The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[rikforto]

By the way, the Chinese theory doesn’t explain why this book was written.

Quite the contrary.  The Chinese Theory is the only one I have seen in all these ~30 years that offers a plausible explanation for why this book looks like it does and why it was written.

We have corresponded at this at length specifically about what purpose the book could have served and I remain at a loss to give a fair, consistent explanation of the impetus for creating it. At a high level, I understand that it is supposed to be a workaround to writing the Chinese characters, and to record a dictation session or their phonetic value some other way. It is still not clear to me whether or not you think The Author understood the dictation, and you certainly think it is full of errors that you have supposed were due to the difficulties the author would have had telling words apart. Why create that kind of record? Why write that? Pivoting to explanations of specific features, regardless of whether you and your critics agree about those, is not responsive here!