Around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, there were countless Chinese intellectuals and common citizens who perceived that their nation was in such desperate straits that something drastic had to be done or it would collapse altogether. Many of these concerned citizens focused on the archaic script as unsuited for the purposes of modern science. Others concentrated on the "unsayable" classical / literary language (wényán 文言) as primarily responsible for China's backwardness, which resulted in Japan's defeat of China in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95). There were scores upon scores of reformers, the best minds of the country, who put forward a broad variety of proposals for language and script reform.
Well, first of all, the difficulty of learning a language can only be measured relative to the language(s) the learner already knows. Japanese is easier for Koreans than for Americans; I would guess Chinese is easier for English speakers than, say, Arabic speakers. Second, language isn't writing. Learning to write Japanese or Chinese is hardly a snap even for native speakers.
After coming face to face with the unavoidable debacles inherent in mechanical Chinese typewriters (not to mention many other pitfalls of the writing system), Language Log readers will not be surprised to learn that sinographs were not well suited for telegraphy:
We have mentioned the Dungan people and their unique language many times on Language Log. How did it happen that we at Penn have a connection with the Dungans, a small group (less than a hundred thousand) of Sinitic speakers who have lived in the center of Asia (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) since the latter part of the 19th century? They fled there from northwest China, many of them dying along the way, after revolting against the Manchu Qing government.
On Language Log and in Sino-Platonic Papers, we have often focused on the rise of romanization for Sinitic languages, especially as engendered by the Jesuits and other Catholic orders. In this post, I would like to introduce an Italian Ph.D. thesis that does a commendable job of surveying what transpired in this regard during the 16th through 18th centuries:
The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (TPC) was first planted by British missionaries in Tainan, which later expanded to all southern parts of Taiwan, constituting the present Southern Synod of TPC. The most important pioneer among them was the Scottish missionary Rev. Thomas Barclay who worked in Taiwan-Fu (the present Tainan). He was born in Glasgow, and matriculated at the University of Glasgow. While there, he studied under Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin [according to Wikipedia]. The celebrated Lord Kelvin reminds me of the absolute zero degree in physical chemistry and the electric cable equation as the underpinning of the Transatlantic cable as well as the conduction of electric impulses along nerve fibers.
Today I'm bringing you this short article for LL. A Korean pop idol, Solar — that's her stage name, Mandarinized as 頌樂; her real name is 김용선 (Hanja: 金容仙), romanized Kim Yongsun) — has made headlines for speaking very fluent Mandarin after just 7 months of learning it. She has also released a full song in Mandarin with Taiwanese artist 9m88 and taken countless interviews with Taiwanese media in Mandarin as well (see this "What's in My Bag" interview with Vogue Taiwan.)
BOPOMOFO CAFE draws its name from the phonetic Traditional Chinese Alphabets. ㄅ, ㄆ, ㄇ, and ㄈ [bo, po, mo, and fo] are the “ABCs” of the Mandarin Chinese alphabet symbolizing nostalgia and strength as the building blocks of Mandarin language mastery. Co-founders Eric and Philip, both "American Born Chinese" (ABC), chose the name to reflect their heritage and shared pride in their culture.
We've talked about Dungan a lot on Language Log. That's the northwest Sinitic topolect written in Cyrillic that has been transplanted to Central Asia. See "Selected readings" below.
For those of you who are interested and would like to hear what it sounds like in real life — spoken and sung by male and female voices — we are fortunate to have a series of ten radio broadcast recordings (here).
Note the natural, easy, undistorted insertion of non-Sinitic borrowings, e.g., "Salam alaikum" (Arabic as-salāmu ʿalaykum السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ ["Peace be upon you"]). That would not be possible in sinographic transcription of northwest Sinitic speech. This and other aspects and implications of alphabetic Dungan have been extensively discussed on LL.
