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.
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.
Nice! Didn't know that. I wonder if they Romanized transliterated 'Vissarionovich' as a test case. Regardless, with pinyin they certainly did a better job than the Taiwanese!
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.
> 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 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.
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).
This is a point I was also wondering the whole time. The vulgarisation of literature happened all over Europe at varifying times and in different stages. We don’t see these as changes in the language itself, but instead the authors daring to write the way they actually always spoke.
There’s something in bemoaning the loss of a poetic register in written language, but that’s a different and much less significant change.
As I understand it, Classical Chinese literature has long been inscrutable and full of references to other texts, requiring a tutor to explain everything as you read it, who learned from a tutor, and so on.
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.
> 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)
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.
I don’t think there’s an inherent modern bias against the laconic traditional style. It actually sounds more in line with the simple sentences children learn in grade school. Really, that ‘traditional’ version is only missing a noun for the second part and then that’s sufficient for modern use. Could remove the last character, even.
> 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.
Tai languages are a completely different language family to Chinese, written using Indian abugidas and largely prisoner to a confluence of religious affectation, court ritual and the popular language of the peasantry as popular literacy never occurred. By contrast, Chinese has an uninterrupted written history spanning thousands of years with world leading poetry, philosophy and science. In terms of historical and linguistic nuance, comparing the two on the basis of an excluded adverb is like eating a banana and declaring it tree-rice.
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.
Probably true. Though as someone who can read both English and Chinese, I thought the translations in the article does a good job of representing the traditional vs modern grammar styles. Not sure what more explanation would be necessary
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.
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.
Even more than that: Romanization was the official goal of the Communist party until Stalin talked them out of it!
https://faroutliers.com/2004/04/24/how-stalin-and-the-cultur...
Nice! Didn't know that. I wonder if they Romanized transliterated 'Vissarionovich' as a test case. Regardless, with pinyin they certainly did a better job than the Taiwanese!
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.
There's a whole spectrum between "full AI slop" and "no AI usage". This article is far towards the former.
> 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...
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.
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).
In any case, Classical Chinese did the same thing but with 之.
How do we know this isn't just a difference in register? Classical Chinese was extremely literary, but did people actually speak that way?
That's exactly what it is. The article is almost entirely misconceived.
This is a point I was also wondering the whole time. The vulgarisation of literature happened all over Europe at varifying times and in different stages. We don’t see these as changes in the language itself, but instead the authors daring to write the way they actually always spoke.
There’s something in bemoaning the loss of a poetic register in written language, but that’s a different and much less significant change.
As I understand it, Classical Chinese literature has long been inscrutable and full of references to other texts, requiring a tutor to explain everything as you read it, who learned from a tutor, and so on.
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.
> 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...
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.
> 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.
I don’t think there’s an inherent modern bias against the laconic traditional style. It actually sounds more in line with the simple sentences children learn in grade school. Really, that ‘traditional’ version is only missing a noun for the second part and then that’s sufficient for modern use. Could remove the last character, even.
> 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.
Tai languages are a completely different language family to Chinese, written using Indian abugidas and largely prisoner to a confluence of religious affectation, court ritual and the popular language of the peasantry as popular literacy never occurred. By contrast, Chinese has an uninterrupted written history spanning thousands of years with world leading poetry, philosophy and science. In terms of historical and linguistic nuance, comparing the two on the basis of an excluded adverb is like eating a banana and declaring it tree-rice.
why use many word when few word do trick?
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.
Probably true. Though as someone who can read both English and Chinese, I thought the translations in the article does a good job of representing the traditional vs modern grammar styles. Not sure what more explanation would be necessary
Did you want the article to teach you read Classical Chinese?
I wonder how this accounts for regionalisms, let alone different Chinese dialects. Taiwanese Mandarin uses 研究 as a verb easily enough.
I'll read this when it's written by a human.