you’re leaoing to an unsupported conclusion that pinyin is designwed to replace characters. pinyin was designed to help with learning Chinese. these are two sepearte issues and are not logically connected.
now some early romanization proponents may have hoiped that one day in a utopic future that pin yin will replace chaacters.
imho it’s a lot more likely we’ll see voice/pinyin to character technology perfected. the next language evolution will be recognizing but not being able to write he chqracter, which is a trend we already see with computer use.
Wikipedia is at best omitting the key practical result of the ‘baihua’ movement of the early 1900’s. of which, Lu Xun is the best example. the Bai Hua movement was to make written chinese to more closely resemble modern speech rather than the previously ancient / Classical chinese written languge that would be akin to Greek at the time of Christ.
Again, look to written Japanese as a clue to eliminating characters. Japanese linguistically is much further ahead of the curve than Chinese in this regard. And I’m not aware of any serious attempt to remove Kanji from the language since Mc Arther had a run at it.
Let me give you an example of Chinese typing I did on my own computer just now: it took me no time at all, and I think the meaning should be conveyed quite efficiently
China Guy, 你應該知道,無論我們寫什麼論點,這位"Abe"先生應該不太會接受,有一點浪費我們的時間.
I guess you missed this quote in your own cite:
**As long as there are writing systems using the Roman alphabet in the world, there is always a need for Chinese romanization *in areas like teaching Chinese as a foreign language, Chinese information cataloguing, etc. *Whether a romanized writing system will replace the current Chinese writing system is something for our future generations to decide, perhaps hundreds of years down the road. Right now, it is very unlikely that this will happen any time soon. **
[note: Obviously I haven’t fully mastered the Treo keyboard for remote posting. Sorry.]
On the contrary, that conclusion is both supported and appropriately cited. Mind you, the word “replace” here does not necessarily mean “supplant”. Pinyin was designed as an easier alternative to traditional logography, where it **replaces ** or (in the example of keyboard input or some dictionaries) assists the user in negotiating the older script.
This was already explained and supported with relevant citations in previous posts.
I have already provided support showing that Pinyin was a Chinese invention for speakers of Chinese. It was not created to facilitate learning of Chinese - since the Chinese already knew their own language - but to raise the literacy rates and avoid the problems presented by the old script, which was considered too difficult and inefficient for the new and modern China.
This, also, has been well supported in previous posts.
You seem to have fallen victim to the imprecise nature of English here - the AND/OR problem in logic. I refer to Pinyin as replacing logographic scripts not as a wholesale replacement and elimination of its predecessors, but of use in specific applications. Among all the Chinese luminaries who argued for the use of Pinyin, I am not aware of any who suggested that the old script must be supplanted entirely. But all of them were all looking for a more efficient script, one that required less effort to learn and maintain.
This follows from the observation that you learn an alphabet just once and use it for life; but in Chinese if you do not use or encounter a character for some time you are likely to forget it. So not only does Chinese present a considerable barrier to **becoming **literate to varying degrees, but also makes it difficult to **maintain ** that standard of literacy. These were some of the issues that the language reformists sought to address.
This, also, has already been argued and supported.
No. Able to read for comprehension much?
I did not miss anything in the text I quoted, since I included that portion of the quote on purpose when I could have just as easily provided a shorter passage. What point are you trying to make? What strange contradictions did you prematurely assume you identified in my arguments?
As far as I know (not being in the field) good English language teachers are in high demand, particularly for primary and middle school kids whose parents want them to learn better English than what they acquire in school. As for CKM, I pop in occasionally for some Indian food and you will be happy to hear that it looks and feels as dodgy as always, just with improved fluorescent lighting!
Sure it was 20th floor? I don’t think CKM is that high. There’s a mess of restaurants in the complex and I have enjoyed every meal I have ever had there, even the take-out samosas on the ground floor. I had to find a list of restaurant names to jog my memory, since there are more restaurants in CKM than drug dealers:
I definitely remember the Delhi Club - first curry restaurant in CKM and probably the most popular. It is in block C and well regarded, so it might be the one you remember. I have had excellent food at Khyber Pass, Taj Mahal Club, Sher-E-Punjab, and Swagat and recomend them all. I am sure I have eaten at other places on the list but don’t remember the names. Wherever you go in the Mansions I think you will probably have a good meal. Bon appetit - or sik faahn!
I stand corrected. There are only 17 floors in the mansions. Strange, back in the day, there were zero restaurants on the ground floor. There were a handful you could walk up to on the 1st or 2nd floor. There was a really popular one in the back - must have been C block on the first floor. The rest were scattered usually in the higher floors. One near the top of block A near the most popular backpacker hostel was called the Deep Mess, because if you ate there you would be in a “deep mess.” I probably haven’t eaten or stayed there since 1989 so no surprise that I don’t recognize any of the restaurant names.
