. I 100% guarantee you use a logographic system every single day, very easily, without even realizing it. In fact, nearly the whole world uses it - Arabic numerals.
I don’t know about a lot of those points. I can read French quite well, but can’t speak it for shit, I don’t know how much I have to “convert” in my head since its phonetics are irrelevant to me (and as English became a main online language, tons of people everywhere in the world can read and write it, but not really speak it since we are all communicating primarily through text - my English pronunciation sucks btw)… but anyway, about stability and adaptation, China has 120k+ different characters in its language, the vast majority got out of use because other ways to write the same thing became more popular, so I don’t think it works like you described.
Have you ever heard about Paulo Freire? The guy developed a very interesting literacy method, he tested it out with adult rural workers from poor regions and in just 2 months he was able to get those people to read and write (even if with grammatical mistakes) because his method is phonetic (well, there’s quite more to it, but the reading/writing part is phonetic). For learning to read/write other languages, the “no sounding out” might be an advantage (like a lot of netizens writing in English without really speaking it), but for your own language, well, from what I understand they expect that only by high school the kids in Japan and China should be able to read their local newspaper because of the amount of characters they need to know for it, meanwhile Paulo Freire got adults, who have very low mental plasticity, able to do it in 2 months… phonetics and alphabets ftw :P
edit: We both know we are talking about Chinese and Japanese when talking about logograms, so great for them they have the same root and symbols have the same meaning even when sounding different. If there were other languages using logograms but with different roots, the positive point of symbols having the same meaning wouldn’t hold. But something happened with the Koreans that made them break away and build from scratch what seems to be the best and most logical writing system around.
Sure, I agree that alphabet systems are initially easier to learn than logographic systems. But to achieve that they sacrifice the consistency and lack of ambiguity of a logographic system. It’s funny you bring up Korean as an example of a good alphabet system, because I can assure you as someone who is currently learning Korean, it has it’s weird spelling inconsistencies and pronunciation “rules” and exceptions, just like any other alphabet system.
And again, I’m not trying to convince you that one is better than the other. My whole point is that one isn’t any better or worse than another. They each have their own strengths, weaknesses, and specific purposes, they’re both functional, one isn’t better or worse than the other as a whole.
A take I had from this is that a non-phonetic written language works like cached memory (and you might have a lot to cache), while phonetic is like real-time rendering. I was reading about how Vietnam changed to its current script, and just like Korea, and also Paulo Freire’s view of language, seems like the change made the language more accessible.
“The belief that the imperial system is worse than metric is not unreasonable”
Is the belief that the logographic system is worse than alphabets (and abugidas, for that matter) unreasonable? You seem to suggest that, arbitrarily, for this case it’s not just unreasonable, but also bigotry…
“It’s time for the Japanese to drop their system” - racism.
“It’s time for the Americans to drop their system” - not racism.
Ok, whatever makes you feel better about yourself. I will still say logograms and imperial units are awful.
Lol yes. Both systems have benefits and drawbacks, it’s unreasonable to say either is “worse” than the other. It’s certainly not as clear-cut as the comparison between the imperial and metric systems.
In alphabets you learn a small set of letters. Using those letters you can logically form syllables. With those syllables you can write and read every single word in that language (yeah, through historical processes most languages fucked up the connection between syllables and phonemes, but that’s a different matter).
Meanwhile logographic systems have no logical way to form words (unless they are compound), as lots of words are their own symbol. In current logogram languages you are expected to learn from 2000 to 4000 different characters (compared to an average of 20-something letters in alphabets) just to read most publications - and odds are that if you try to read something from an area you have no expertise in, you are going to stumble upon several words you can’t even read (difference between ability to read and knowing the meaning. One may stumble upon a word they don’t know the meaning of while using an alphabet, but they can still read the word. While if you don’t know the right logogram for a word, even if you know the meaning of it, you can neither write nor read it).
I find the distinction even more clear-cut than imperial vs metrics, as imperial just uses very confusing conversions. Logograms are way more unnecessarily complicated.
Agree you’ve covered some of the pros of alphabet systems and cons of logographic systems, and those are totally valid. You’re neglecting the other sides though, so let’s balance that out:
Here’s some pros of logographic systems:
Higher information density - you can say more with less, and readers can parse it faster
Compound words are intuitive - just put the symbols for the two halves of the words next to each other (or visually combine them in some cases)
Symbols have direct meaning - there is usually no “sounding out” words to figure out what they mean, the symbol by itself fully encapsulates meaning, independent of pronunciation
Because meaning is independent from phonetics, ambiguity is reduced with homophones, in that two words that sound the same still have two different-looking symbols
Written communication can still be understood even across different dialects, and even across different languages altogether, if the same logographic system is used, and even if those logographic symbols have different pronunciations. This separation makes it possible to communicate across language barriers without having to learn a whole other language.
Logographic systems don’t have to adapt to changes in pronunciation over time, they’re stable
Here’s some cons of alphabet systems:
Much lower information density takes longer to read, most people have to internally convert the visual data to sound to understand it, so it physically takes more brainpower/effort to understand written text
Wild inconsistencies in phonetics within a language, requiring rote memorization of spelling “rules” and all of their various exceptions. Makes learning new words difficult as you can’t be sure if you’re “sounding it out” correctly unless you’ve heard the spoken word
Meaning directly depends on phonetics/pronunciation, which can lead to confusion and ambiguity with alternate pronunciations, alternate spellings, and differing dialects (e.g. Canadian French vs. Metropolitan French)
Learning a language that uses an alphabet system means learning it twice - the written language and the spoken language
Homophones and hereronyms? Good luck
Also here’s some food for thought. I 100% guarantee you use a logographic system every single day, very easily, without even realizing it. In fact, nearly the whole world uses it - Arabic numerals.
I don’t know about a lot of those points. I can read French quite well, but can’t speak it for shit, I don’t know how much I have to “convert” in my head since its phonetics are irrelevant to me (and as English became a main online language, tons of people everywhere in the world can read and write it, but not really speak it since we are all communicating primarily through text - my English pronunciation sucks btw)… but anyway, about stability and adaptation, China has 120k+ different characters in its language, the vast majority got out of use because other ways to write the same thing became more popular, so I don’t think it works like you described.
Have you ever heard about Paulo Freire? The guy developed a very interesting literacy method, he tested it out with adult rural workers from poor regions and in just 2 months he was able to get those people to read and write (even if with grammatical mistakes) because his method is phonetic (well, there’s quite more to it, but the reading/writing part is phonetic). For learning to read/write other languages, the “no sounding out” might be an advantage (like a lot of netizens writing in English without really speaking it), but for your own language, well, from what I understand they expect that only by high school the kids in Japan and China should be able to read their local newspaper because of the amount of characters they need to know for it, meanwhile Paulo Freire got adults, who have very low mental plasticity, able to do it in 2 months… phonetics and alphabets ftw :P
edit: We both know we are talking about Chinese and Japanese when talking about logograms, so great for them they have the same root and symbols have the same meaning even when sounding different. If there were other languages using logograms but with different roots, the positive point of symbols having the same meaning wouldn’t hold. But something happened with the Koreans that made them break away and build from scratch what seems to be the best and most logical writing system around.
Sure, I agree that alphabet systems are initially easier to learn than logographic systems. But to achieve that they sacrifice the consistency and lack of ambiguity of a logographic system. It’s funny you bring up Korean as an example of a good alphabet system, because I can assure you as someone who is currently learning Korean, it has it’s weird spelling inconsistencies and pronunciation “rules” and exceptions, just like any other alphabet system.
And again, I’m not trying to convince you that one is better than the other. My whole point is that one isn’t any better or worse than another. They each have their own strengths, weaknesses, and specific purposes, they’re both functional, one isn’t better or worse than the other as a whole.
A take I had from this is that a non-phonetic written language works like cached memory (and you might have a lot to cache), while phonetic is like real-time rendering. I was reading about how Vietnam changed to its current script, and just like Korea, and also Paulo Freire’s view of language, seems like the change made the language more accessible.