> Traditional Chinese relies on context: “Rain heavy, not go”, “雨大，不去了”.
> Modern Chinese demands explicit logic: “Because the rain is heavy, therefore I will not go.””因为雨下得很大，所以我决定不去了。”
No, what? Most native speakers today definitely say things like “雨大，不去了” in daily conversations.
> Take his most famous poem, Saying Good-bye to Cambridge Again (再别康桥). In Classical Chinese, a farewell to a river might be compressed into four dense characters: Liu shui, li ren (流水，离人 | Flowing water, departing person). But Xu wrote:
> (轻轻的我走了，正如我轻轻的来；我挥一挥衣袖，不带走一片云彩)
Sorry, it's just stupid. Yes, Xu's poetry style is heavily influenced by European languages. However it doesn't mean this is equivalent to "流水，离人."
Even 們 was used in Journey to The West all the time. I really don't know where the author got the idea that plural suffix is something from English. Perhaps this whole article is AI-generated.
This article seems to completely ignore the fact that languages change over time on their own and attributes all differences between Literary Chinese and Modern Standard Chinese to contact with European languages, which is rather excessive. Lu Xun was interested in translation, but he was even more interested in writing for the common folk, i.e. not in some relexified foreign language. There are definitely some innovations that were originally used in translations (e.g. different characters for gendered pronouns that are pronounced identically) and of course there are loanwords, but I think most of the claims about grammar are false.
> I think most of the claims about grammar are false.
This part about "forced the English plural We [..] injecting mandatory number-specificity where context once sufficed" really struck me. Sounds cool for poetry to be ambiguous about this, but really now, how is an advanced society handling the practical matters of writing contracts and keeping records without it
> how is an advanced society handling the practical matters of writing contracts and keeping records without it
By "it" I guess you mean grammatical plurals? It's indeed semantically redundant. Say in a context of contracts, how is "3000.00 dollar" in any way more ambiguous than "3000.00 dollars"? The Chinese language indeed has been supporting an advanced society without grammatical plurals for thousands of years.
Fun fact: Luxun proposed dropping Hanzi entirely. The communist party conveniently forgets to teach that part to the youth because it doesn't fit their nationalist narrative.
We talked about this years ago. This is very much taught in the PRC (and I believe Taiwan for that matter). I specifically gave you examples of standardized tests that go over this material.
You seem to be conflating "someone taught it at a university" with the apparently well evidenced view that Lu Xun's overwhelming coverage in popular media and secondary schooling neglects to point out his anti-character stance.
> apparently well evidenced view that Lu Xun's overwhelming coverage in popular media and secondary schooling neglects to point out his anti-character stance
What do you mean by "apparently well evidenced view?" No I'm not saying "someone taught it at university." That's a public high school exam. That is specifically secondary schooling.
Moreover, this gets mentioned in official publications and popular media frequently. See for example this official article from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (which is a state-run entity), which just happened to be the first article that caught my eye.
> In December of 1935, 688 well-known individuals including Cai Yuanpei, Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Ye Shengtao, Mao Dun, Chen Wangdao, and Tao Xingzhi, published "Our views on spreading Sin Wenz [Latinxua Sin Wenz, i.e. a Latin alphabetization of Chinese]." It stated in part, "China has already arrived at the point of life or death, we must educate the masses and organize [them] to solve difficulties. But the work of educating the masses, at its very beginning already runs into an enormous problem. That problem is Chinese square characters [Chinese characters usually are roughly proportioned as if they were in a square frame]. Chinese square characters are difficult to recognize, difficult to understand, and difficult to learn.... We believe that Sin Wenz deserves to be introduced to the entire nation. We deeply hope that everyone will study them, spread them and put them into practice, and make them into an important tool for improving the culture of the masses and the movement to liberate the people."
More broadly this is a very common topic among Chinese netizens. There are as I linked dozens of forum posts on this across Zhihu, Baidu, etc.
It's not the first thing people learn about Lu Xun. But it's definitely not hidden.
"Hidden" and "not taught" are two different things. I'm not claiming the knowledge is buried in a grand conspiracy, I'm just saying few know because it's not generally shared and this is policy. Source: 20 years of talking to people.
I'm not one of those AI haters, and as long as you give it enough love, I have nothing against the usage of AI in blog posts. Actually, I'm even quite disappointed that I'm not allowed use AI to correct my grammar here anymore.
That said, this has so much fill-words and weird section titles that reading becomes torture. Not to mention the lack of sources.
The biggest shift in the past ~100 years or so was the fact that mass-literacy became a thing. People started writing how they speak.
The written language's disconnect from the spoken language had a bunch of different reasons: bridging the gap between mutually-unintelligible regional dialects, political gatekeeping, etc.
I think the main claim of "Modern Chinese can read as English in Hanzi camouflage" owes a lot to the fact that they're two "subject verb object" languages with similar formal/written registers.
> He argued that Modern Chinese has become “lazy” by forgetting how to use its own verbs. instead of “researching” (研究, yanjiu), speakers “conduct research” (进行研究, jinxing yanjiu)
> Traditional Chinese relies on context: “Rain heavy, not go”, “雨大，不去了”.
> Modern Chinese demands explicit logic: “Because the rain is heavy, therefore I will not go.””因为雨下得很大，所以我决定不去了。”
Two observations. One, I see this in Thai, too, which might yet preserve that earlier syntax. ไม่เผ็ด ไม่กิน ("No spicy, no eat") is perfectly fine in Thai, though it is possible (and very unidiomatic) to create a formal conditional using เพราะ ("because").
Two, it's also true that ancient languages in general have a different logic to their syntax than their modern descendants. I've always felt it was easier to read and understand academic French than ancient Latin, despite having much less training in the former than the latter. There is probably a shift that happens, that isn't always deliberate, when speakers of a language encounter a radically different world than one they were born into. And add contact to that: the author write of creolization, though it's not only about vocabulary and syntax. That's the just the visible. It's often about changing how we perceive things. To return to Thai, squid, octopus, and cuttlefish are all ปลาหมึก. For English speakers, those are similar things, but all clearly distinct. But for Thai speakers, they're all ปลาหมึก, just different types.
This article seems overly critical trying to impose a stance. I have never heard anyone say "因为雨下得很大，所以我决定不去了".
> The Sausage Sentence: English stacks relative clauses. Modern Chinese attempts to shove that complexity into a single pre-noun modifier using de (的), creating bloated, breathless sentences that tax the memory.
This is given without any evidence. "Creating bloated, breathless sentences that tax the memory" sounds like something Claude might write. IMO, 的 is far from as negative as the author (or AI) portrays it; arguably better than the multitude of English synonyms (his, her, theirs, its).
The article is mistaken on a number of linguistic points. For example 们 was used to mark plurals way before some 19th century translation, if you look at things that were written in the vernacular and not in Classical Chinese.
> Traditional Chinese relies on context: “Rain heavy, not go”, “雨大，不去了”.
> Modern Chinese demands explicit logic: “Because the rain is heavy, therefore I will not go.””因为雨下得很大，所以我决定不去了。”
I would say "下雨了，我不去“ or something like that. The second example is perhaps what a language learner would say in order to "speak correctly", but nobody actually speaks or writes like that.
There is a similar path with Chinese painting. The language of painting was refined over millennia, but the last 2 centuries caused an extremely rapid integration of Western influences.
This article is interesting because language is like water to a fish, the invisible medium humans live through. Since art is more 'foreign' and 'superfluous', the change were more obvious and there was much more debate regarding this evolution than in linguistics.
I discussed with a painter in the artistic lineage of Shi Guoliang, and he told me he remembered how much that could be seen as "Western art painted with a Chinese brush".
I think the criticism was more directed towards such painters than say the Lingnan school that explicitly sought to revitalize Chinese painting through foreign influences, because it's really in the foundations of the painting -- how perspective and light are tackled through the 'scientific' system rather than the elaborate symbolic system of classical painting.
An article for those who read both because none of the grammatical exemplars are really explained. You have to take his word for it without transliteration or explanation.
There's so much wrong with this article. For starters, no one speaks Classical Chinese/Wenyanwen. Not now, not ever. It was designed for writing only, and the conciseness was to preserve bamboo (but stayed because it conveyed a sense of authority). Most importantly, modern Chinese remains challenging after all of the "westernization" events used as examples in the article, and the difficulty is not just because you get a new set of characters. On top of the writing system, you need to learn the tones, new phonemes like x, zh, q, and an entirely new vocabulary that shares very little cognates with English. And the grammar is different, with Chinese relying on much less conduction and requires much more context to understand.
56 comments
> Traditional Chinese relies on context: “Rain heavy, not go”, “雨大，不去了”.
> Modern Chinese demands explicit logic: “Because the rain is heavy, therefore I will not go.””因为雨下得很大，所以我决定不去了。”
No, what? Most native speakers today definitely say things like “雨大，不去了” in daily conversations.
> Take his most famous poem, Saying Good-bye to Cambridge Again (再别康桥). In Classical Chinese, a farewell to a river might be compressed into four dense characters: Liu shui, li ren (流水，离人 | Flowing water, departing person). But Xu wrote:
> (轻轻的我走了，正如我轻轻的来；我挥一挥衣袖，不带走一片云彩)
Sorry, it's just stupid. Yes, Xu's poetry style is heavily influenced by European languages. However it doesn't mean this is equivalent to "流水，离人."
> The constant use of “I” (Wo) is a modern invention; classical poetry usually omits the subject to create a universal feeling.
我(Wo, "I") has been constantly used for a very very long time. Just less in poetry. For example, this is from early 19th century[0]:
>> 嫣娘答應著，出來三步兩步，連忙跑到園裡，一進門就高聲說道：「我回來了，我可也回來了！」
This is from Journey to The West, 16th century:
>> 我等在此，恐作耍成真，或驚動人王，或有禽王、獸王認此犯頭，說我們操兵造反，興師來相殺，汝等都是竹竿木刀，如何對敵？須得鋒利劍戟方可。如今奈何？
This is allegedly more than 2,000 years(!) old[1]:
>> 帝力於我何有哉
Actually, there are pronouns specifically created for western text:
- 她 (she)
- 妳 (female you, no longer used in mainland China)
- 祂 (originally this character was only used for He and Him in the Bible).
The author mentioning 我 instead of these makes me question how knowledgeable this article is.
[0]: https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hant/%E9%A2%A8%E6%9C%88%E9%91%9...
[1]: https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hant/%E6%93%8A%E5%A3%A4%E6%AD%8...
>> 我等在此...
This is also an example of a plural suffix ("-等") which the post author paints as English/Western influence (specifically "-们")
> I think most of the claims about grammar are false.
This part about "forced the English plural We [..] injecting mandatory number-specificity where context once sufficed" really struck me. Sounds cool for poetry to be ambiguous about this, but really now, how is an advanced society handling the practical matters of writing contracts and keeping records without it
> how is an advanced society handling the practical matters of writing contracts and keeping records without it
By "it" I guess you mean grammatical plurals? It's indeed semantically redundant. Say in a context of contracts, how is "3000.00 dollar" in any way more ambiguous than "3000.00 dollars"? The Chinese language indeed has been supporting an advanced society without grammatical plurals for thousands of years.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33312227
> apparently well evidenced view that Lu Xun's overwhelming coverage in popular media and secondary schooling neglects to point out his anti-character stance
What do you mean by "apparently well evidenced view?" No I'm not saying "someone taught it at university." That's a public high school exam. That is specifically secondary schooling.
Moreover, this gets mentioned in official publications and popular media frequently. See for example this official article from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (which is a state-run entity), which just happened to be the first article that caught my eye.
> 1935年12月，蔡元培、鲁迅、郭沫若、叶圣陶、茅盾、陈望道、陶行知等688位知名人士，共同发表文章《我们对于推行新文字的意见》，其中说：“中国已经到了生死关头，我们必须教育大众，组织起来解决困难。但这教育大众的工作，开始就遇着一个绝大难关。这个难关就是方块汉字。方块汉字难认、难识、难学。……我们觉得这种新文字值得向全国介绍。我们深望大家一齐来研究它，推行它，使它成为推进大众文化和民族解放运动的重要工具。” (http://ling.cass.cn/keyan/xueshuchengguo/cgtj/202112/t202112...)
And my very rough translation.
> In December of 1935, 688 well-known individuals including Cai Yuanpei, Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Ye Shengtao, Mao Dun, Chen Wangdao, and Tao Xingzhi, published "Our views on spreading Sin Wenz [Latinxua Sin Wenz, i.e. a Latin alphabetization of Chinese]." It stated in part, "China has already arrived at the point of life or death, we must educate the masses and organize [them] to solve difficulties. But the work of educating the masses, at its very beginning already runs into an enormous problem. That problem is Chinese square characters [Chinese characters usually are roughly proportioned as if they were in a square frame]. Chinese square characters are difficult to recognize, difficult to understand, and difficult to learn.... We believe that Sin Wenz deserves to be introduced to the entire nation. We deeply hope that everyone will study them, spread them and put them into practice, and make them into an important tool for improving the culture of the masses and the movement to liberate the people."
More broadly this is a very common topic among Chinese netizens. There are as I linked dozens of forum posts on this across Zhihu, Baidu, etc.
It's not the first thing people learn about Lu Xun. But it's definitely not hidden.
https://faroutliers.com/2004/04/24/how-stalin-and-the-cultur...
That said, this has so much fill-words and weird section titles that reading becomes torture. Not to mention the lack of sources.
The written language's disconnect from the spoken language had a bunch of different reasons: bridging the gap between mutually-unintelligible regional dialects, political gatekeeping, etc.
I think the main claim of "Modern Chinese can read as English in Hanzi camouflage" owes a lot to the fact that they're two "subject verb object" languages with similar formal/written registers.
> He argued that Modern Chinese has become “lazy” by forgetting how to use its own verbs. instead of “researching” (研究, yanjiu), speakers “conduct research” (进行研究, jinxing yanjiu)
I can't help but think of this classic essay about Java OOP: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdo...
> Traditional Chinese relies on context: “Rain heavy, not go”, “雨大，不去了”.
> Modern Chinese demands explicit logic: “Because the rain is heavy, therefore I will not go.””因为雨下得很大，所以我决定不去了。”
Two observations. One, I see this in Thai, too, which might yet preserve that earlier syntax. ไม่เผ็ด ไม่กิน ("No spicy, no eat") is perfectly fine in Thai, though it is possible (and very unidiomatic) to create a formal conditional using เพราะ ("because").
Two, it's also true that ancient languages in general have a different logic to their syntax than their modern descendants. I've always felt it was easier to read and understand academic French than ancient Latin, despite having much less training in the former than the latter. There is probably a shift that happens, that isn't always deliberate, when speakers of a language encounter a radically different world than one they were born into. And add contact to that: the author write of creolization, though it's not only about vocabulary and syntax. That's the just the visible. It's often about changing how we perceive things. To return to Thai, squid, octopus, and cuttlefish are all ปลาหมึก. For English speakers, those are similar things, but all clearly distinct. But for Thai speakers, they're all ปลาหมึก, just different types.
> The Sausage Sentence: English stacks relative clauses. Modern Chinese attempts to shove that complexity into a single pre-noun modifier using de (的), creating bloated, breathless sentences that tax the memory.
This is given without any evidence. "Creating bloated, breathless sentences that tax the memory" sounds like something Claude might write. IMO, 的 is far from as negative as the author (or AI) portrays it; arguably better than the multitude of English synonyms (his, her, theirs, its).
> Traditional Chinese relies on context: “Rain heavy, not go”, “雨大，不去了”. > Modern Chinese demands explicit logic: “Because the rain is heavy, therefore I will not go.””因为雨下得很大，所以我决定不去了。”
I would say "下雨了，我不去“ or something like that. The second example is perhaps what a language learner would say in order to "speak correctly", but nobody actually speaks or writes like that.
I discussed with a painter in the artistic lineage of Shi Guoliang, and he told me he remembered how much that could be seen as "Western art painted with a Chinese brush". I think the criticism was more directed towards such painters than say the Lingnan school that explicitly sought to revitalize Chinese painting through foreign influences, because it's really in the foundations of the painting -- how perspective and light are tackled through the 'scientific' system rather than the elaborate symbolic system of classical painting.
> Traditional Chinese relies on context: “Rain heavy, not go”, “雨大，不去了”.
> Modern Chinese demands explicit logic: “Because the rain is heavy, therefore I will not go.””因为雨下得很大，所以我决定不去了。”
Interestingly the "traditional grammar" is much more conversational and natural, while the latter is expected for modern written work.