Why do they write from R to L in Arabic countries?

[Jimmy Snyder]

Being able to read books in another language (mandarin vs. cantonese) and be able to read books from a 1000 years ago because although the sound of the language has changed the symbols for words haven't, might be an advantage.

The idea that Chinese writing is universal among the dialects is urban legend.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=548"

The idea that it is universal across languages (as in Japanese people can read Chinese books) is even more fantastic. As for reading 1000 year old books, in addition to changes in the language, there are also cultural changes that would make the task impossible to anyone but an expert in the field. It's no different than a native English speaker trying to read a 1000 year old English book in that respect. The characters are helping the East read each others' languages about the same as the latin alphabet is helping the West do so.

Having invested a great deal of time learning to do so, I can read Japanese fluently. All that effort would go to waste if they changed their writing system to a purely phonetic one. I'm sure that literate Japanese feel the same way. As yet unborn generations don't get much say in the debate even though they are the ones who would benefit most from the change.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

One day the Chinese will stop using these stupid characters and convert to letters, which is much better! Then you only have to learn 26, not thousands.

I don't think you get the point of Chinese logographs. There are many different spoken languages in China and for the most part they're unrelated to each other and mutually unintelligible. The advantage of the writing system is that because it's completely unrelated to the way the words sound in any particular language two people who have no spoken language in common can communicate.

If they ditched all that for a phonetic alphabet they'd be back to having to learn each other's spoken languages before they could understand each other, like in the primitive West. Might as well go back to making knives out of stone.

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[Oerg]

I don't think you get the point of Chinese logographs. There are many different spoken languages in China and for the most part they're unrelated to each other and mutually unintelligible. The advantage of the writing system is that because it's completely unrelated to the way the words sound in any particular language two people who have no spoken language in common can communicate.

If they ditched all that for a phonetic alphabet they'd be back to having to learn each other's spoken languages before they could understand each other, like in the primitive West. Might as well go back to making knives out of stone.

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Being able to read books in another language (mandarin vs. cantonese) and be able to read books from a 1000 years ago because although the sound of the language has changed the symbols for words haven't, might be an advantage.

Actually, Cantonese, like CaptainQuasar said, uses the same script as Mandarin. Cantonese is a dialect spoken primarily in Hong Kong and Guangdong province. Most Chinese wouldn't understand what the Hong Kongers are saying, but they would definitely be able to read a newspaper in Hong Kong.

Another reason why you couldn't just replace those characters with alphabets is because there are many Chinese characters that have the same pronunciation.

 

[mgb_phys]

Most Chinese wouldn't understand what the Hong Kongers are saying, but they would definitely be able to read a newspaper in Hong Kong

That was my point that mandarin and cantonese are effectively different spoken languages in that they are not mutually comprehensible - although the link by jimmysnyder claims that you can't read a newspaper because the written language has been simplified to match the local usage and so has diverged along with the spoken language.

The idea that Chinese writing is universal among the dialects is urban legend.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=548"

That's interesting - I didn't realize that the Chinese had invented new characters as new elements were discovered.

Having invested a great deal of time learning to do so, I can read Japanese fluently. All that effort would go to waste if they changed their writing system to a purely phonetic one.

Is Japanese is getting more phonetic as more foreign and technical terms are translated phonetically in katakana?

 

[Oerg]

That was my point that mandarin and conatonese are effectively different languages in that they are not mutually comprehensible - although the link by jimmysnyder claims that you can't read a newspaper because the written language has been simplified to match the local usage and so has diverged along with the spoken language.

oh, ok, sorry to have misread your post, because you were saying reading languages in a different language followed by a mandarin vs cantonese.

And yeh, written chinese in china is a simplified version from the traditional, which is the written form used by Taiwan and Hong Kong. But due to their influences in entertainment etc., and the not so long ago switch to the simplified form, (about 60 years I think) most chinese can recognise the traditional form and the simplified form.

Whether Hong Kong and Taiwan will change their written script to the simplified form or whether the 2 written forms will diverge is pretty hard to say for the future.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Is Japanese is getting more phonetic as more foreign and technical terms are translated phonetically in katakana?

Imported foreign words almost always are written phonetically and as time goes on, they take up a larger percentage of the entire opus of Japanese text. In that sense, you could say that the written language is getting more phonetic. However, this does not mean that the core vocabulary is being replaced with phonetic equivalents. You will need to learn Chinese characters to read Japanese for the foreseeable future.

 

[arunma]

I'm fairly certain that the reason people in Arabic countries write from right to left has more to do with the Arabic language than anything else. If I'm not mistaken, it's a characteristic of semitic languages. Hebrew, both ancient and modern, is also written from right to left. If you write some Hebrew characters in Microsoft Word and try to highlight them, it'll even do this funny thing where it tries to highlight from right to left. Arabic is a derivative of Hebrew, so it stands to reason that it would be the same way.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Arabic and Hebrew are both Semitic languages but I don't think that Arabic is a derivative of Hebrew, is it?

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[mgb_phys]

Arabic and Hebrew are both Semitic languages but I don't think that Arabic is a derivative of Hebrew, is it?

No - although as you said they both come from the same roots and have some words/grammer in common.

 

[leopard]

Even better if they switched to English.

 

[mgb_phys]

Even better if they switched to English.

Yes it's odd that they haven't really.
I can't imagine what God, who is of course originally English - although apparently moved to America on the Mayflower, thought he was doing making the Muslims and Jews both write the word of God in silly made up squiggly letters.

Personally I blame the French.