On Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:18:13 -0800 (PST), troll
wrote:
>
>Phonetic scripts in China
>
>I have looked up a little of the Hiragana,
>and have surfed over bits about Hangul,
>and started wondering to what extent
>phonetic symbols have existed and
>have been used in China throughout
>history.
>
>It seems to me that reading a bit about
>Mongolian, that some of the Mongolians
>might have been literate in a phonetic
>alphabet prior to conquering China.
>
>The basic question is this: do the
>Chinese logograms have a phonetic
>subset that has consistently been
>used to aid pronunciation in local
>spoken languages as far back as
>500BC to 1000BC or earlier? Or
>did the imperial government basically
>suppress phonetic scripts in order
>to discourage regionalism and local
>autonomy based upon local spoken
>dialects?
>
>It seems to me that there would have
>been enough contact with the near
>east or Europe that the existence of
>the potential for conveying phonetic
>information in a script would have been
>made easily known through trade and
>contact with other areas.
>
More important, there was contact with India, and Indian linguistics
was rather advanced at this period. For some reason that knowledge
didn't carry across to China, or at least didn't result in them
abandoning their ideographic script - I suspect because Chinese, as a
tonal language, was not well adapted to represenation in a alphabetic
or syllabic script (Japanese and Korean are non-tonal; I'm not sure
about Mongolian, but I suspect it is as well).
>Two phenomena seem feasible to me.
>
>1. Alphabets and syllabaries of a
>phonetic nature were common in China
>from 500BC to 1000AD but they were
>basically considered 'vulgar' or not
>proper to be used for bureaucrats
>in government posts or literate persons.
>They were generally used by the lower
>classes and 'illiterate' people.
>
Buddhist texts would have been written in an alphabetic script, and
they wouldn't have been considered 'vulgar' or 'not for nobs'. There
might have been political opposition to them from the anti-Buddhist
conservatives, on the grouds that they were 'un-Chinese', , but since
there were times when Buddhism had imperial favour, that would hardly
be a reason throughout the period.
>2. Phonetic alphabets, abdjabs, and
>syllabaries were actively suppressed
>by the imperial government because the
>the nature of the different spoken languages
>in China meant that a phonetic script would
>promote regionalism. The educated classes
>did not want the peasants to be able to read,
>and so they too supported the suppression
>of more easily learned phonetic scripts with
>fewer symbols in order to keep literacy only
>within the educated classes.
>
Those who've learned the Chinese script would have no reason to
change, and one very good reason to retain it - it could be a
communication tool even between those who didn't speak mutually
intelligible dialects. Those who hadn't learned it would have little
reason to learn an alphabetic script, since there was nothing to read
in it. The ones who would benefit most from an alphabetic script would
be those who were in the process of learning, and it wouldn't be
introduced in schools without considerable pressure from above.
>The basic question is this. Were there
>phonetic scripts in China included among
>the logograms also in use from before 500BC
>to 1000AD or afterward, or were they
>basically absent?
>
There's a phonetic element in Chinese characters as it is, but I
suppose it's not emphasized. (So various characters pronounced 'sho'
in Japanese (I'm getting this from a Kanji dictionary because I don't
know Chinese) all contain the same radical, along with others which
distinguish the meaning.)
They say that when reading, we recognise the 'shape' of words and
parts of words, rather than building each word up from its letters
each time we encounter it. If that's true generally (and that seems to
accord with my experience), then Chinese is arguably a more 'natural'
reading experience than reading an alphabetic script.
>Was there the possibility of some emperor
>in China around 0AD introducing something
>phonetic like Hangul in China much like
>Sejong the Great in Korea did later in our time
>line, in the hope of something on the order
>that 'all peasants might be able to read'? If
>it had happened, what would be the changes
>from our time line?
>
If the Chinese peasants were expected to read imperial edicts for
themselves, then those edicts would have to be sent out from the court
in the various languages and dialects of China. So the court would
need to keep a bevy of official interpreters on hand to translate
them. That in itself might be a major change, because they couldn't be
recruited through the normal examination system. That would mean
either the introduction of specialist subjects (such as languages)
into the examinations, or it would mean that some posts were filled by
people recruited for their specific skills. That would make it more
like a modern civil service, which might allow China t respond to the
challenge of the West in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries more
effectively.
Pete Barrett
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