The impact of phonetic inputting on Chinese languages December 9, 2019 @ 9:03 am • Filed by Victor M
The impact of phonetic inputting on Chinese languages
December 9, 2019 @ 9:03 am • Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Language reform, Writing systems
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The vast majority of people, both inside and outside of China, input characters on cell phones, computers, and other electronic devices via Hanyu Pinyin or other phonetic script. Naturally, this has had a huge impact on the relationship between users of the Chinese script and their command of the characters, since they are no longer directly writing the characters through neuro-muscular coordination and effort. Instead, their electronic devices do the writing of the characters for them by converting the Pinyin or other phonetic inputting to the desired characters, resulting in the widely lamented phenomenon of "character amnesia", which we have touched upon in dozens of LL posts.
There has in recent years been a lot of stuff and nonsense bandied about concerning how Chinese character inputting led to the development of predictive typing, whereas the actuality is that the extreme cumbersomeness of the Chinese writing system necessitated the development of one kind of predictive typing (other predictive algorithms were already in use long before) to rescue the characters from hasty extinction.
Fatuous, sensationalistic claims for the superiority of Sinographs over the alphabet are refuted by more sober analyses, such as that presented in the following article:
"How the QWERTY Keyboard Is Changing the Chinese Language", by Chip Chick (3/13/12)
Even though it was written seven years ago, the points this article makes are still relevant and valid today, especially because they were obscured by the thick smokescreen of misinformation about how technologically advanced Chinese characters allegedly are that was being purveyed during the intervening years. (In the not too distant future, David Moser will write a guest post exposing the fallacy of the assertion that Chinese characters were the source of predictive typing.)
Starting with the first two paragraphs, here are some key portions of the well-informed, balanced Chip Chick article:
Think about how easy and natural it is to type an English word. Writing a word down on paper and typing a word on a computer are done using the same process - letter by letter. Made a mistake? Pop back and fix the spelling error. It's easy to overlook how simple the whole process is, because it is done so naturally. But, users of the Roman alphabet have it easy in the world of computers. Things don't go as smoothly in other languages around the world, which have had to adapt to the now-ubiquitous QWERTY keyboard.
…Estimates say a Chinese speaker needs to know 2,000 different characters to achieve basic literacy, with well-educated speakers knowing upwards of 5,000. 5,000 characters aren't going to fit onto a keyboard - at least, not one anyone will want to use.
….
Yang Yaju, a Chinese language teacher at National Sun Yat-Sen University, remarked, "For me, typing English is much faster than Chinese…Besides, computer software can check and correct English easily, but it doesn't work as well in Chinese." Chinese computing is in danger of failing to keep up with the needs of its users.
So, what does the future hold? Predictive algorithms are improving, cutting down on the need for selection boxes in phonetic input methods. They aren't perfect, but they are faster. The attentive typist can spot and fix typos fairly quickly. Still, that leaves the most common methods of Chinese computing completely lacking in the richness and complexity of the natural written language. The practicality issue is being addressed, but the cultural problem of character amnesia persists.
The article pays due regard to shape-based entry methods such as Cangjie and assesses touchscreens and trackpads that enable the user to write characters with one's fingertip or a stylus, but in the end it squarely confronts the inescapable drawbacks of such complicated, user-unfriendly systems in comparison with the ease and efficiency of phonetic inputting (the article naturally focuses on the 26 letters of the alphabet, but also gives an adequate accounting of bopomofo (Mandarin phonetic symbols). As the author puts it daintily, shape-based, component composition inputting requires "a steep learning curve". Beyond that, they are slower, more frustrating, and result in a disappointingly large number of mistakes. These are things I have witnessed repeatedly and have often written about on Language Log.
Some people just dispense with the conversion from Pinyin to characters and communicate directly with Pinyin. You don't even need tones if you divide up the syllable strings into words (as we've learned in recent posts) according to grammatically rational orthographical rules. Here's an example:
Anthony Tao
@anthonytao
--
Zhongguo xuezhe David Moser cengjing shuo guo, women wanquan keyi zhi yong pinyin lai goutong (zui qima jiandan de zaixian jiaoliu). Huan yi ju hua shuo, shei ye dou bu xuyao Zhongguo wenzi!
--
Dangran, wenzi geng haokan, geng you wenhua.
I read that as easily and flawlessly as I read English.
December 9, 2019 @ 9:03 am • Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Language reform, Writing systems
« previous post | next post »
The vast majority of people, both inside and outside of China, input characters on cell phones, computers, and other electronic devices via Hanyu Pinyin or other phonetic script. Naturally, this has had a huge impact on the relationship between users of the Chinese script and their command of the characters, since they are no longer directly writing the characters through neuro-muscular coordination and effort. Instead, their electronic devices do the writing of the characters for them by converting the Pinyin or other phonetic inputting to the desired characters, resulting in the widely lamented phenomenon of "character amnesia", which we have touched upon in dozens of LL posts.
There has in recent years been a lot of stuff and nonsense bandied about concerning how Chinese character inputting led to the development of predictive typing, whereas the actuality is that the extreme cumbersomeness of the Chinese writing system necessitated the development of one kind of predictive typing (other predictive algorithms were already in use long before) to rescue the characters from hasty extinction.
Fatuous, sensationalistic claims for the superiority of Sinographs over the alphabet are refuted by more sober analyses, such as that presented in the following article:
"How the QWERTY Keyboard Is Changing the Chinese Language", by Chip Chick (3/13/12)
Even though it was written seven years ago, the points this article makes are still relevant and valid today, especially because they were obscured by the thick smokescreen of misinformation about how technologically advanced Chinese characters allegedly are that was being purveyed during the intervening years. (In the not too distant future, David Moser will write a guest post exposing the fallacy of the assertion that Chinese characters were the source of predictive typing.)
Starting with the first two paragraphs, here are some key portions of the well-informed, balanced Chip Chick article:
Think about how easy and natural it is to type an English word. Writing a word down on paper and typing a word on a computer are done using the same process - letter by letter. Made a mistake? Pop back and fix the spelling error. It's easy to overlook how simple the whole process is, because it is done so naturally. But, users of the Roman alphabet have it easy in the world of computers. Things don't go as smoothly in other languages around the world, which have had to adapt to the now-ubiquitous QWERTY keyboard.
…Estimates say a Chinese speaker needs to know 2,000 different characters to achieve basic literacy, with well-educated speakers knowing upwards of 5,000. 5,000 characters aren't going to fit onto a keyboard - at least, not one anyone will want to use.
….
Yang Yaju, a Chinese language teacher at National Sun Yat-Sen University, remarked, "For me, typing English is much faster than Chinese…Besides, computer software can check and correct English easily, but it doesn't work as well in Chinese." Chinese computing is in danger of failing to keep up with the needs of its users.
So, what does the future hold? Predictive algorithms are improving, cutting down on the need for selection boxes in phonetic input methods. They aren't perfect, but they are faster. The attentive typist can spot and fix typos fairly quickly. Still, that leaves the most common methods of Chinese computing completely lacking in the richness and complexity of the natural written language. The practicality issue is being addressed, but the cultural problem of character amnesia persists.
The article pays due regard to shape-based entry methods such as Cangjie and assesses touchscreens and trackpads that enable the user to write characters with one's fingertip or a stylus, but in the end it squarely confronts the inescapable drawbacks of such complicated, user-unfriendly systems in comparison with the ease and efficiency of phonetic inputting (the article naturally focuses on the 26 letters of the alphabet, but also gives an adequate accounting of bopomofo (Mandarin phonetic symbols). As the author puts it daintily, shape-based, component composition inputting requires "a steep learning curve". Beyond that, they are slower, more frustrating, and result in a disappointingly large number of mistakes. These are things I have witnessed repeatedly and have often written about on Language Log.
Some people just dispense with the conversion from Pinyin to characters and communicate directly with Pinyin. You don't even need tones if you divide up the syllable strings into words (as we've learned in recent posts) according to grammatically rational orthographical rules. Here's an example:
Anthony Tao
@anthonytao
--
Zhongguo xuezhe David Moser cengjing shuo guo, women wanquan keyi zhi yong pinyin lai goutong (zui qima jiandan de zaixian jiaoliu). Huan yi ju hua shuo, shei ye dou bu xuyao Zhongguo wenzi!
--
Dangran, wenzi geng haokan, geng you wenhua.
I read that as easily and flawlessly as I read English.