🚀 go-pugleaf

In-Reply-To: <1993Jan18.002731.6997@trl.oz.au> jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)


> I found learning to write Chinese no more difficult than English.
> Perhaps Chinese children are considered to be fluent only when
> in their teens because Chinese teachers insist on decent standards
> of literacy.

I don't think fluency is the issue, it's having learnt to recognize and
reproduce 4000+ different characters. The task of learning to write
correctly (i.e. to form the letters correctly) is fairly soon
accomplished in an alphabetic script, and it's the relation of sound
to spelling that's the problem. In Chinese, learning the inventory of
signs is the whole task essentially. The enormous numbers of
homophones must make it difficult too.

Peter

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Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
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