[KS] writing systems

[willpore]

Dan,

I have been following this discussion of writing systems, with its special
attention to Hangul. After having just read your message I was reminded of
something. I don't think that anyone has mentioned what my former professor,
Gari Ledyard, at Columbia used to say about Hangul  vs. Chinese: Despite how
"inefficient" Chinese  characters may be in some ways, for ease/speed of
recognition (if you know Chinese),characters beat Hangul, or maybe any
alphabetic script. I think he was referring to instances in Korea in which bus
destinations or signs with short messages in Chinese were used instead of
Hangul. This might also be pertinent to scripts that, like Vietnamese (which I
have studied), use a great many diacritics to distinguish meanings. In other
words, Chinese charcaters carry a certain gestalt(?)that makes their
understanding quickly comprehensible.
Not a linguist, I first replied to Dan off the list with this observation,
which, to me, still seems to be true.

Will