Chinese characters that have been circulating for thousands of years have been pointed out by the famous British philosopher and mathematician Russell that there are three major defects, and do the three defects really exist?
How does the mainland deal with these three defects, so that Chinese characters keep pace with the times and are still in use today.
Are Russell's own statements convincing?
The history of Chinese characters has a long history, dating back at least to the Shang Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago.
As one of the oldest scripts, Chinese characters must have profound cultural value and use value in order to survive to this day.
Since Russell pointed out the flaws in Chinese characters, let's first understand Russell himself, look at his academic achievements, and then think about whether to accept his remarks.
Russell graduated from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, he has made great achievements in mathematics and philosophy, and is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 1920, Russell was invited to China to give an academic lecture, and at this time, China urgently needed fresh ideas and theories to change the fate of the old China's backwardness and beating.
However, Russell's arrival did not propose a sharp policy, but commented on the social situation in China at this time.
While criticizing the Chinese "poor, selfish, and indifferent" at this time, Russell also pointed out that this status quo must be reversed through social change.
He also praised the traditional virtues of diligence, simplicity and hospitality of the Chinese people, and believed and looked forward to the development of China in the later period.
In fact, Russell's assessment is one-of-a-kind.
Lu Xun also conveyed in many works that the people of old China were willing to oppress, selfish and indifferent, and based a little numb happiness on the pain of others, so that there would be such an unfortunate character as "Xianglin Sister-in-law".
Even the female compatriots of old China were willing to accept the oppression of feudal etiquette.
Because this feudal shackled idea is deeply rooted, rather than willing as forced, they are eager to use humble feudal beliefs to redeem themselves, otherwise they are different and will be reviled by the world.
As soon as this remark came out, the people at that time naturally would not accept it, and even attacked Russell's evaluation.
Three major flaws in Chinese characters
Russell himself had a deep study of Chinese culture, and even Sun Yat-sen called Russell: "He is the only Westerner who knows China best." This evaluation is quite high, just as the so-called "authorities are confused, bystanders are clear", and we must accept the evaluation of others appropriately.
One of the disadvantages of Chinese characters is that the font is complex and there are many strokes.
We all know that Chinese characters evolved from ideographic symbols, and the structure of many Chinese characters has great similarities with everyday things.
Because there are many strange things in this world, many hieroglyphs have been formed to refer to such things. At this time, words with many strokes are produced.
In particular, the complex structure and numerous strokes of traditional characters dwarf the simple letter combination of English, and traditional characters are not easy to write and understand. If you want to improve the literacy rate of the whole people, it will be a very difficult thing to know more traditional characters.
When we were in elementary school, the teacher would teach us to recognize a lot of new words, and then group words for these new words, and then write them in small letters.
Sometimes the teacher will assign the language homework to copy new words. This is undoubtedly a headache for us, some Chinese characters have a lot of strokes, and it will take a long time to write a new word of a text.
The Chinese characters we are learning now are already very simple, and if they are traditional characters, the strokes will be more and more difficult to write.
The second disadvantage of Chinese characters is the ordering of Chinese characters. For the problem of sorting, many people will think that you can use pinyin to sort, isn't our current dictionary very well sorted?
At that time, although there were many Chinese characters in China, there was no pinyin. In the absence of pinyin, it can only be sorted with the help of the partial side of the Chinese character, and the use of many partial sides to sort is also a big problem.
The problem of sorting Chinese characters has greatly affected the dissemination of cultural knowledge, Chinese characters are not easy to sort, it is difficult to typeset when printing, which is not conducive to the dissemination and exchange of science and technology and culture.
The third disadvantage of Chinese characters is the translation of Chinese characters.
At that time, the Qing government implemented a policy of closing the country to the outside world, and was unaware of foreign cultural conservatism.
So that when the invaders came to attack us, we often said that trains, machine guns, bombs, which were all new words at that time.
When our doors are forced to open, we cannot describe the advanced weapons and equipment in precise Chinese.
It also includes many foreign daily necessities circulated into the country, the most common is the sofa, which is based on the English "sofa", and the coffee and chocolate that foreigners like are also transliterated.
The revolution of Chinese characters
There is one thing to say, the Chinese characters at that time did have these three defects that could not be ignored. Therefore, the New Culture Movement proposed the use of vernacular language, and Lu Xun also wrote the first vernacular diary.
After the founding of New China, our country gained complete independence and peace, and only then did we have the opportunity to calm down and study the Chinese characters that have been circulating for thousands of years, and to carry out the reform and simplification of Chinese characters.
With simplified Chinese characters, people at that time recognized many Chinese characters and were not illiterate.
Especially in today's society, the popularization of compulsory education on the mainland, as long as it is not a strange word, many people can pronounce and write standardly, and the illiteracy rate has generally decreased.
In addition, Chinese characters are different from English, which is a word composed of infinite combinations of letters, and the tense of English needs to be transformed through words, and the tense of a sentence is very important. However Chinese handles tenses very well.
Regarding the ordering of Chinese characters, our country has adopted pinyin sorting, which is very convenient.
As long as you know the pronunciation of this word, you can type it out with a pinyin keyboard. With the advancement of science and technology, typography is no longer a problem, and the efficiency of printing has been greatly improved.
Today, our comprehensive national strength has been significantly improved, and we have a certain right to speak in the international community, and exchanges between countries are becoming more and more frequent.
For many foreign things that cannot be spoken in Chinese, we have adopted proper nouns.
Even to a certain extent, our "Chinese English" is gradually widely used, for some English short sentences, we can also translate it with ancient poetry, not only the language has a beautiful, but also a strong expressive power.
These advances and changes in Chinese characters are indeliblely related to the development and strength of our country. The wisdom of the Chinese people has made the Chinese characters that we have passed down for thousands of years to this day, and the three defects of the past no longer plague our development.
With the country's emphasis on Chinese culture, various Chinese character writing conferences have emerged in recent years. Chinese characters not only add to our cultural self-confidence and cultural identity, but also promote the spread of Chinese culture.
epilogue
Today, the three defects of Chinese characters proposed by Russell have been improved and perfected to varying degrees, and Chinese characters have been widely used.
The accumulation of Chinese culture for thousands of years must have its desirability, and we must firmly believe in its authority and let Chinese characters be passed down from generation to generation.