The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[rikforto]

I did answer that question---I told you that we disagree about what it means and that we should explore that.

After all, you are contending there are no words to read. That needs examined before we can discuss what it means to read them:

But it is quite misleading to say that the hanzi "represent words, not ideas".  The hanzi 人 does not represent any specific string of sounds.   Presumably it did when people started writing the symbol that evolved into this glyph; but that word and its language have died long ago and do not matter any more.  And probably that language had tens of thousands of words that never received a written symbol. 

I cannot stress enough: It is your position that Chinese people do not have a way to represent their words. I am not misrepresenting you and I do not misunderstand you. You may prefer a verbiage to describe this supposed Chinese illiteracy that flatters your position more, but people who cannot write are not literate; as you say, they are like a drunk European king drawing pictures. 

I actually responded to that quote, and showed that it is trivial to find the string of sounds the word represents and at least some of the lexical meanings between languages, though that point has been left unanswered. You can find that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..