/n/ews: Pride - Why Chinese Language FAILS.

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/chinese-language-ever-evolving/

The Times recently published an article about China’s effort to manage the vast number of characters in the Chinese language. A government computer database, designed to recognize people’s names on identity cards, is programmed to read about 32,000 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, cutting out the more “obscure” characters.

This is not the first attempt to modernize a sprawling and ancient language. The most ambitious effort was the introduction of a simplified system of writing in the 1950s. As part of the Communist Party’s campaign to reduce illiteracy, simplified characters were promoted as the common written language, replacing many traditional characters.

More than five decades later, simplified characters remain the standard writing system of China, while Chinese elsewhere — especially in Taiwan and Hong Kong — continue to use traditional characters.

We asked several experts to explain the roots of this shift, and how it might affect the future course of the written language.

>>47

Are you kidding? There are reasons why Chinese characters may fall into disuse, but 'western' technology is not one of them. Are you trying to say that they simply can't write in Japanese at all? That's just not true; Japanese input is simple and intuitive across a wide variety of devices. Anything released in Japan is capable of it.

Or are you suggesting that this technology is what's causing them to be unable to physically write with a pen and paper? While it's certainly true that fewer Japanese retain this knowledge into later years, especially younger people, that has nothing to do with Western vs Eastern technology. We see the same phenomenon in young Americans these days as well (text speak, poor spelling due to the presence of spellcheck).

In either case, their ability to read and -type- it has not diminished. The wide variety of characters used in any basic light novel, for instance, which are generally targeted at a younger audience, shows this.

Have I just been trolled?