美国网友：为什么中文仍然是唯一一种带有表意功能的语言？

文字是在时间上记录和传达语言信息的书写符号。汉字是在时间上记录和传达汉语语言信息的书写符号，是中华民族使用的主要文字，是世界上最具有考古价值，以及与未来沟通的文字。汉字表意是汉字在造字原则上，从表形、表意到形声。在美版知乎Quora上，美国网友提问道：为什么中文仍然是唯一一种带有表意功能的语言？这引起各国网友的关注和热议。

问题：为什么中文仍然是唯一一种带有表意功能的语言？

美国网友约恩•托马斯的回答

As others mentioned, Japanese also use Chinese characters. Unlike Koreans, the Japanese must continue to use them to avoid ambiguity.

正如其他人提到的，日本人也使用汉字。与韩国人不同，日本人必须继续使用它们来避免歧义。

But why do Chinese still use square characters?

但为什么中国人仍然使用方块字？

Because it's hard to change! Language is the foundation of culture. Just as Americans still use the Imperial System of Weights and Measures, even though it is cumbersome.

因为很难改变！语言是文化的基础。就像美国人仍然在使用大英帝国的度量衡制度，尽管它很笨重。

Some people have briefly considered the idea of replacing Chinese characters, claiming that Chinese is difficult to learn and write, and not very accurate. They have become obstacles to progress. This statement is not groundless. For similar reasons, Vietnamese and Koreans basically abandoned Chinese characters. Beijing TV programs once taught Esperanto. Of course, because it was difficult to implement and promote, the idea quickly disappeared.

一些人曾短暂考虑过替换汉字的想法，声称汉语很难学习和书写，而且不太精确。他们已经成为进步的障碍。这一说法并非毫无根据。出于类似的原因，越南人和韩国人基本上放弃了汉字。北京的电视节目曾教人们世界语，当然，由于很难执行和推广，这个想法很快就消失了。

In order to alleviate this concern, Chinese Mainland and Singapore simplified and further standardized Chinese characters in the late 1970s.

为了缓解这种担忧，中国大陆和新加坡在20世纪70年代末对汉字进行了简化和进一步规范。

Now it is more difficult to change for four reasons:

现在就更难改变了，原因有四：

1. Chinese characters are deeply rooted in people's social life. People today are more educated than they were decades ago. The proportion of people graduating from high school is much higher, and they have learned everything with Chinese characters. In contrast, Koreans and Vietnamese gave up Chinese characters when the two countries were basically illiterate and agricultural populations.

1.汉字在人们的社会生活中根深蒂固。今天的人们比几十年前受过更多的教育。高中毕业的人口比例高得多，他们都用汉字学会了一切。相比之下，韩国人和越南人在两个国家基本上是文盲和农业人口的情况下放弃了汉字。

2. As time goes by, people have created and used many new words and terms to reflect the growing maturity of society. They can even use some English words in private dialogues, which reflects the flexibility of Chinese characters.

2.随着时间的推移，人们创造并使用了许多新词和术语，以反映社会的日益成熟，甚至可以在私人对话中使用一些英语单词，这反映了汉字的灵活性。

3. This is not conducive to the maintenance of culture. Now people are proud of China's history and culture. In contrast, some Koreans and Vietnamese regret that they have completely abandoned Chinese characters in the current writing system because it is difficult for them to read their historical texts.

3.这将不利于文化的维持。现在人们为中国的历史和文化感到自豪，相比之下，一些韩国人和越南人对在目前的书写系统中完全放弃汉字感到遗憾，因为他们很难阅读他们的历史文本。

4. The computer makes it easier to type Chinese characters. This is especially true for those who write traditional characters - their typing is more complicated than the simplified characters used in Chinese Mainland.

4.计算机使键入汉语字符变得更加容易。对于那些书写繁体字的人来说尤其如此——他们打字比中国大陆使用的简体字更复杂。

Because of these factors, I think Chinese people will always use Chinese characters.

由于这些因素，我想中国人将永远使用汉字。

日本语言学者布鲁斯•托马逊的回答

Japanese is composed of a large number of "Chinese characters". As Gary Westergren pointed out in his post, "ideogram" is very effective.

日语是用大量的“汉字”组成的，正如加里·韦斯特格伦（Gary Westergren）在其帖子中所指出的，“表意文字”非常有效。

As a Japanese historian, when I found that the texts and lists were mainly Chinese characters, it was much easier to scan the lists and texts to find technical terms.

作为一名日本的历史学家，当我发现那些文本和列表主要是汉字时，扫描列表和文本以查找专业术语要容易得多。

There are also some Japanese specific problems. Japanese has many words with the same pronunciation but different meanings. Without Chinese characters, the text becomes extremely difficult to read.

还有一些日本人特有的问题，日语有许多发音相同但含义不同的单词。去掉汉字，文本就会变得极其难以阅读。

Another issue concerns history. The abolition of Chinese characters and the cessation of teaching of Chinese characters meant that only experts could conduct historical research. In my opinion, this is not a good thing.

另外一个问题涉及历史。取消汉字并停止教授汉字意味着只有专家才能进行历史研究。在我看来这不是一件好事。

Of course, the Japanese have the above reasons, while the Chinese have other deeper roots: control, pragmatism and tradition/inertia.

当然，对日本人来说有以上几点原因，对中国人来说有其他更深层次的根源：控制、实用主义和传统/惯性。

Unity: There were many languages in ancient China. There are Cantonese, Minnan, Shanghainese and many other Chinese dialects that are now called dialects. As in India, they used to speak only the local language in some regions/provinces. Therefore, a Chinese from one region cannot understand what people from another region say. By choosing a writing system that does not rely on sound, emperors can ensure that everyone understands his decrees. This flexibility is why many other languages, such as Korean and Japanese, use or still use Chinese characters.

大一统：古代中国有多种语言。有广东话、闽南语、上海话和其他许多现在被称为方言的汉语。像在印度一样，过去在某些地区/省，他们只说当地语言。因此，一个来自一个地区的中国人无法理解另一个地区人们说的话。通过选择一种不依赖声音的书写系统，皇帝们可以确保所有人都能理解他的法令。这种灵活性是为什么许多其他语言，如韩语和日语，都使用或仍然使用汉字的原因。

Pragmatism: When New China was founded, the problem of communication difficulties caused by dialects still existed. Therefore, for practical reasons, they retained these characters and invented Putonghua. For practical reasons, they simplified writing and popularized vernacular, thus promoting literacy and education.

实用主义：新中国成立时时，方言导致沟通困难问题仍然存在，因此，出于实用的原因，他们保留了这些字符，发明了普通话。出于实用的原因，他们简化了文字，普及了白话，从而促进了识字和教育。

南加州大学学者Zhou Y.的回答

When considering this question, we must ask why the phonographic characters will rise and why Chinese characters can retain their ideographic advantages.

在考虑这个问题时，我们必须问，为什么表音文字会崛起，以及为什么汉字可以保留其表意优势。

Almost every phonetic letter in the world can be traced back to the 22 symbols of the Phoenician letter (also known as the original Sina letter or the original Canaanite letter).

世界上几乎每一个语音字母都可以追溯到腓尼基字母的22个符号（也被称为原始锡纳字母或原始迦南字母）。

This innovation makes reading and writing much simpler than the early writing system. To promote its widespread promotion, the Phoenicians were very successful businessmen who had the means to spread their writing system through the Mediterranean and Middle East trade networks. The revolution of phonetics and characters has developed in two directions. The first letter is Greek, followed by Latin, Cyrillic and other letters. The second branch is Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic.

这种创新使阅读和写作比早期的写作系统简单得多。促进其大范围推广的是，腓尼基人是非常成功的商人，他们有办法通过地中海和中东的贸易网络传播他们的书写系统。语音文字革命朝着两个方向发展。第一个字母是希腊字母，随后是拉丁字母、西里尔字母和其他字母。第二个分支是阿拉姆语、希伯来语、阿拉伯语。

With the rise of the Pinyin alphabet, the non pinyin writing system gradually disappeared. Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs and all cuneiform writing systems have long since disappeared. Phonetic writing systems are very meaningful. They require much fewer symbols and are easier to learn and write. The alphabet can be modified or created to meet the phonetic requirements of any language.

随着拼音字母的兴起，非拼音书写系统逐渐消亡。埃及象形文字和玛雅象形文字以及所有楔形文字书写系统早已消失。语音书写系统很有意义，它们需要的符号要少得多，更容易学习和书写，字母表可以修改或创建新的字母表，以符合任何语言的语音要求。

Phoenician innovation was almost immediately regarded as a practical innovation, but each language system created its own alphabet. Along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, the alphabet became Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic. To the east, it became Aramaic (the standard Hebrew alphabet).

腓尼基的创新几乎立即被认为是一种实用的创新，但每个语言系统都自创了自己使用的字母表。在地中海和爱琴海沿岸，字母表变成了希腊语、拉丁语和西里尔语。往东，它变成了阿拉姆语（标准的希伯来语字母）。

The Indian branch appeared in the form of Brahmi language and became the precursor of South Asian, Tibetan and Thai. It is worth noting that all these regions are in contact with each other in the contiguous areas of trade and interconnectedness between empires and countries extending from the Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Persia, and reach South and Southeast Asia through monsoon driven land routes and trade routes.

而印度支系以婆罗米语的形式出现，成为南亚语、藏语和泰语的前身。值得注意的是，所有这些地区都在从地中海延伸到非洲之角、中东和波斯的帝国和国家之间的贸易和相互联系的毗连区内相互接触，并通过季风驱动的陆路和贸易路线到达南亚和东南亚。

Although China has never been completely isolated as the legend suggests, the trade route to the east is always daunting. Scholars have debated whether the Chinese writing system was influenced by Mesopotamians, but philologists believe that it may be an independent invention. Even if it was not developed by the Chinese completely independently, it must have followed its own development path from the very beginning.

虽然中国从未像传说中的那样完全孤立，但往东方的贸易路线总是令人生畏，与西方的联系也并不热络。学者们曾经争论中国的书写系统是否是由美索不达米亚人影响的，但文字学家认为它很可能是一项独立的发明。即使它不是中国人完全独立发展而来的，它肯定从一开始就遵循自己的发展道路。

Although the Chinese writing system is not as old as the ancient Middle East/North Africa scripts, more than 1 billion people are still fully using it. At the beginning, Chinese was operating in a field without other writing systems, so its more complex relationship with the West was different. In addition, the reason for the persistence of Chinese characters is different from that of other languages.

中文书写系统虽然不像古代中东/北非文字那么古老，但仍有超过10亿人在充分使用。一开始，汉语是在一个没有其他书写系统的领域中运作的，因此它与西方彼此更复杂的联系有所不同。此外，中国文字持续存在的原因也与其他语言的情况不同。

Reasons for the successful continuation of Chinese characters:

汉字成功延续下来的原因：

1. Accumulation of cultural history: With the passage of time, each word has gained layers of meaning. As the most important symbols, these characters preserve a large number of cultural memories. Every Chinese can get a little resonance in a character. In addition, writing in the form of calligraphy is one of the highest art forms in East Asian culture.

1.文化史的积淀：随着时间的推移，每个字词都获得了层层意义。作为最重要的符号，这些文字保存着大量的文化记忆。每个中国人都可以在一个字符中获得一丝哪怕是很小的共鸣感，此外，以书法形式书写文字是东亚文化中最高的艺术形式之一。

2. Homonyms: There are many Chinese words with the same pronunciation, even considering the tone. The speech writing system cannot distinguish all these words, and the characters can immediately distinguish and recognize the quoted words.

2.同音异义词：汉语有很多、很多发音完全相同的单词，即使考虑到音调，也是如此。语音书写系统无法区分所有这些单词，而字符可以立即区分识别所引用的单词。

3. Political unity: China has a vast territory and a large number of language varieties. The "dialects" of Chinese may be far more distant than various European "languages", and they are difficult to understand each other. A non phonetic writing system, which can be read and understood by people who speak any dialect, is the main contribution of political unity. Any phonetic writing system, such as Pinyin, must be written in a specific language form. Under the unified rule of the Qin Dynasty (221 – 206 BC), the standardization of Chinese characters was one of the many political acts formulated by the Qin rulers to implement stable political control. China's diversity and the need for a unified empire or central government control over a large area were only amplified in the next few thousand years.

3.政治团结：中国幅员辽阔，语言变体数量巨大。汉语的“方言”可能比各种欧洲“语言”的距离远得多，而且彼此都难以理解。一种非语音书写系统，可以被说任何方言的人阅读和理解，是政治团结的主要贡献。任何语音书写系统，如拼音，都必须以特定的语言形式书写。在秦统治下（公元前221–206年），汉字的标准化是秦统治者为实施稳固的政治控制而制定的众多政治行为之一。中国的多样性，以及对一大片地区实行统一的帝国或中央政府控制的必要性，在此后的几千年中才得以放大。

4. If the writing system has been changed, for example, when Arabic characters were abandoned and changed to romanized letters, the writing system in Türkiye has been changed, and Turks still cannot understand the content of ancient characters. It is almost inconceivable that all the inscriptions and books in Chinese history, not to mention the treasures of Chinese calligraphy, will be separated from most Chinese people.

4.如果书写系统被改变了，例如，当阿拉伯文字被放弃而改为罗马化字母时，土耳其的书写系统就被改变了，土耳其人现在还看不懂古代遗留的文字内容。中国历史上所有的大量碑刻和书籍，更不用说中国书法艺术的瑰宝，都将与大多数中国人分离，这几乎是不可想象的。

5. Japanese uses two kanas, Latin letters and 1000 to 3000 Chinese characters, but Japan has nearly 100% literacy rate. China has made great progress in improving the literacy rate. The current literacy rate is 96% (China: adult literacy rate in 2015 | statistics). Almost all of these people can communicate with Chinese characters using the Romanization system of Pinyin. Therefore, using a complex writing system is not an obstacle to success! In fact, the latest progress of AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithm and the mobile phone as the contact way of Pinyin and character system are unimaginable before. Hundreds of millions of people are now used to using Pinyin to input speech and reading Chinese characters to output.

5.日语使用两种假名，拉丁字母和1000到3000个汉字，但日本拥有近100%的识字率。中国在提高识字率方面取得了巨大进步，目前的识字率为96%（中国：2015年成人识字率|统计）。几乎所有这些人都可以用拼音罗马化系统和汉字进行交流。因此，使用复杂的书写系统并不是成功的障碍！事实上，AI（人工智能）算法的最新进展，以及手机作为拼音和字符系统的联系方式，是以前无法想象的。数以亿计的人现在习惯于使用拼音语音输入和阅读汉字输出。

To sum up, there are specific reasons why Chinese characters are fully used in China and Chinese, but partially used in Japan and Japanese. This is largely related to early successful applications. There is no real competition for Chinese characters. When other minority characters want to replace Chinese, the Chinese character writing system has firmly established its position in culture, administration and language.

总结一下：汉字在中国和汉语中被充分使用，而在日本和日语中被部分使用，这是有具体原因的。这在很大程度上与早期的成功应用有关。汉字没有真正的竞争。当其他少数民族文字想要代替汉语时，汉字书写系统在文化、行政和语言上已经牢固建立其地位。

In contrast, in Western countries, in order to effectively conduct trade and management, competing political empires choose from a series of evolving writing systems. The Persian Empire wanted to popularize Persian, but the Iranian people were not keen on using their "home" language, but they used Aramaic, which was the common language acceptable to most citizens. The empire was also not keen on forcing a certain language to be used as a specific writing system for decrees or administration, but took turns to use Iran characters, cuneiform characters in different forms, and Aramaic language written in Pahlavi characters.

相比之下，在西方国家，为了有效地进行贸易和管理，相互竞争的政治帝国从一系列不断演变的书写系统中进行选择。波斯帝国要普及波斯语，但是，伊朗人民并不热衷于使用他们的“家乡”语言，而是使用亚拉姆语，作为大多数公民可以接受的通用语。帝国也不热衷于强制用某种语言作为法令或行政管理的特定书写系统，而是轮流使用伊兰文字、不同形式的楔形文字和用巴列维文字书写的阿拉姆语。

The Indian subcontinent is another place that tries to enforce the ruling language, perhaps out of the same political unity motive as China. However, here, it does not maintain an alphabet, but splits into many kinds. The existence of the caste system makes it seem that each language needs to express its different hierarchical identity in the form of slightly different variants of the same original system, thus producing Sinhala, Kannada, Tamil, Tibetan, Kormushi, Tiancheng Documents and many other related alphabets.

印度次大陆是另一个试图强制执行统治文字的地方，也许是出于与中国相同的政治统一动机。然而，在这里，它并没有保持一个字母表，而是分裂成许多种，种姓制度的存在，导致每种语言似乎都需要以同一原始系统的稍微不同的变体的形式来表达自己不同的等级身份，从而产生了僧伽罗语、卡纳达语、泰米尔语、藏语、廓尔木希语、天成文书和许多其他相关的字母表。