Striving to revive the flagging sinographic cosmopolis
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If we take stock of the sinographic cosmopolis at the end of first quarter of the 21st century, it is evident that it is increasingly moribund. Vietnam has jettisoned chữ Hán for the Latin alphabet; North Korea has switched exclusively to hangul; South Korea now uses very few hanja; the Japanese script currently consists of draconically limited kanji, many of which are simplified, often in ways that are different from the simplified characters adopted by the PRC, plus two types of syllabaries and roman letters; the PRC itself now uses radically simplified and limited characters and the Latin alphabet, not to mention that all of the hundreds of millions of students in China learn English, which is a primary index of success for rising in the world of education, and entering sinographs into computers and other digital devices is overwhelmingly accomplished through the alphabet (with resultant amnesia eroding the characters they do learn); while the ephemeral Sinoform scripts of Inner Asia (Tangut, Jurchen, Khitan) disappeared around a millennium ago; Sinitic Dungan speakers write their language in Cyrillic…. For those who are advocates of the sinographic script, naturally all of this would be cause for alarm.
From a time when the sinographic script had a monopoly on writing in East Asia, its position is now indeed shaky at best. It is no wonder, then, that adherents of the sinographs in East Asia are fighting back.
Yonhap News Agency: Korea-China-Japan Forum on Common Chinese Characters to be Held in China
The Korea-China-Japan Common Chinese Characters Forum will be held on April 20 in Anyang, Henan Province, China. This forum is hosted by the Korea-China-Japan Cooperation Secretariat, with the Korean Institute of Hanja, the Chinese Characters Museum, and the Japanese Kanji Museum participating as supporting organizations. “Common Chinese characters” refers to Chinese characters shared among the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese languages.
The forum will consist of two sessions. In the first session, experts from Korea, China, Japan, and ASEAN will discuss topics such as the use and promotion of common Chinese characters among the participating countries, as well as the role of Chinese character museums. In the second session, participants will focus on comparative research on Chinese characters among young researchers from the three countries.
The “Common 808 Chinese Characters List for Korea, China, and Japan” was officially released at the 9th Northeast Asia Celebrities Conference in April 2014. In the same year, the cultural ministers of the three countries agreed to promote this 808-character list to enhance cultural exchange. This forum aims to commemorate the 11th anniversary of the 808-character list’s release and implement the initiative to designate 2025-2026 as the Korea-China-Japan Cultural Exchange Years.
Source: Yonhap News Agency (South Korea), April 3, 2025
It is noteworthy that the forum was held at Anyang, where oracle bones — the first attestation of sinographs around 3,300 years ago — were discovered. The whole tenor of the forum is backward looking, a sort of rump action — what used to be, with an emphasis on museums and other custodians of the past. The vaunted “Common 808 Chinese Characters List for Korea, China, and Japan” was officially released eleven years ago, and not much has happened with it since. Anyway, it is not much to build a new sinographic cosmopolis upon
Selected readings
- "Against Spherespeak and Sino-speak" (2/7/21)
- "Nomadic affinity with oracle bone divination" (11/25/20)
Chris Button said,
April 26, 2025 @ 6:58 am
I'm not sure the premise holds for Japan:
Tōyō kanji (1946): 1850 kanji, with the introduction of Shinjitai "simplified" kanji.
Jōyō Kanji (1981): 1945 kanji.
Jōyō Kanji (2010): 2136 kanji, with many additions coming from the Jinmeiyō "name" kanji list, which otherwise itself continues to expand (863 as of 2017) and preserves many of the Kyūjitai "traditional" kanji.
Victor Mair said,
April 26, 2025 @ 7:03 am
I'm not sure I understand the thrust of your introductory sentence. What premise?
Chris Button said,
April 26, 2025 @ 7:18 am
I mean I'm not sure this statement holds true for Japan:
"If we take stock of the sinographic cosmopolis at the end of first quarter of the 21st century, it is evident that it is increasingly moribund."
Victor Mair said,
April 26, 2025 @ 8:23 am
"More katakana, fewer kanji" (4/4/16)
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=24960
We need a scientific study to determine if there is empirical evidence to demonstrate that katakana, hiragana, rōmaji, and English (i.e., phonetic writing) is increasing at the expense of kanji (i.e., logographic / morphosyllabic writing). My personal observation is that the non-kanji elements of Japanese are clearly increasing at the expense of the kanji components, and I have pointed that out in a number of Language Log posts. There is substance / material for several theses / dissertations and dozens of papers here.
Lucas Christopoulos said,
April 26, 2025 @ 8:47 am
"Jōyō Kanji (2010): 2136 kanji, with many additions coming from the Jinmeiyō "name" kanji list, which otherwise itself continues to expand (863 as of 2017) and preserves many of the Kyūjitai "traditional" kanji."
Students in Japan have to learn an increasing number of Kanji per grade level up to University, but they hardly achieve the theoretical number, and mostly don't use them unless they go to literacy departments.
wgj said,
April 26, 2025 @ 9:27 am
If we're to talk about the sinographic "cosmopolis", then we need to look beyond the historical CJKV cultural sphere into the wider world. With evermore people learning Chinese as a secondary language, it's very much possible that their number offsets the decrease of JKV people familiar with sinographs. But even if that's not the case, China itself has had an expanding population until very recently, while effectively eliminating illiteracy of said population. I'm therefore fairly confident that the number of people alive with a basic comprehension of sinographs is currently as high as it's ever been in human history.
Victor Mair said,
April 26, 2025 @ 10:15 am
@wgj
You missed the whole point of the post. It's about the proportion of phonetic elements in texts vs. morphosyllabic hanzi / kanji / hanja.
I will be writing a series of posts on this subject during the coming weeks.
I'm excited by the prospect of going to Korea very soon, where I don't expect to see many hanja, a situation which stands in sharp contrast to the late 19th and early 20th century when the proportion of hanja rapidly declined and hangul grew until now, as I pointed out in the o.p., hanja have almost disappeared, particularly in the north.
As for teaching Mandarin abroad, it is increasingly done through pinyin (the alphabet), which I have explained countless times on Language Log. More to come.
wgj said,
April 26, 2025 @ 11:55 am
Dear Professor, I did not miss your point, nor do I wish to contradict it. :) I was merely pointing out that your (very valid) point is but one angle to look at the issue at hand – which, per the title of this post, is "the flagging sinographic cosmopolis" -, while there are other, equally important angles through which one may come to very different conclusions regarding the state of the world in sinograph.
J.W. Brewer said,
April 26, 2025 @ 12:21 pm
I think the problem may be that the introductory language suggests that there has been significant deterioration in the position of the sinograms over the last quarter-century but most of the historical developments mentioned substantially predate the end of the 20th century. The impact of those more recent developments (increasing use of ASCII-based keyboards for online communication, increasing percentages of population with English fluency potentially having the spillover effect of making people more willing to use romaji or pinyin to write their L1) is indeed an interesting question. But for example next year will be the 80th anniversary of the simplification of (certain) kanji in Japan, when the pre-existing constituency for reform took advantage of the U.S. occupation to put their ideas into effect in the school system, so that's hardly breaking news and it seems improbable that it has had much additional impact over the last 25 years beyond what it had had in the first 54 years after it happened.
Student said,
April 26, 2025 @ 12:51 pm
I wholly agree J.W. Brewer.
I eagerly await Victor's promised posts.
@Victor Mair
Victor, are there any sinospheric organizations that advocate sinography to a similar degree as romanization advocacy organizations?
The article's Hanja group might count, but a lack of organizations favoring sinography might indicate they don't see a need to- that the current writing system suffices. Obviously this meeting is a counterexample, but it seems that sinography advocates only fleetingly appear in conferences and never as a permanent organization.