Idea: Alphabetising the Chinese language

RH:
1. Those of us who learned English and Chinese know that English is far easier to learn than Chinese, mostly because English uses just 26 letters of the alphabet to make up all its words, which totalled 1 million words around June 2009. Whereas in Chinese, each word has to be learned by rote not only how it is written but also how it is pronounced -- having to remember by memory each word-sound, since you cannot tell how to pronounce it simply by looking at how the word is written.

2. As a purely academic exercise, I would venture to ask if the Chinese language [and maybe also the Japanese and Korean languages?] can be alphabetised. Scholars in China have discovered that to be fully literate in Chinese requires only 3,000-4,000 words, although the ancient Kangxi dictionary contained about 47,035 words, most of them not used today.

3. Languages are living things and change and grow with time and usage. If a special effort is deliberately made to alphabetise the Chinese language, what would some of the considerations be?

4. Firstly, let us consider how many 'letters' of the 'alphabet' Chinese would need. Suppose we replace most of the current 3,000-4,000 Chinese words with 2-word equivalents, just like 电话 is the 2-word Chinese 'word' for 'telephone'. We would need just 70 Chinese alphabet words to generate 4,830 current words. Not bad. We are getting there. Not as difficult as it seems at first. Just a new Chinese alphabet of about 70 words ['letters'] to replace the current 3,000-4,000 Chinese words.

5. To match the English total of 1 million words requires a Chinese alphabet of just 1,000 'alphabet-words' giving 999,000 'words'. All using 2 Chinese word combinations.

6. Of course, nobody is going to change the Chinese language. All this is just an academic exercise. After all, languages are living things, not a gadget that can be easily modified. Yet, beginning in the 1950s, progressing in batches, China began to slowly adopt Simplified Chinese words, so maybe my idea of alphabetising the Chinese language may happen one day, too.

7. Changing a language is now much easier than before, since we now read and write mostly on computers. And we have the very powerful mass media to disseminate it to every corner of a country, and into every home through tv and pc, even into every school classroom. So, change is indeed possible and not very difficult.

8. If we modify a computer word processing program, we can make the program automatically write out the new 2-word Chinese 'word' whenever we type in the 'old' word. This is easily done with only a slight modification of the program. So you may type using the traditional words but the program automatically changes each old word into its new 2-word equivalent, either as you type or when you have finished composing and click a button to change the entire text into the new alphabetised Chinese.

9. That takes care of the typing, writing and composing stage. For reading, again the computer program can help. If you do not know a new 2-word alphabet 'word', you simply hover your mouse pointer over the 2-words and the old, traditional word would pop up to help you recognise the meaning of the new 2-word 'word'. Of course, we can also have the standard 'dictionary' that gives the conversions between new and old words.

10. Thus, with modern technology, everything will be fairly easy and simple. This has been an interesting academic exercise. Scholars may want to take these ideas further and who knows, Chinese may be alphabetised one day -- using just 70 word-alphabets to replace the current 3,000-4,000 Chinese words in use today, [I used mathematical Permutations, not Combinations, to arrive at the 70 alphabet-'letter-word'].

11. Note: If a Chinese scholar or group of scholars are to attempt to create this new Chinese script, I sugggest that the 70 or so alphabet 'letter-word's be chosen for easy writing, that is, having as few strokes as possible for quick and easy writing, although this is less and less important as more and more writing is done on a computer. In addition, each of the 70 or so alphabet 'letter-word's should sound as distinct and unique as possible because Speech To Text computer softwares are getting better and better and should soon allow us to dictate into a microphone [whether a big one or a small mic built into our smartphones] and the program types out the words automatically as we dictate into the mic. By choosing the 70 or so alphabet 'letter-word's for distinct and unique sounds, you will make Speech To Text much easier and far more accurate in Chinese than is possible in English, since English has too many sounds that are very similar so mistakes are still common.

12. Thus, if my ideas are adopted, Chinese will be as easy to learn as English, since you only need to learn to read and write 70 words or so, instead of the current 3,000-4,000 words, and from these 70 words, exactly as in English, all the rest of the language can be constructed, mostly in 2-word combinations. If the 70 or so words are well chosen for their DISTINCT sounds, Chinese Speech To Text will be far easier and far more accurate than English can ever be. For this alone, my ideas are worth considering. I have calculated the Permutations for 70 words for 2-word combinations. If you allow 2 as well as 3-word combinations, you will need far less than 70 alphabet 'letter-word's, but I think 3-word combos are too many, and 70 letter-words seem reasonable -- English has 26 letters in its alphabet. Thank you for joining me in this academic exercise, if nothing else.

Related somewhat:
http://i-came-i-saw-i-solved-it.blogspot.com/search/label/Idea%3A%20New%20Mandarin%20script%20%3A%20sinograms%20%2B%20pinyin

Idea: New Mandarin script : sinograms + pinyin

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RH: ME ON VIDEO DESCRIBING lky lhl wks NUMEROUS ELECTION RIGGINGS:
http://i-came-i-saw-i-solved-it.blogspot.com/search/label/%22A%20Video%20RH%20on%20LKY%20LHL%20WKS%20cheating%20elections%22

MY ACQUAINTANCE, MR DAVID DUCLOS, A FORMER POLICE INSPECTOR, AND HIS LAWYER FRIEND, EYEWITNESSED LEE KUAN YEW RIGGING THE 1997 CHENG SAN GRC ELECTION. READ MORE AT MY BLOG ENTITLED "I CAME, I SAW, I SOLVED IT" :
http://i-came-i-saw-i-solved-it.blogspot.com/

MY ONLINE POLICE REPORT ON LKY LHL WKS CHEATING ELECTIONS:
http://i-came-i-saw-i-solved-it.blogspot.com/2009/06/police-report-lee-ky-lhl-wks-cheating_02.html

THE MOST COMPLETE RUBBISHING OF LEEconomics EVER:
http://i-came-i-saw-i-wrote-it.blogspot.com/2009/06/most-complete-rubbishing-of-leeconomics.html

[ALSO AT THE ABOVE BLOG, LIE KUAN YEW's LIES, CORRUPTION, WRONGFUL JAILING, TORTURE AND BEATING TO DEATH OF INNOCENT POLITICAL PRISONERS LIKE MR CHAN HOCK HUA]

READ ALSO MARTYN SEE's INTERVIEW WITH ME AT:
http://singaporerebel.blogspot.com/

ALSO AT:
http://i-came-i-saw-i-wrote-it.blogspot.com/2007/03/filmmaker-martyn-see-interviews-robert.html

FOR QUICK, IRREVERENT REASONS WHY LIE KY DESERVES A NOBEL:
http://i-came-i-saw-i-solved-it.blogspot.com/search/label/Not%20nominated%20for%20a%20Nobel%20so%20LIE%20KY%20gives%20himself%20many%20others

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PHOTOS OF LIE KY SCRATCHING MY WIFE's NEW CAR:
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NOT GUILTY BUT TORTURED, DEGRADED 15 YEARS FOR PUBLICITY, FUN
http://i-came-i-saw-i-solved-it.blogspot.com/2009/05/not-guilty-but-tortured-degraded-15.html

WHY SINGAPORE HAS NO ECONOMY
http://i-came-i-saw-i-solved-it.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-singapore-has-no-economy.html
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