Writing English in Hanzi

[Tmeister]

之 北 風 和 之 日 是了 非思且 哪 是們了 之 強更， 何時 個 旅者 來了 個長 裹了 內 個 暖 氅。
The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak.

他們 肯了 那 之 一 誰 甲 下譲了 內 做且 之 旅者 把 他的 氅 離 應了 乃 共星了 強更 比 之 別。
They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other.

(Spaces are inserted to correspond to English word boundaries.)

You may have seen the Yingzi page and the Hangraphy project - basically, this is an attempt to strike a balance between the two, by using existing characters (and perhaps learning a little Chinese in the process!) while being tailored specifically to English.

If we were to do this with, say, French, we would need an extensive set of "okurigana" to represent inflections, but English has few enough inflections that I thought it should be possible to represent them purely using Hanzi. Accordingly, the system I'm using here is much more complicated than Chinese, or even Japanese - the relationship between characters and words is very much not one-to-one.

There are two major points of complication:

Compound Words

Many words (mostly function words) are written using combinations of characters that denote the semantics of the word without regard for pronunciation; the pronunciation of each combination must be learned separately. For example, personal pronouns:

Code: Select all

I 我               we 我們            me 我也              us 我也們
you 你             you 你們
he/she/it 他/她/它 they 他們          him/her 他也/她也     them 他也們

Forms of "be":

Code: Select all

am 是私     was 是們了      be 乃
are 是     were 是了
is 是們

Demonstratives:

Code: Select all

this 這      that 那      what/which 何/哪
here 這裡     there 那裡   where 何裡
thus 這麼     so 那麼      how 何麼
now 這時      then 那時    when 何時
                         who/whom 誰/誰也

Miscellaneous suffixes:

Code: Select all

了 -ed (used with irregular verbs also, so 來了="came")
且 -ing
們 -s (plural nouns, 3sg verbs)
的 -'s (possessive)

Onyomi/Kunyomi

There is also the problem that the same character can have multiple readings depending on the etymology of the word. For example, the word "succeed" (used above) derives from Latin, and is written with the characters 下譲, which alone would be read "under" and "yield" (the Native reading). In a similar vein, 下水="underwater", 水本="hydrogen", etc.

Feel free to create your own examples, correct my character usage, or flesh out the vocabulary more!

[Thomas Winwood]

That should surely be handu and yingdu, not on'yomi and kun'yomi.

I decided to have a go at the Gettysburg Address, since DeFrancis is so fond of using it as his example in The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy.

四 廿 和 七 年們 前 我們的 先父們 產了 在 這 陆 個 新 国，妊了 內 自由，和 贡献了 以 之 建议 那 全 人們 是 创了 等。
Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

I borrowed some words wholesale where they seemed to fit better or where I failed at coming up with characters for the individual components (e.g. -dom in "freedom" for "liberty", and "posit" in "proposition"): 產 for "bring forth", 自由 for "liberty", 贡献 for "dedicate" and 建议 for "proposition". Some standard characters for noun-forming suffixes would help.

[Zhen Lin]

General comment: the choices seem biased towards Mandarin. I think this is unfortunate, as Mandarin has lost a lot of the single-hanzi words that were present in classical Chinese.

Many words (mostly function words) are written using combinations of characters that denote the semantics of the word without regard for pronunciation; the pronunciation of each combination must be learned separately. For example, personal pronouns:

Code: Select all

I 我               we 我們            me 我也              us 我也們
you 你             you 你們
he/she/it 他/她/它 they 他們          him/her 他也/她也     them 他也們

Why 也 for accusative? Why not imitate Old Chinese, which had inflected pronouns: 吾 for the nominative 1P, and 我 for the oblique 1P. Similarly 其 for the nominative 3P and 之 for the accusative 3P.

Forms of "be":

Code: Select all

am 是私     was 是們了      be 乃
are 是     were 是了
is 是們

Why 私 for the 1SG ending? I think this can be left to context, since English isn't pro-drop.

Miscellaneous suffixes:

Code: Select all

了 -ed (used with irregular verbs also, so 來了="came")
且 -ing
們 -s (plural nouns, 3sg verbs)
的 -'s (possessive)

Wha? Even Mandarin has a perfectly good particle for the progressive: 着.

There is also the problem that the same character can have multiple readings depending on the etymology of the word. For example, the word "succeed" (used above) derives from Latin, and is written with the characters 下譲, which alone would be read "under" and "yield" (the Native reading). In a similar vein, 下水="underwater", 水本="hydrogen", etc.

Why not 水素 for hydrogen, which is, in fact, the Chinese word for it? It's constructed exactly according to the calquing principle you suggest.

[Ollock]

That should surely be handu and yingdu, not on'yomi and kun'yomi.

Of course, English would have handu, yingdu, ladu, fadu, xiladu ... etc etc etc

General comment: the choices seem biased towards Mandarin. I think this is unfortunate, as Mandarin has lost a lot of the single-hanzi words that were present in classical Chinese.

I suspect that if we did start using hanzi to write English in the near future, it would be based on Mandarin primarily, though you make a good point on having more root characters to go on.

[Thomas Winwood]

General comment: the choices seem biased towards Mandarin.

If you know of a good dictionary for Classical Chinese, please share.

[con quesa]

Onyomi/Kunyomi

There is also the problem that the same character can have multiple readings depending on the etymology of the word. For example, the word "succeed" (used above) derives from Latin, and is written with the characters 下譲, which alone would be read "under" and "yield" (the Native reading). In a similar vein, 下水="underwater", 水本="hydrogen", etc.

Why not simply use different characters for English and Latinate and Norman French vocabulary? The stock of available hanzi is quite large, after all; there's no reason why you couldn't give, say, 水 the reading "water" for words like 下水, "underwater", and pick some other character, say, 泳, for hydro- in 泳素, "hydrogen" or 泳表 "hydroplane" (I know Japanese, not Chinese, so perhaps my choice of particular characters would be odd from a Chinese perspective, but the principal still applies).

[faiuwle]

Plus, you'd probably run into problems with words that have morphemes with the same semantics but different sources, like "behead" versus "decapitate", which would probably be written with (or at least start with) exactly the same characters in that scheme.

[Zhen Lin]

Plus, you'd probably run into problems with words that have morphemes with the same semantics but different sources, like "behead" versus "decapitate", which would probably be written with (or at least start with) exactly the same characters in that scheme.

This already happens in Japanese: 一日 can be either ichinichi (one day) or tsuitachi (first day of the month), 空間 can be either kūkan (space) or akima (vacancy), 上手 can be either jōzu (skillful) or kamite (upper part), etc.

[clawgrip]

Onyomi/Kunyomi

There is also the problem that the same character can have multiple readings depending on the etymology of the word. For example, the word "succeed" (used above) derives from Latin, and is written with the characters 下譲, which alone would be read "under" and "yield" (the Native reading). In a similar vein, 下水="underwater", 水本="hydrogen", etc.

Why not simply use different characters for English and Latinate and Norman French vocabulary? The stock of available hanzi is quite large, after all; there's no reason why you couldn't give, say, 水 the reading "water" for words like 下水, "underwater", and pick some other character, say, 泳, for hydro- in 泳素, "hydrogen" or 泳表 "hydroplane" (I know Japanese, not Chinese, so perhaps my choice of particular characters would be odd from a Chinese perspective, but the principal still applies).

but 泳 in Japanese is swim, not water.