[KS] Misunderstanding Hanja

[dbaker at interchange.ubc.ca]

I thought one of the linguists on the list would reply to William Brown's comments about the alleged barriers Chinese characters and the Chinese language raise to abstract thinking. However, since no one else has responded, I'll step forward.

He says, "there was no algebra, calculus etc. in China until the modern era." That is incorrect. In fact, for most of the last 2,000 years mathematics in China (and in Korea as well, since Koreans learned their math from China) was more advanced in many areas, including algebra, than the West was. Li Yan and Du Shiran's history of Chinese mathematics, as well as volume 3 of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China, provide plenty of evidence for the high level of algebra in traditional Chinese mathematics. Chinese characters clearly did not present a barrier to abstract thought by mathematicians. 

He also says that Chinese is a monosyllabic language,and that the monosyllabic nature of Chinese vocabulary items has hindered abstract thinking not only in China but in Korea and Japan as well. John DeFrancis laid that myth to rest in his chapter on "The monosyllabic myth" in The Chinese Language, Fact and Fantasy. Anybody who has spent much time reading texts written in Hanmun, or even just looking through Chinese language dictionaries, is well aware that there are many multi-syllabic words in Chinese. As for Chinese characters being a poor tool for expressing abstract ideas, just try translating Neo-Confucian concepts such as li and ki into English!

--
Don Baker
Director, Centre for Korean Research
Interim Head, Department of Asian Studies
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2  CANADA