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New Area Studies and Languages on the Move

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jing Tsu
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Extract

In 1909 Wu Zhihui, a proponent of esperanto and well-known anarchist of Twentieth-Century China, predicted the future of global languages. Though the nationalization of the Chinese language was still pending, Wu expressed concern not for its imminent standardization but for its eventual global viability. The outlook was not rosy:

Not only is the Chinese language not phoneticized, it is also not easy to typeset or index. This is a tremendous obstacle to the dissemination of civilized modernization and the governance of all things…. Looking up Chinese characters takes great effort indeed. Regardless of the index system and classification scheme, it is very difficult to memorize them. Moreover, there are too many characters…. Western writing has one great advantage, which became clear as the greatest disadvantage of the Chinese language only with the advancement of machine technology. A typewriter can be used with Western scripts but not with the Chinese language…. Sooner or later the Chinese script has to be abolished.

(51, 36, 37, 52; my trans.)

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 126 , Issue 3 , May 2011 , pp. 693 - 700
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2011

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