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A comment on Zhou Youguang, creator of the Pinyin writing system, has died. Parent comment

Re:Zhou Youguang, creator of the Pinyin writing system, has ... by yongjik on Saturday January 14, 2017 @04:36PM (#13400701)
It's a chicken-and-egg problem. When most people write in "phonetic" script, people stop using ambiguous words that sound alike, so these words fade away, which further strengthens the adoption of phonetic script.

If everyone around you uses Chinese characters, there's little incentive to avoid homophones, so they will remain a part of literary language, reinforcing the use of Chinese characters.

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Re:Zhou Youguang, creator of the Pinyin writing system, has ... by eva1984 on Saturday January 14, 2017 @05:21PM (#13400921)
That is exactly what I meant. The theory that w/o Chinese, makes languages like Korean/Vietnamese 'worse', is a myth constructed by some sino-centrists. The decision to keep or deprecate Chinese characters is political, but people find their way to adapt and evolve with the new language.
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Re:Zhou Youguang, creator of the Pinyin writing system, has ... by FabHK on Saturday January 14, 2017 @04:47PM (#13400753)
Very true.

And indeed, Korean words that come from Chinese (about half) have a much higher ratio of homophones than in the native Korean part.

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