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I think one of your “I wanna bring” videos got deleted.

Same way japanese dont drop kanji: similar sounding words. Reading in kanji/hanzi makes recognizing words easier, and it is so much more simpler to read a hanzi than a completly unfamilioar word. Because you can kinda see the meaning of the word from the hanzi itself even if you dont know how to read/pronounce it... You can look at 包 and see its a BAO. If you just see "bao" written, how do you know which BAO they want there? Okay, context, but still, hanzi makes reading so much more easier... japanese and chinese text is basically a picture book if you know your stuff :D

The inconsistency of simplified Chinese is a trivial matter. 99.999% of the time you won’t even encounter it.

朦胧，雨濛濛，这几个字没被简化成蒙。

Many Simplified chinese characters have created more problems than solving them. 1) merging homonyms into single characters creates confusions 2) many radicals with elemental meaning of a characters (similar to prefixes and suffixes i English) are removed or changed, causing the loss of meaning.

Every language has homophones, and speakers of those various languages still manage to get their meaning across, I think the argument about not being able to distinguish between meanings anymore is wildly exaggerated

The best solution I've seen is General Chinese. There are two versions, a Latin alphabet and a Chinese character syllabary. The Latin version is a worse fit to Mandarin than Pinyin and to Cantonese than Jyutping, but it is a good fit to all dialects. The Chinese character version is the same as regular Chinese writing, except when two or more words are homonyms in multiple dialects.

There is an easy solution: just apply the etymological orthographic principle to Chinese, and it’ll preserve the dialectal unity and discernment of homophones. It is similar to how English has dealt with it: “night” can be pronounced differently but the spelling stays the same (nikht in Middle English and nite in Modern English), and it clearly differs from “knight”.

So basically there are several versions of alphabet for mandarin and you just don't want to use it to feel special. Well, congrats, you are "special" now!

Chinese characters work very well for Chinese languages: analytic langagues without declensions or conjugations (Chinese languages rely on word order to link words in a sentence).

Google translate can easily convert texts of Traditional characters to Simplified and vice versa. Technology can help us close the gap between scipt variations.

The best solution would be for the Chinese to give up Chinese, and for everyone to speak English. British English, of course.

文想她能有誒恩人村落到會產生的波浪漫情思在的就給他這很不多ㄝㄙㄝ¯在有約在呵在的就要注意到在無人問他的車體系出這。一說會不8他不限於他在不完他要屁屁是有自己不限制或被你在的人生是在有約儑在自己會是直線或服務態度惡劣在不多時會產生高就說在的是都是很想我阿阿秋在有約是在的波段感情也是很一是有諳不完的車都在自己這百花的人生要比堤嗄有我辣媽在這在

homophones are not a chinese only problem, it exist in other languages too like koran for example..which is why hanja is used in certain situations to be specific in what they wanna say.

Koreans have similar problem when it comes to Chinese-origin vocabulary, that is why they still use chinese characters in some specific situations like in law-making, medicine, science

love the fact you pronounce canto and mando

Simplified chinese took some characters from the past, because chinese caracters became more complicated over time. So traditional are not so traditional, and simplified is not so simplified 😂

Love the new format

Excellent

Pin Yin is sort of an alphabet…..

Egyptians invented Chinese characters

Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, Burmese, Filipino, and Mongolian had alphabets. Why can't Chinese? How would a Chinese person would memorize thousands of characters and how to write them is beyond my comprehension. I think Mao Zedong tried to romance the language during the Cultural Revolution but failed.

This is a clear and well communicated video, but it has one fundamental flaw. Taiwanese children learn to read using Zhuyin (with tones) and are able to read completely fine. Anything that can be spoken, can be clearly and precisely written (with tones) in Zhuyin. to argue that written Zhuyin is unclear, is to argue spoken Chinese is unclear. It doesn't make a lot of sense. The only way this argument works is if you force people to not write tones. But all that said, characters are here to say, they are beautiful, and part of our heritage and people who wish to get rid of them have a few screws loose, or are upset that they failed their Chinese class. Long live Chinese characters.

Chinese characters are a very inefficient writing system. Even our professors at university kept forgetting characters which they spent so much time memorizing in school while students in neighboring Korea were already reading complex texts.

I think the issue is just political. People who are highly educated and have the expertise to propose a writing system reform normally don’t struggle with the current system. So they don’t want to change it.

Aside from the problem of monosyllabic and tonal features in Chinese which would create thousands of homonyms and confusions if fully alphabetized, Chinese also has another unique feature that makes it very difficult to ditch the logographic system. It is not about history, but grammar. Unlike most other languages around the world, Chinese is character-based with each character representing a single/multiple meaning(s), while other languages add prefixes and suffixes to the word to adjust the nature (like genitive, normative, accusative), time, tone, assumption, numbers, hierarchy, etc. Even Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, all used to write in Chinese characters in all official documents for hundreds of years, contain such conjugative/agglutinative grammar features mentioned. That's why they have less problems when converting to syllables/alphabets.

Sob story😂😂😂

i think it's nice that you were able to make it work, but i don't think it's your fault. there is an underlying implication that you are the one that is expected to learn the language instead of the other side, neither of which i like. this seems very specific to Chinese culture

I still think the alphabet is possible, there's no limit to how many letters there can be in an alphabet. Maybe they can look at languages like Thai for example, Thai has a “pseudo-alphabet” or abugida, it includes 44 consonants and 32 vowels, compared to English it seems very difficult, but the Thai alphabet has many consonants with the same sound, like 4 "s", 3 "p", 6 "t", 2 "ch", etc., this allows them to write multiple words with the same sound but different tones and words with the same sound and the same tone but all spelled differently. Chinese could adopt something similar that would probably be easier for the dialects to adapt. That said, they can also decide on something only for the standard Mandarin.

Switch to emojis 😂

As someone who learned Japanese and currently studying Mandarin, I think that characters are much better for foreign learners at advanced levels than a phonetic system. It allows you to quickly pick up new vocabulary once you learn a majority of the characters and most of the time, the pronunciation guides in the characters are accurate (at least for Japanese). Mandarin is even much easier to read or write than Japanese, since you usually don't have multiple readings per character. IMO, the hardest part if you're looking to learn Mandarin to a fluent level is pronunciation and listening because of the complex phonetics for people who are not used to the consonants and tonal languages.

Chinese does already have an alphabet. The Hanyu Pinyin, which is essentially Mandarin spelt with the Roman alphabet

I hate to burst your bubble, but size doesn't matter when it comes to having highly varied dialects, or even ones that develop into separate languages, i.e. no longer mutually intelligible. Even a small area can have that so long as the speakers of the dialects are sufficiently separated for extended periods of time. We see this in for instance Norway, which is only sightly bigger than Japan and has a fraction of the population, yet has very varied dialects with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility to the point that some dialects could be considered different languages. China doesn't have all its variations because of size itself, but because of population separation. Size can be a cause of that, but so can many other things, so saying other areas don't have the same thing because they are small makes no sense. Homophony and homography is also not something that only happens in Chinese. Most languages experience that, though to varying degrees, and will have to rely on context.

Thank you so much, this was so helpful! I watched the video from start to end and learnt so much 🥳

So when the radicals are written vertical are they read like they do in Japanese?

How did you learn Chinese?

Hanja mixed script was the best script to have ever existed. It’s a shame it’s gone. I love Chinese characters, but I hate transliterating foreign words with Chinese characters, it makes no sense. They should be written in zhuyin instead

Alphabetization of Chinese dialects will repeat what Latin faced in Europe. Each dialect will become more distinct and thus soon we will have different languages.

I get what you mean by "dialects" but calling other Chinese languages a "dialect" is misrepresenting the fact that they are different languages. By calling them dialects, but Romances languages or Slavic languages not dialects is very Eurocentric.

Chinese is a monosyllabic and tonal language family. If replaced with an alphabetic writing system, it will create many more problems than solving the original issue.

My ex told me he would never learn a second language, like flat out not even try kind of never, the i wont even consider it ever kind of never. It, genuinely hurt to hear, im bi-lingual and a third culter kid, my non american culture is very deeply a part of my identity since i didnt even grow up in the usa, so to have someone who claimed that they wanted a relationship with, explicitly say that they wanted nothing to do with non american culture was a slap in the face. Yeah that relationship ended /fast/. Taking the time to learn and embrace your partners cultures and languages /is/ a part of embracing them as a whole. If there is a familial language barrier, take the time and effort to bridge it. Showing you want to form a connection wirh their family too, also shows you love your partner, every aspect of them and not just the one part that is "the partner" but the parts that are also "the daughter" "the sibling" "the friend" etc. Love this video💜 very good message 👏

So, the problem stems from calling completely different languages 'dialects' of Chinese while trying to keep the 'unity' by using the same writing system. Like trying to make Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian 'read the same' while they are all pronounced in different ways (what would be mostly possible, with some caveats). There are plenty of homophones in each Romance language (multiplied if you take them all as 'a group') but that doesn't confuse anyone, in any case you expand the context or learn how to add linguistic markers. The solution would be to get sincere with the Chinese reality but any measure that would impose Mandarin over all the regional variants and languages would provoke the discontent of the people, what they are not willing to risk. Or assuming the regional languages as their own thing would also be seeing as divisive. So, the issue is not linguistic: is politics, tied with the fear of social upheaval given how strong the cultural connection of the people is to their roots.

Using tibetan alphabets is a perfect choice for translating chinese characters.

I was watching this vid and I was gonna sub with how good it was, then I saw your sub count... and like holy shit you're underrated for how cool this is

The Soviet Union had a Cyrillic alphabet system for Dungan, a dialect used in Kazakhstan by people who fled into the Russian empire in the wars of Zuo Zongtang "General Tso".

Vietnamese dialects are not mutually intelligible. If you take someone from hue and someone from the Mekong they will have an extreme amount of difficulty understanding each other. It is only because of the recent unification of Vietnam that these dialects of Vietnamese have become closer. A standard Vietnamese has been forced upon all of Vietnam much the same way that a standard version of a Chinese language is being forced on China. China cannot have a singlealphabet because Chinese is a family of languages not a single language

My suggestion is to use Pinyin and come up with new words for somethings, that way you don't have same word for totally different things. For example use Tā for he/him, Tātā for she/her, and Tātō for it. 😂 And then they can get rid of the tones. If China wants to dominate, they will need to make changes to make it easier to compete with English.

Multiple ways of writing can coexist at the same time. Outside the Chinas, write as you like. Very simple programming in modern terms can convert these to characters back and forth.

They're not different dialects, they're completely different languages.

10:17 i fr laughed at this mike jumpscare