Asia's Orthographic Dilemma

Front Cover
University of Hawaii Press, Jun 1, 1997 - Foreign Language Study - 352 pages
With the advent of computers and the rise of East Asian economies, the complicated character-based writing systems of East Asia have reached a stage of crisis that may be described as truly millennial in scope and implications. In what is perhaps the most wide-ranging critique of the sinographic script ever written, William C. Hannas assesses the usefulness of Chinese character-based writing in East Asia today.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Chinese
3
Japanese
26
Korean
48
Vietnamese
73
Critique of Chinese CharacterBased Writing
99
5 Representation
101
6 Learning and Literacy
125
7 Reading
153
Forces for Change
205
9 The Chimera of Reform
207
10 Language Speech and Writing
231
11 Computing with Chinese Characters
258
12 Chinese Characters and East Asian Culture
277
Notes
301
Bibliography
317
Index
331

8 Appropriateness to East Asian Languages
174

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information