Chinese Characters vs. Latin Alphabet: Which reigns supreme?

In my recent travels in Vietnam, I was surprised to learn that the Vietnamese language employs the Latin alphabet rather than traditional characters.

Yes, that’s right. Stop the presses. We have an ignoramus here.

I’m sorry for my apparent previous short-comings of knowledge in that department, but I had always assumed that the Vietnamese writings like “Khỏe không?” (which, FYI, means “how are you?”) were simply transliterations from Vietnamese characters into something that speakers of Latin-alphabet-using-languages could understand.

But before you laugh too hard, let it be known that my assumptions were not all that ridiculous. In fact, the modern writing system of Vietnamese only became the modern writing method in the 1920s. Before that, Chinese characters were used in Vietnam.

The reason for the switch? Apparently, the French rule in Vietnam discouraged and/or banned the use of traditional characters because the Latin alphabet method was seen as beneficial to the learning of French. Ultimately, the Vietnamese preferred the alphabetic version because it was deemed easier to learn, thereby reducing illiteracy rates.

The Vietnamese example is not unique. Similar examples can be seen in Korea and Japan, where Chinese characters have been dropped (either wholly or partially) in favour of an alphabet (albeit not a Latin-based one). 

(An aside: Korean sounds like the world's perfect written language. Apparently, it was invented by scholars upon request of the king, and each 'character' is comprised of vowel and consonant sounds. This means that it only takes a morning to be able to read all Korean out loud (of course, the meaning is another matter), and there are no stupid exceptions and silent letters like in English). 

Which begs the question, is an alphabetic-based system of language inherently better than a character-based one? Although characters are indeed (in my opinion) far more beautiful than the Latin alphabet, I would argue that overall, an alphabetic method of writing is superior to characters, and I’ll explain why.

Why an alphabetic system is better

1. The printing press

Printing is often touted as one of the “Four Great Inventions” of China (along with gunpowder, paper and the compass). Indeed, printing has revolutionized the world in unfathomable ways: knowledge is able to spread to far more minds when printed rather than written by hand. Great leaps in knowledge in fields like science can be attributed to the wide-spread uptake of the printing press.  

But despite it’s origin, the printing press didn’t really spread like wildfire in China like it did throughout Europe. The reason? For most of it’s history, printing in China was limited to moveable wooden blocks carved with individual characters; and so, as you might imagine, even an average piece of writing may require thousands of wooden blocks to express an idea; whereas European languages had much greater flexibility because they had only approximately 26 letters (give or take a few, depending on when and where you’re talking about).

2. Computers

Fast-forward to the modern day, where the average person in the developed world writes hundreds, if not thousands, of words each day on their computer or smart phone.

For many people in China, computers and phones represent a serious barrier to interpersonal communication. This is, not surprisingly, because computers and phones use the Latin alphabet, and for many people, they simply do not know the Latin-alphabet transliterations of Chinese, known as pin-yin.

Even if you do know pin-yin, another issue arises: for each pin-yin pronunciation of a character, there will likely be several different characters representing that sound. A good example is the saying: “妈妈骂马吗？”which is pronounced “ma ma ma ma ma?” and means “did mother scold the horse?” Consequently, when you type pinyin into a computer, you must also select which character you want to write. This can make typing burdensome, and may lead to errors.

3. Literacy

Because written Chinese characters (usually) give no clue as to their pronunciation, until you are taught how those characters are pronounced, you will not know. This means when you read something for the first time, you can’t simply attempt to “sound it out” and get the meaning as a word you already know.

On the other hand, an alphabet system of corresponding sounds makes it possible for anyone to read anything aloud after simply learning the alphabet, such as Dory was able to do in Finding Nemo.

High illiteracy rates in China are often attributed to this very issue (although personally I feel that poverty and a lack of access to education is far more to blame). But it’s important to point out here that English is most certainly not the best language in this regard. Letters of the alphabet are not used consistently in English, so “sounding out” a word is often easier said than done. 

4. Self-learning

Because of the pronunciation problem as above, self-learning of words in Chinese is more difficult. If an English speaker encounters an unknown word, it is simple to look the word up in the dictionary because dictionaries are ordered using the alphabet. On the other hand, when a Chinese speaker encounters an unknown word, it is more troublesome to look up.

On a computer, for example, this might involve a trial-and-error process of typing in pin-yin until the character pops up. In a paper dictionary, one must work out which part of the character is the “radical”, and then count the strokes to find the character.

Why characters are better

1. More efficient when written by hand

Let it be known that this particular portion of my argument bears little, to any, scientific backing. Rather, it is simply my own experience and perceptions. Furthermore, this argument really only applies to simplified Chinese characters, because traditional characters are, to be blunt, extremely complicated.

BUT, all that aside, in my experience, words and sentences can be written much more efficiently in Chinese than in English. The characters take up less room, and Chinese can skip words like ‘the’, and sometimes ‘of’, altogether, conveying the meaning quickly.

(An aside: I also believe that spoken Chinese is more efficient, using fewer syllables to convey what would take us far more syllables in English. I suppose that is a factor of having tones, and is not relevant to a conversation about characters vs. alphabet).

2. More beautiful

This, again, is completely based on my own opinion, although I’d be interested to find anyone who disagrees that characters are more beautiful than a written alphabet.

Is it because they are all unique? It is because they all fill squares, rather than words of differing lengths? Is it because I am less familiar with them and still find them “exotic”? Who knows. All I know is that it is far less acceptable to hang calligraphy of English words in galleries and museums than it is to hang Chinese calligraphy.

Conclusion

This question is not at all original. In fact, I’m sure that the character/alphabet dichotomy is the subject of very deep analysis amongst professionals. This article is simply a summary of my own opinions, experiences and arguments. I’d be interested to hear anyone else’s opinion!

the reckless philosopher