Why can't Japanese completely replace Chinese characters and Korean completely replace Chinese characters?

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Western guns gradually opened the long-closed door of eastern countries. With the invasion of the west, western culture has also entered East Asian countries, and its characters have more or less influenced the characters of East Asian countries.

As early as before the founding of New China, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and other countries dealt with Japan, and Japan also absorbed some western cultures. At this time, the "Lan Xue" for learning western culture prevailed in Japan, and western science and technology were actively introduced. According to some similarities between Japanese and Spanish and Portuguese (the ratio of a vowel to a consonant is basically 1: 1), those orchid scholars use Roman characters (ローマ) to mark Japanese pronunciation. For example, Suzuki is Suzuki and Yamada is Yamada. The wave of "Western learning spreading to the East" also appeared in China during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Xu Guangqi and other people of insight actively cooperated with Matteo Ricci, a western missionary, to introduce advanced western culture. They use Latin letters to deal with difficult syncopation in Chinese phonetic notation, which makes Chinese phonetic notation more convenient.

After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC) (for the convenience of writing, Japanese "founding" refers to similar situations in East Asian countries), western culture was further introduced into East Asian countries, and the struggle between different cultures became increasingly obvious, so was writing.

Japan: From "Abolishing Chinese Characters" to "Restricting the Use of Chinese Characters"

After Meiji Restoration, Japan rose rapidly and its economy and culture developed rapidly. In view of the disadvantages of Chinese characters, there is a voice in which spoken and written languages are consistent in society. The theory of abolishing Chinese characters and the theory of special pseudonyms came into being. Its appearance has a deep background.

Japan actively developed education after Meiji Restoration, but Chinese characters were difficult to read and remember. Japanese people read Chinese characters in many complicated ways, including training reading and pronunciation reading. Training reading is divided into basic word training and familiar word training, and pronunciation reading is divided into five tones, Chinese tones and Tang and Song Yin. For example, Ren is pronounced as ひと in Japanese, にん in Wu, じん in Chinese and ひと𞕪 in one person. Sword can be pronounced as ぁぃだ or ま, but Ren Jian should be pronounced as にんげん (Wu Yin) or じん〯. It can be read as; "Xia" can be pronounced as "de"

There are many Chinese characters with the same pronunciation. Such as "national treatment", "physical repair", "tax payment" and "scabbard" are also "gold products", and when the money belongs to the other party, the underlined part is "Na"; When the money belongs to you, the underlined part is "める".

Thirdly, there are a huge number of Chinese characters, but only about 4,000 to 5,000 Chinese characters are mainly used in daily life, and the rest are very difficult to remember. A lyricist named "しげる" in Taisho and Showa period in Japan, in which "しげる" was written as "you" with the middle vertical line removed, and there are no other examples of this word.

Fourth, Chinese characters resemble many characters and are easily confused. For example, at first glance, it is difficult to distinguish between "Yang" and "Yang".

Fifth, there are many strokes in Chinese characters. For example, "rhyme" (later simplified as "rhyme") looks complicated and is not conducive to teaching.

Sixth, there are many Chinese characters. In Japan, there are "righteousness" (for the most respectable people), "righteousness" (for the second-ranked people) and "righteousness" (for ordinary people).

With the development of modern printing industry, the weakness of Chinese characters is becoming more and more obvious. Printers need to look at the manuscript and walk on the wall full of movable type to find the required Chinese characters (selected works); After that, Chinese characters should be arranged in the correct order (planting words); After that, the used movable type should be put back in place. This process is troublesome.

After the Sino-Japanese War, China suffered a crushing defeat. The decline of China also made some Japanese abandon Chinese characters and "leave Asia and enter Europe".

However, the theory of abolishing Chinese characters finally hit a wall in Japan. Japanese still use Chinese characters. Before the end of World War II, Japan used 4,000 to 5,000 words. Even though Japan and China were enemies during World War II, Japan did not ban Chinese characters and Chinese characters.

Only after World War II, 1946, the Ministry of Education published 1850 Chinese Characters to be Used, and 198 1 year published a list of commonly used Chinese characters, taking 1945 Chinese characters as "the general standard for using Chinese characters in general social life". It also stipulates the pronunciation of Chinese characters (only phonetic reading, only training reading and phonetic reading training). Chinese characters are limited.

The reasons why Japan continues to use Chinese characters are as follows:

First, Chinese characters are ideograms and pseudonyms are syllabic letters. Ideographic characters can clearly express the meaning of words. If sulfuric acid is installed on the tractor, the word "danger" will definitely give people a stronger feeling than "ぁぶなぃ" or the Roman word "Abner". For the British and Americans, many people don't know the meaning of "herbivore", but the Japanese certainly know the meaning of "herbivore".

Secondly, the ideographic nature of Chinese characters makes Japanese avoid the troubles caused by many homophones. As mentioned earlier, if "ぉさめる" does not use Chinese characters, it is difficult to distinguish between "Na める" and "ェ". The existence of homophones makes it necessary to distinguish Japanese from Chinese characters.

Third, the Japanese have always had reverence for the ancient culture of China. Chinese characters have always been considered to have higher taste than Japanese, and Chinese characters naturally have higher taste than pseudonyms. For example, today (こんにち) is more than today (きょぅ), and yesterday (さくじつ) is more than yesterday (つ𞏰), even trying to use it on formal occasions. For example, the job advertisement is:

How much is the transaction management? From 32 years to now, 1 50,000 liters has been given, and1year has been given, with a lapse of 2 years.

As long as you know something about Japanese characters, you can understand this passage.

In addition to restricting the use of Chinese characters, the Ministry of Education has also published some simplified characters, namely "new fonts". Such as "body" → "body" → "country" → "country" Some of them are the same as China's simplified characters, while others are different. Such as "art" → "rhyme", China simplified it as "art". In this way, Japan has basically overcome the weakness that Chinese characters are difficult to understand and remember.

South Korea and North Korea: "China and North Korea" and "North Korea only"

After the signing of the Jianghua Treaty, the invasion of Korea by the great powers deepened, and national and democratic movements were also launched in Korea. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1898, Korea became "independent", and 1898 was renamed as "Korean Empire". At this time, Korean Democrats vigorously promoted new ideas, and journalism also developed rapidly. In order to inspire people's wisdom and promote the idea of equality, they adopted Chinese characters and Chinese characters to make Korean (? ) mixed Chinese characters for printing. In this way, official reading was actually abolished, and only proverbs used by people and women in Park Jung Su were widely used.

19 10 "Japan-Korea merger treaty" was signed, and Japan annexed South Korea and established the South Korean Governor's Office. The Governor's Office suppressed Korean and Korean, and even listed them as "foreign languages". After the March 1st Movement, the Governor's Office practiced "cultural politics" and allowed Korean and Korean to exist. In the 1930s, with the increasing Japanese fascism, Japan's oppression on North Korea became deeper and deeper. The Governor's Office implements the "integration of domestic fresh food" (in Japan; Fresh: North Korea), Korean and Korean are completely banned, and Japanese is the common language.

After the end of World War II, the Korean people broke free from the shackles of Japan, and there was a call for the abolition of Japanese in society. At the same time, it was proposed to abolish Chinese characters and use them exclusively for Korean. With the intensification of the Cold War, North Korea was divided into South Korea and North Korea, but the reform of writing continued.

South Korea's writing policy is rather confusing. 1948, 10 year 10 9 October, the National Assembly enacted the Korean Special Law, stipulating that "all official documents of the Republic of Korea shall be in Korean, but Chinese characters may be used if necessary". At this time, the school taught 1000 commonly used Chinese characters, but Chinese characters were used in society. The views of the Korean government and the Korean media often run counter to each other. Li Chengwan has repeatedly stressed that only Korean is used, but the news media retorted that "there should be no legal cases that ignore traditions and customs". In 1960s, the contradiction caused by Chinese character education became increasingly acute. It was not until 1970 that park chung-hee forced the implementation of "all-Korean culture" that the contradiction was alleviated.

A few years later, South Korea began to resume Chinese character education. At 1975, Chinese character education resumed, and Chinese characters were marked after difficult words in brackets. In 1999, the government of Kim Dae-jung decided to restore Chinese characters and those in official documents and traffic signs. Kim Dae-jung said: "If we ignore Chinese characters, it will be difficult to understand our classical culture. You need to use both Korean and Chinese characters. " But the controversy continues.

Concentrate on thinking:

1) It is easy to learn Korean, but difficult to learn Chinese characters;

2) Now China basically uses Korean;

3) Korean people in Korea and other countries in the world also use pure Korean;

4) Korea is one of the countries with the lowest illiteracy rate, which should be attributed to the easy learning of Korean.

The mixer thinks:

1) Chinese characters are a part of Korean, especially the academic language. It is not accurate to express meaning in Korean. There are 70% Chinese characters in Korean, and there are quite a few homonyms, which are not clearly expressed in Korean.

2) Historical books in ancient and modern times are recorded in Chinese characters, bearing the traditional Korean culture;

3) Chinese characters are beneficial to brain development and suitable for computer language;

4) In order to ensure the national strength of South Korea, Chinese characters need to occupy a place in the cultural circle of China;

5) Chinese and Korean can learn from each other.

It must be noted that Chinese experts in this period did not advocate the complete abolition of Chinese characters, but believed that China people were currently using them.

Words are enough.

Although South Korea's specialization has brought some benefits, its disadvantages have to be mentioned. First, there are many Chinese words in Korean. If you leave Chinese characters and Chinese words, it is impossible to understand Korean correctly, and it will also cause confusion in meaning. Like "?" This word refers to stories, ancient events, ancient history, ancient temples and censorship. The word "?" It means both "persistence" and "drummer". If they are all written in Korean, it is very troublesome to understand the meaning of words according to the context. Secondly, the meaning concept of words is not accurately conveyed, and the power of word creation is also greatly reduced. Many words that could have been derived can only be created or transliterated; Third, the ignorance of Chinese characters makes Koreans lack classical culture and cut off from tradition, which makes South Korea completely separated from the East Asian cultural circle and isolated.

In North Korea, because it is a centralized political system, the reform of writing is relatively smooth. 1945, Kim Il Sung first instructed all publications of the xx Party of Korea to stop using Chinese characters, and later instructed to gradually stop using Chinese characters. By 1949, North Korea completely stopped using Chinese characters.

However, after the Korean War, Kim Il Sung saw that South Korea could not be merged in a short time, and at that time, South Korea was still mixed with Chinese characters, so he instructed the Korean Academy of Social Sciences that "future generations need to know southern publications and historical documents with Chinese characters, so they need to teach them some Chinese characters", so North Korea opened a Chinese character course at 1954. However, Chinese character education in North Korea is a part of foreign language education and is not included in the Korean language and writing system.

Vietnam: the use of Latin letters

Modern Vietnamese characters came into being two or three hundred years ago, originally created by French missionaries according to Latin letters. After the Sino-French War, Vietnam became a French colony, and only retained the Ruan regime in name. French colonists forced Vietnamese to use Latin letters. In the Latin alphabet, the impractical southern characters were excluded, but the Chinese characters remained.

Why did French colonists force Vietnamese to use Latin letters? The reason for this is the following：

First, the word Hannan is the cultural link between Viet Nam and China. The abolition of Hannan will cut off Vietnam-China relations and make Vietnam a pro-French country.

Second, the Latin alphabet is the language used in France. Letting Vietnamese use Latin letters can make Vietnam a French-speaking country.

But the French colonists only played a catalytic role in the change of Vietnamese characters. What is decisive is the promotion of Latin letters by Vietnamese progressives.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Vietnamese progressives set up "Tokyo Book" to publicize advanced knowledge to Vietnamese people. Members of Tokyo Normal University believe that in order to stimulate people's wisdom, people must be educated through Latin letters, so that people have the knowledge of resisting French colonial rule.

After World War II, Vietnam launched the independence movement until 1955 North Vietnam became independent. The North Vietnamese government headed by Ho Chi Minh announced the abolition of Chinese characters and the use of Latin letters. The former South Vietnamese authorities also abolished Chinese characters under the pressure of France and the United States.

There are also profound reasons for the abolition of Chinese characters in Vietnam: first, the illiteracy rate in Vietnam was 90% at that time, and it was necessary to speak and recognize Chinese characters before using them, so learning Chinese characters was of no practical significance to the broad masses of working people, and it was difficult for Vietnam to consolidate socialism urgently; Moreover, Vietnam is in a state of war for a long time, so the cultural policy of using Chinese characters can not be implemented at all: Vietnam's national conditions determine that the reform of Chinese characters in Vietnam must be rapid.

Modern Vietnamese characters are composed of 26 Latin letters, and some supplementary letters have been created according to language needs. This is easy to learn. Its use has rapidly reduced the illiteracy rate in Vietnam. But it has caused serious consequences. Vietnamese traditional culture has been buried for thousands of years, because fewer and fewer people know Chinese characters. Vietnamese history books are only supported by a few translated historical materials, while a large number of historical materials are written in Chinese characters. Vietnamese can't live without Chinese characters. Many people have China calligraphy such as "Unity", and Vietnamese people also put the word "Xi" in front of their doors when they get married. Chinese and Vietnamese cultures are inseparable. Although modern Vietnamese is easy to learn, it hinders Vietnamese culture. Moreover, the pinyin of different Chinese characters in Vietnamese is often the same. For example, "Thuong" means "hurt" and also means "love" and "business"; Son of a butcher, son of a gentleman. In this way, a mistake is "a small difference, a thousand miles away."

China: Pinyin to Simplified Chinese Characters.

1840 After the Opium War, China began to become a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and with the signing of the Treaty of Xin Chou, China completely became a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. With the deepening of the invasion of foreign powers, western culture was introduced into China, which influenced the intellectuals in China. At the end of 19, it was proposed that Chinese characters should be pinyin, that is, Chinese characters should be abolished and pinyin should be adopted. In the new culture movement, Qian put forward the idea of reforming writing, which was supported by many advanced intellectuals. Even Mr. Lu Xun accused Chinese characters of feudalism. Under the social conditions at that time, this argument is understandable. Later, the revolutionary base areas led by the xx Party in China also implemented the phonetic writing policy, but it failed.

The pinyin of Chinese characters failed in the end. The main reasons are as follows:

1. The formulation of "Chinese Pinyin Scheme" and simplified Chinese characters has basically solved the shortcomings that Chinese characters are difficult to read and remember, which is the basis of the existence of Chinese Pinyin;

Second, with Academician Wang Xuan solving the problem of inputting Chinese characters into computers, Chinese characters have also kept pace with the information age.

Third, China used to be a weak country. With China becoming prosperous again, people's confidence in China culture has been restored.

Fourth, in the past, Chinese characters were regarded as backward characters, while Pinyin characters were advanced characters. But later, intellectuals in China generally established the view that "language and writing have no class", and Chinese characters were no longer advanced or backward.

But why is there such a saying that Chinese characters are pinyin? This has a lot to do with the difficulty of reading and remembering Chinese characters. In ancient times, the pronunciation of Chinese characters was marked by orthography and anticlockwise, which needed to be carried out on the basis of understanding certain Chinese characters. It is impossible for beginners, and Chinese characters urgently need a new phonetic notation method. So before and after the May 4th Movement, people formulated "phonetic symbols", which played a very good role in the phonetic notation of Chinese characters and the promotion of "Putonghua". After the founding of New China, 1956 formulated the Chinese Pinyin Scheme (Draft). After repeated examination and revision, it was approved and implemented in February 1958, and the modern Chinese phonetic system was formally formed. Phonetic symbols are still used in Taiwan Province province.

In addition to being difficult, Chinese characters are also difficult to remember, which has already been said when talking about Japan. In order to solve this problem, New China published the Summary of Simplified Chinese Characters, which simplified a large number of complicated Chinese characters and made them easy to learn and remember, thus reducing the illiteracy rate, improving the writing speed and office efficiency.

Besides Chinese mainland, Singaporeans also use Simplified Chinese. Taiwan Province Province intended to use simplified Chinese characters, but Chiang Kai-shek heard that Chinese mainland used simplified Chinese characters, so he stopped the work of simplified Chinese characters on the grounds of "discord between Chinese thieves and thieves". In 1980s and 1990s, although some simplified characters were published, in Taiwan Province Province, traditional characters were still used.

China's writing reform is generally good, but there are also some problems:

First, with the popularization of simplified characters, people know less and less about traditional characters, which is not conducive to reading ancient books and communicating with Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan;

Second, the emergence of Chinese Pinyin has solved the pronunciation problem of Chinese characters, but it also has an excessive dependence on Pinyin.

Pinyin and its advantages and disadvantages

Having said that, we find that all these reforms revolve around one theme: Pinyin. So what is Pinyin?

As the name implies, Pinyin refers to the gradual transition of ideographic characters to phonography. This is a very long process.

The earliest characters in the world, such as hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt, cuneiform characters in ancient Babylon and Oracle Bone Inscriptions in China, are all ideographs. The earliest phonography is the Phoenician alphabet, which appeared later than ideographic characters.

With the development of the times, ancient Egypt and ancient Babylon appeared homophonic, and then they used the same symbol. For example, ancient Egypt used "swallow" to mean "big" because "swallow" is homophonic with "big". After the appearance of this notation, the ancient Egyptian and Cuban Babylonian characters, although still ideographic, have taken a step towards phonetic notation.

Later, with the increase of exchanges between West Asia, North Africa and Europe, loanwords increased accordingly. At this time, some changes have taken place in these ideographs. For example, in ancient Egypt, in the late Ptolemy Dynasty established by the Greeks, there was a famous Cleopatra. When writing her name, the historian wrote down some symbols and circled them in circles. According to later research, although the characters in the circle are still ancient Egyptian characters, they are "Cleopatra" sounds. So the words in the circle are pinyin words. But ancient Egypt and ancient Babylon were still mainly ideograms. With the decline of ancient Egypt and ancient Babylonian civilization, the further development of its characters ended.

In the early days of ancient Phoenicia, ideographic characters were also used, and their characters had a certain inheritance relationship with ancient Egyptian and ancient Babylonian characters. But in the later period, its characters gradually evolved into phonography and spread, affecting ancient India, ancient Persia, Arabia, ancient Greece, ancient Rome and even the whole of Europe.

Different from these civilizations, China's writing style has changed several times since the birth of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, but it is still ideographic. This is determined by the characteristics of Chinese and the specific national conditions of China.

At first, Chinese vocabulary was monosyllabic words, such as eyes, mouth, hands and feet. Later, although some loanwords were disyllabic words, such as pipa, grape and bodhisattva, they accounted for a minority in ancient Chinese. Chinese characters adapt to this monosyllabic feature, that is, one word at a time. Although modern Chinese is mostly disyllabic words, most disyllabic words can be decomposed into related monosyllabic morphemes except loanwords.

Besides, there are seven dialects in China, namely Northern Dialect, Wu Dialect, Xiang Dialect, Gan Dialect, Min Dialect, Hakka Dialect and Cantonese, which are quite different from each other, such as Beijing Dialect and Guangzhou Dialect. Moreover, there are differences between sub-dialects within each dialect and between dialects within sub-dialects. For example, both Fuzhou dialect and Xiamen dialect are Min dialects, but they cannot communicate with each other. In Eastern Europe, Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Polish and even Yugoslav can communicate with each other, and the differences between Chinese dialects are even greater than them. Chinese characters have become a bridge to maintain the unity of Chinese. If the language is not unified, it will lead to the division of Chinese. In ancient India (Indo-European only), Sanskrit became the highest language after the Aryan conquest. However, with the development of the times, proverbs are constantly produced from Sanskrit, and proverbs vary from place to place. Because Indian characters are pinyin characters, this difference intensifies, which eventually leads to many Indian languages, even one language in one city. Latin was the official language in ancient Rome. Today's French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian all developed from it. But they became different languages. The reason is that Gaul, Spain and Italy all used Latin, but they belonged to different dialects. When using it, each region has added some dialects in consideration of its own language habits, and then spelled its own dialects with Latin letters. With the demise of the Roman Empire, the language development in different regions went their separate ways. Therefore, there are many languages now.

Third, Chinese characters have been used in China's history, and Chinese characters carry the past of China. All kinds of books in ancient China were written in Chinese characters. Through it, we have learned about Confucius and Mencius, Twenty-four History, a hundred schools of thought contend, Du Lisu San and four classic novels. Pinyin's ability to carry the past is limited, and it is difficult for people to understand works seven or eight hundred years ago or even earlier, because Pinyin has changed greatly with the times. For example, the Latin in the fourth and eighth centuries was very different, so Renaissance scholars found that Constantine's gift was forged by the church. Americans and British people can't understand Shakespeare's previous literature unless they study old English specially, while China people can understand classical Chinese as long as they finish middle school. The stability of Chinese characters enables them to cross the boundaries of the times and let modern people understand the meaning of the ancients. For example, in Du Fu's Spring Hope, "Although the country is broken, the mountains and rivers will last forever, and the vegetation will turn green in spring", which makes people sad in Su Parting. If Pinyin is rashly implemented, modern China will be isolated from traditional culture. In a few lifetimes, I'm afraid that Chinese characters and China culture can only be rediscovered if champollion is reincarnated.

Now, South Korea and Vietnam have seen the disadvantages of abolishing Chinese characters. The Chosun Ilbo published an editorial saying that it is nothing to be proud of that Koreans don't know Chinese characters, and Vietnam is also planning to resume Chinese character education in two generations. Chinese characters have regained their vitality in those countries. In China, the latest syllabus of textbooks also contains provisions on learning some words before learning traditional Chinese characters and pinyin, which can eliminate the above-mentioned problems.