The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[rikforto]

I'm genuinely unsure what the three questions are. I'm only tracking the one about Mandarin pronunciation in the Spring and Autumn Period, which I have given you my position on.

As for this:

Yes you are. Grossly and offensively. And it is getting worse each time. Stop saying what you think my "position" is.

I am quoting you saying that Chinese people do not have the written word. You've clarified this repeatedly, and have not rejected the substance of that claim. Here you are clarifying that there is no way to write down the word for "water" in China, only to draw a picture:

And yet 水 continued to have meaningS to this day, not only to speakers of all Sinitic languages but also to speakers of Japanese, and to scholars reading old Korean and Vietnamese books.  Maybe to some of those people the meaning of 水 is a word -- but it will be a different word to different people, and none of those words is "THE" meaning of  水.  But to other people the meaning of 水 is not a word but the concept of water; and it so happens that, for most people who know that character, it indeed means the concept of water -- either directly, or indirectly through a word that means water to them.

Lest I be accused of misrepresenting you, here you generously allow some people are literate, and immediately undercut it by saying it would be a personal language. This is not how reading and writing work. In writing, a person puts down the words and in reading a person recovers them, allowing for the kinds of relatively small qualifications that always accompany this kind of linguistic description. The fact that logographs admit a more flexible relationship to pronunciation standards and have a greater translingual presence than Indo-European orthographic morphemes is interesting and ultimately relevant to this thread, but I've pointed out several times this is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

On the merits, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is not the example I would choose because, without triggering a debate about the rigor of glottochronology, the broad observation that common words tend to be more stable holds for Sinitic languages and 水 is very common. Nonetheless, it illustrates my point well enough. In Cantonese it has gained a sense of "money" that is not available in other languages. In Japanese and Korean it retains its old, alchemical sense in the compound meaning "Tuesday" and in that use was one of the few hanja I encountered in daily life when I lived in Korea; from what I can tell, it is no longer current in any Chinese language. But most to the point, in a few Wu languages the word for water has been supplanted by 沝. This is not simply an orthographic convention. In both Mandarin and the Wu languages in question the words have different meanings and readings. Mostly 沝 is obsolete in Mandarin, but it meant "river confluence" or the like and is still collated in Mandarin dictionaries, but in the relevant Wu languages it has simply taken on the meaning "water" and supplanted 水. To be absolutely clear: 水 and 沝 are not homophonous or synonymous in Mandarin; in the same way 水 and 沝 are not homophonous or synonymous in these Wu languages. However, Mandarin 水 is synonymous with Suichang Wu 沝; Mandarin 沝 is not synonymous with Suichang Wu 沝. Mandarin 沝 and Suichnag Wu 沝 will admittedly be homophonous if one does not use different pronunciation standards for both languages, but this is a tautology that tells us nothing about usage and meaning. That Chinese more readily admits that sort of homophonous reading schemes does not grant Chinese speakers an exception from language change, as the lexical and synonym entries for 水 readily show.

Ultimately, I will not manage your emotions for you. If you are offended by the straightforward meaning of saying that Chinese people cannot write down words then stop saying it. Given that it's wrong on its merits, there are no downsides to doing so. What is not acceptable is to lash out at me for not being deferential to your preferred way of saying that Chinese people cannot write words. I did not edit your position to compare Chinese writing to the drunken art of a European monarch, nor did I choose to describe those readings as "broken", nor did I draw a diagram excluding words from the defintion of characters, nor did I call that misleading, nor did I dismiss out of hand the proper understanding of readings. The person who said those things was you and if they become objectionable when it is pointed out they mean there is no way to read and write in Chinese, you will need to take that matter up with yourself