WI: Chinese alphabet

This is in before 1900 but if you can have the communists or someone in the 20th century doing it then even better!

How can we best have the Chinese deciding to adopt a real alphabet? (or a syllabary if you must)
Its often said that its very hard to learn Chinese even for the Chinese themselves due to the sheer complexity of their script. To have it as a alphabet would be...interesting. And cool.

What form would this alphabet take?

Bonus points for how far you can obliterate the Chinese script. Though I would admit this is unlikely, a mixture like the Koreans or Japanese is more likely.
 
There actually IS a Chinese alphabet called Zhuyin. Like Kana in Japan and Hangul in Korea, it isn't really a "true alphabet", but a syllabic alphabet. This scenario you've proposed is actually quite plausible.

Easy and late POD. The Nationalists don't send an army into Manchuria in 1948, deciding to consolidate their gains. They control most of China, "winning" the Chinese Civil War. In an effort to to improve literacy (like how the Communists simplified characters), they integrate Zhuyin into the written Chinese languge. Modern-day Chinese would then likely be a mixture of Zhuyin and Hanzi, much like the mixture of Kana and Kanji in that the Japanese government promoted. Keep in mind that Kana only became super super commonplace in Japan after the Japanese (read: American) government started promoting it after World War II. I could see the same thing happening in a pro-American KMT government on Mainland China, especially when the issue of how to deal with the staggering illiteracy pops up.

In KMT-controlled Taiwan, Zhuyin became the primary way to learn Chinese for both foreigners and locals (like Pinyin is on the Mainland). And it's actually pretty useful. Regardless of the nastiness of the Japanese occupation, they left Taiwan overwhelming literate, so the KMT government never really had to significantly reform the Chinese language. I actually tend to write in a mixture of Zhuyin and Hanzi (its actually far easier than normal Chinese), so I could see Zhuyin being integrated into the Chinese language more strongly, as the KMT would be dealing with far more illiteracy than OTL.
 
There actually IS a Chinese alphabet called Zhuyin. Like Kana in Japan and Hangul in Korea, it isn't really a "true alphabet", but a syllabic alphabet. This scenario you've proposed is actually quite plausible.

Easy and late POD. The Nationalists don't send an army into Manchuria in 1948, deciding to consolidate their gains. They control most of China, "winning" the Chinese Civil War. In an effort to to improve literacy (like how the Communists simplified characters), they integrate Zhuyin into the written Chinese languge. Modern-day Chinese would then likely be a mixture of Zhuyin and Hanzi, much like the mixture of Kana and Kanji in that the Japanese government promoted. Keep in mind that Kana only became super super commonplace in Japan after the Japanese (read: American) government started promoting it after World War II. I could see the same thing happening in a pro-American KMT government on Mainland China, especially when the issue of how to deal with the staggering illiteracy pops up.

In KMT-controlled Taiwan, Zhuyin became the primary way to learn Chinese for both foreigners and locals (like Pinyin is on the Mainland). And it's actually pretty useful. Regardless of the nastiness of the Japanese occupation, they left Taiwan overwhelming literate, so the KMT government never really had to significantly reform the Chinese language. I actually tend to write in a mixture of Zhuyin and Hanzi (its actually far easier than normal Chinese), so I could see Zhuyin being integrated into the Chinese language more strongly, as the KMT would be dealing with far more illiteracy than OTL.

Exactly. Also, isn't it sometimes called bopomofo?
 
TBH I love bopomofo. If I ever decide to learn Mandarin Chinese, I'm making sure that bopomofo is included. And I agree with you on that situation - makes a lot of sense.

There actually IS a Chinese alphabet called Zhuyin. Like Kana in Japan and Hangul in Korea, it isn't really a "true alphabet", but a syllabic alphabet. This scenario you've proposed is actually quite plausible.

Easy and late POD. The Nationalists don't send an army into Manchuria in 1948, deciding to consolidate their gains. They control most of China, "winning" the Chinese Civil War. In an effort to to improve literacy (like how the Communists simplified characters), they integrate Zhuyin into the written Chinese languge. Modern-day Chinese would then likely be a mixture of Zhuyin and Hanzi, much like the mixture of Kana and Kanji in that the Japanese government promoted. Keep in mind that Kana only became super super commonplace in Japan after the Japanese (read: American) government started promoting it after World War II. I could see the same thing happening in a pro-American KMT government on Mainland China, especially when the issue of how to deal with the staggering illiteracy pops up.

In KMT-controlled Taiwan, Zhuyin became the primary way to learn Chinese for both foreigners and locals (like Pinyin is on the Mainland). And it's actually pretty useful. Regardless of the nastiness of the Japanese occupation, they left Taiwan overwhelming literate, so the KMT government never really had to significantly reform the Chinese language. I actually tend to write in a mixture of Zhuyin and Hanzi (its actually far easier than normal Chinese), so I could see Zhuyin being integrated into the Chinese language more strongly, as the KMT would be dealing with far more illiteracy than OTL.
 
Would it be possible to kick the PoD back to the 2000s BCE? Way I figure, written Chinese can indeed have a similar path to how the Roman alphabet developed.

The main questions would be this:
1. Is spoken language affected by written language?

Here's what I'm thinking: Somehow, the Chinese begin to develop an alphabetic language. This, in turn, shifts the spoken language away from being "monosyllabic" to being a language similar to many European languages. I'm not sure how, and I'm definitely not a linguistics expert, so I have no clue if this would even work.
 
Alphabetization would not work in China anytime soon because the spoken languages are so different. Imagine Swedish, English, German, Afrikaans, etc. all using the same written language, and consequently referring to themselves as one nation. The history of civilization might be different. Cantonese, Wu, Hakka, etc. are very different languages that share a writing system only. Thus Chinese characters are a very important part of the national psyche.

Today Zhuyin (bopomofo) is used in Taiwan, and Hanyu pinyin in the Mainland, to teach children new characters. Taiwan recently adopted pinyin as its preferred Romanization as well. But romanization for the sake of foreigners is not the same as alphabetization of the language for its own users. Most people in China cannot read pinyin, although they use it to type characters on a computer (and older mobile phones).

Another drawback is the use of tones. Pinyin or Zhuyin can indicate tones, but these are optional and seldom used. Even with tones indicated, there are still many, many homophones, especially in Mandarin, which has lost most consonant syllable-endings. For example, the pinyin SHI can indicate 80 different characters. Even with tone markings (Mandarin has 5 tones, other languages have more) there is much ambiguity.

I don't have references for this claim at hand, but: Mao first wanted everyone in China to learn Mandarin. He assumed that would take a few generations. Afterward, they could look into alphabetization. However, the current leadership has now abandoned ever attempting alphabetization, because literacy has improved enough that it is unnecessary.
 
I think it would also be interesting to look at the success of Simplified Chinese in the PRC. What are the adjusted literacy rates between Taiwan (which uses traditional characters) and the PRC (which officially uses simplified characters)?

I do know that Japanese newspapers will give furigana for the kanji that are not on the official kanji list. This was 1,945 kanji in the immediate postwar period, but more obscure characters have been reintroduced over the years.

Maybe if the PRC ordered newspapers to print syllabic characters above difficult or obscure characters literacy might increase. Perhaps Beijing might set a certain character knowledge cutoff based on mean education. In other words, newspapers may print characters without syllabics up to the comprehension level of someone educated to age 14. After that, more difficult or uncommon characters must have syllabic equivalents.
 
Why?
Everyone knows enough characters.


I have only once seen pinyin used alongside an obscure character. That was in a municipal museum, on a plaque next to a Shang-dynasty bronze tripod-vessel. The name for this particular style of pot was an obscure character, and next to it was written the pinyin.
I think if a layman were to write an email to his friend about said pot, he would say "an old pot whose name sounded like Ding" and use a different character with the same pronunciation.
 
Alphabetization would not work in China anytime soon because the spoken languages are so different.

That shouldn't be a barrier to alphabetization. After all, the Arabic abjad is used to write many languages, many of which are not even related at all to Arabic.

Imagine Swedish, English, German, Afrikaans, etc. all using the same written language, and consequently referring to themselves as one nation. The history of civilization might be different.

Hmm, I can easily think of situations where something like that pretty much was reality.

Cantonese, Wu, Hakka, etc. are very different languages that share a writing system only. Thus Chinese characters are a very important part of the national psyche.

Not necessarily.

Today Zhuyin (bopomofo) is used in Taiwan, and Hanyu pinyin in the Mainland, to teach children new characters. Taiwan recently adopted pinyin as its preferred Romanization as well. But romanization for the sake of foreigners is not the same as alphabetization of the language for its own users. Most people in China cannot read pinyin, although they use it to type characters on a computer (and older mobile phones).

There are also tons of people in China who are also illiterate in characters as well. It was precisely because of that reason that kana was introduced in Japan and hangul in Korea. The exception was Vietnam, which used characters, including Chu Nom, for the longest time possible until switching completely to the Portuguese-derived Vietnamese alphabet. Had bopomofo been more heavily promoted, it would've easily been a compliment to the characters in the same way kana is in Japan - for writing grammatical morphemes, Ruby characters, words for which the character is unknown or very rare or archaic (such as the character for Biang-biang noodles), foreign loanwords, etc.

Another drawback is the use of tones. Pinyin or Zhuyin can indicate tones, but these are optional and seldom used. Even with tones indicated, there are still many, many homophones, especially in Mandarin, which has lost most consonant syllable-endings. For example, the pinyin SHI can indicate 80 different characters. Even with tone markings (Mandarin has 5 tones, other languages have more) there is much ambiguity.

In Vietnamese, it is compulsory to indicate tone, so something like that could be used for bopomofo or a bopomofo analogue. Personally, I think the best description of Chinese characters was by the Sinologist John DeFrancis, who characterized them as starting off as a syllabary (which actually makes sense, if you think about it) but in which the representation started to break down - hence why you have the homophones for shi, some of which are probably uncommon. Had the characters been standardized (and by that I don't mean Simplified characters, since it broke links with some of the morphophonemics of Mandarin) and/or the introduction of a bopomofo analogue, things would have been much better off.

I don't have references for this claim at hand, but: Mao first wanted everyone in China to learn Mandarin. He assumed that would take a few generations. Afterward, they could look into alphabetization. However, the current leadership has now abandoned ever attempting alphabetization, because literacy has improved enough that it is unnecessary.

Like I said - there are still tons of people who are illiterate in characters for which a standardization could work - maybe not Romanization, but at least something like a mixed script of bopomofo or a bopomofo analogue for function words and grammatical morphemes and a standardized set of characters for content words. That could help a lot.
 
I think it would also be interesting to look at the success of Simplified Chinese in the PRC. What are the adjusted literacy rates between Taiwan (which uses traditional characters) and the PRC (which officially uses simplified characters)?

About the same, but more so for Taiwan since Mandarin there has been adjusted to Taiwanese pronunciation (for example, the entire retroflex series of consonants [bopomofo: ㄓ, ㄔ, ㄕ, ㄖ; pinyin: zh, ch, sh, er] has been completely lost since retroflex consonants do not exist in Min Nan) as well as adopting Japanese loanwords and words unique to Taiwan. The Simplified characters were basically derived from shorthand used among the educated classes of society.

I do know that Japanese newspapers will give furigana for the kanji that are not on the official kanji list. This was 1,945 kanji in the immediate postwar period, but more obscure characters have been reintroduced over the years.

True - the obscure characters reintroduced were the ones used in personal names.

Maybe if the PRC ordered newspapers to print syllabic characters above difficult or obscure characters literacy might increase. Perhaps Beijing might set a certain character knowledge cutoff based on mean education. In other words, newspapers may print characters without syllabics up to the comprehension level of someone educated to age 14. After that, more difficult or uncommon characters must have syllabic equivalents.

That makes a lot of sense and should've been what had happened.
 
Why?
Everyone knows enough characters.

Not everybody. Believing otherwise is just a myth, like all other myths about Chinese (i.e. the highly erroneous notion of Chinese being monosyllabic, which really only apply to those languages which are more archaic than Mandarin, since Mandarin contains tons of polysyllabic words).

I have only once seen pinyin used alongside an obscure character. That was in a municipal museum, on a plaque next to a Shang-dynasty bronze tripod-vessel. The name for this particular style of pot was an obscure character, and next to it was written the pinyin.
I think if a layman were to write an email to his friend about said pot, he would say "an old pot whose name sounded like Ding" and use a different character with the same pronunciation.

A syllabary at work, my friend. :cool:
 
Would it be possible to kick the PoD back to the 2000s BCE? Way I figure, written Chinese can indeed have a similar path to how the Roman alphabet developed.

Makes sense.

The main questions would be this:
1. Is spoken language affected by written language?

Wrong - speech is before writing at all times (there are languages in the world today that are not written). The written language can, however, be influenced by the spoken language.

Here's what I'm thinking: Somehow, the Chinese begin to develop an alphabetic language. This, in turn, shifts the spoken language away from being "monosyllabic" to being a language similar to many European languages. I'm not sure how, and I'm definitely not a linguistics expert, so I have no clue if this would even work.

Umm, I can spot a few problems with that analysis - especially the notion of Chinese being "monosyllabic". That really only applies to languages like Cantonese. Mandarin, for example, has tons of polysyllabic words - not to mention a great deal of grammatical morphemes which are often mistaken for being words. For example, would you consider "walking" to be made up of two words or not?
 
The printing press basically kick started European power over the rest of the world (before which time it was a back water beneath the great powers basically everywhere else). With the printing press, you could produce books, produce them in far greater numbers and far more cheaply, and therefore a greater number of the public could get them, the public could get them in greater number, and people could educate themselves and that education fueled development, innovation, industry, etc. A part of China's downfall was it's alphabet was really too complex to make the printing press practical. So if you streamline the Chinese alphabet, you make the printing press practical to the Chinese, and hence all that can follow is opened.
 
Chinese Cyrillic?

As you know the Soviet Russians captured Mongolia during the Russian Civil War, and introduced a mongolian chyrilic alphabet, could the Russians also capture Manchuria and introduce a chyrilic alphabet to distance the Chinese population there from their compatriots, much like they did with Moldavia and Tajikistan.

If so what would this Chinese chyrillic alphabet look like?
 

Hendryk

Banned
A part of China's downfall was it's alphabet was really too complex to make the printing press practical. So if you streamline the Chinese alphabet, you make the printing press practical to the Chinese, and hence all that can follow is opened.
The sinograms were no obstacle whatsoever to making the printing press practical. Lots of people seem to overestimate the complexity of written Chinese. It's definitely a pain to learn when you're a non-native speaker but you can use it for efficient movable type press printing with no problem.

I second the suggestion of Zhuyin getting greater prominence, though it wouldn't replace the normal script anymore than the hiragana and katakana have replaced the kanji in Japanese. Nor should it, as this would make it much more difficult for ordinary Chinese to access their own civilization's written heritage.
 
You need to make the POD in the late bronze age or the early iron age, Early Chinese was probably a stress language without tones. I agree that the early writing was probably a syllabary or a system similar to modern Japanese.

  • As all of the modern Chinese dialects form what anywhere else would be considered a language family,like the Romance Languages,.the end result might be a archaic written language with mostly spoken regional modern languages.
 
Wrong - speech is before writing at all times (there are languages in the world today that are not written). The written language can, however, be influenced by the spoken language.
Wrong again:) Once societies become reasonably literate, 'spelling pronunciations' occur. So, in English, "often" is now often pronounced with a 't' sound in the middle. Similarly, in French «il y a» now has an 'l' sound. Québec «'y a» preserves the actual old pronunciation.

Similarly, the spread of a standard German based on Luther's bible massively changed what was spoken in German.

The effects are secondary, but they are very real.
 
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