Bibliography
(A longer version of this paper is available through CRCC, Indiana University, 510 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN, 47408.)
Chen, Heqin, (1928)”Yutiwen yingyong zihui” [Characters used in vernacular literature], Shanghai.
DeFrancis, John (1966) “Why Johnny Can’t Read Chinese”, Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, Vol. 1, No. 1, Feb. 1966, pp. 1-20.
DeFrancis, John (1984) The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
DeFrancis, John (1989) Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Kennedy, George (1964) “A Minimum Vocabulary in Modern Chinese”, in Selected Works of George Kennedy, Tien-yi Li (ed.), New Haven: Far Eastern Publications.
Mair, Victor (1986) “The Need for an Alphabetically Arranged General Usage Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese: A Review Article of Some Recent Dictionaries and Current Lexicographical Projects”, Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 1, February, 1986 (Dept. of Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania).
Zhao, Yuanren, (1972) Aspects of Chinese Sociolinguistics, Anwar S. Dil (ed.), Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Notes
- I am speaking of the writing system here, but the difficulty of the writing system has such a pervasive effect on literacy and general language mastery that I think the statement as a whole is still valid.
- John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984, p.153. Most of the issues in this paper are dealt with at length and with great clarity in both this book and in his Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989.
- Incidentally, I’m aware that much of what I’ve said above applies to Japanese as well, but it seems clear that the burden placed on a learner of Japanese is much lighter because (a) the number of Chinese characters used in Japanese is “only” about 2,000 — fewer by a factor of two or three compared to the number needed by the average literate Chinese reader; and (b) the Japanese have phonetic syllabaries (the hiragana and katakana characters), which are nearly 100% phonetically reliable and are in many ways easier to master than chaotic English orthography is.
- See, for ex., Chen Heqin, “Yutiwen yingyong zihui” [Characters used in vernacular literature], Shanghai, 1928.
- John DeFrancis deals with this issue, among other places, in “Why Johnny Can’t Read Chinese”, Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, Vol. 1, No. 1, Feb. 1966, pp. 1-20.
- George Kennedy, “A Minimum Vocabulary in Modern Chinese”, in Selected Works of George Kennedy, Tien-yi Li (ed.), New Haven, 1964, p. 8.
- Zhao Yuanren, Aspects of Chinese Sociolinguistics, Anwar S. Dil (ed.), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976, p. 92.
- John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, p. 109.
- Charles Hockett reminds me that many of my examples are really instances of loan words, not cognates, but rather than take up space dealing with the issue, I will blur the distinction a bit here. There are phonetic loan words from English into Chinese, of course, but they are scarce curiosities rather than plentiful semantic moorings.
- A phrase taken from an article by Victor Mair with the deceptively boring title “ The Need for an Alphabetically Arranged General Usage Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese: A Review Article of Some Recent Dictionaries and Current Lexicographical Projects” (Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 1, February, 1986, Dept. of Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania). Mair includes a rather hilarious but realistic account of the tortuous steeplechase of looking up a low-frequency lexical item in his arsenal of Chinese dictionaries.
- I have noticed from time to time that the romanization method first used tends to influence one’s accent in Chinese. It seems to me a Chinese person with a very keen ear could distinguish Americans speaking, say, Wade-Giles-accented Chinese from pinyin-accented Chinese.