I find it fantastically encouraging to see this sort of argument being made outside academic circles.

Thanks for posting this, Danwei.

I dont understand a word...is he suggesting a return to classical chinese as the standard??? Could Plato really read a contemporary greek newspaper???

As I read it, he's putting forward the same argument that's being commonly heard in the West these days with regard to English standards - people are getting lazy and inarticulate, and the standard of language usage is dropping like a stone. I realize language evolves, but a lot of this crap - in Chinese and in English - is less an evolution than a devolution.

@Shan

I've always been impressed by the intelligence of your comments, and would be interested to know what you find encouraging about this discussion.

It is not my intent to pin you to a specific position so that I can attack it. I have my own feelings and opinions on this topic, and would like some exposure to yours.

Cheers

PS @Ridero: Afaik, Plato probably couldn't read a contemporary Greek newspaper, although a contemporary Greek can read Plato without great difficulty - at least on the grammatical level. The same obtains for Hebrew: Kohelet probably wouldn't understand Ha'aretz, but contemporary Israelis have little trouble reading Kohelet's eponymous tract. My understanding is that this has more to do with the introduction of new vocabulary over time than any other factor. Obviously, the issue is linguistic continuity. English is a good example of a language which lacks such continuity: contemporary speakers have difficulty with Shakespeare (Modern English), much less Chaucer (Middle English) or Beowulf (Old English - author unkown). This is partly due to a confluence of foreign elements, and partly due to social and technological changes, issues which Tang Yi is putting under examination.

@Shan
Have to disagree with you, I'm afraid. The reason this kind of argument is made outside of academic circles (and I don't know about Chinese, but it is often made about English, as Tetsuo notes) is that in academic circles it doesn't stand up.
There is absolutely no evidence (that I've seen) in Chinese or English that "standards" are declining. Usually people who make these comments pick out some recent example of bad writing, and try to claim that it shows a trend. Of course, individual examples are not capable of showing a trend. This is what academics (should) understand.

Plus, two curious points:
1) Tang Yi first says: "the nation's strength must increase, and there needs to be national cohesion".
But then he appears to be complaining that in Europe, "a process of transformation from cultural awareness to individual awareness. In China...this step was never taken."
So which does he want? National cohesion or individual awareness? He appears to be setting them up as opposites (which I don't agree with) but then saying that he wants them both!
2) "Without a subjective spirit there can be no earnest search for evidence."
Shouldn't that be objective? I can't understand this sentence as it stands.

Phil: #2 - "subjective spirit" is my translation for "主体精神". Tang uses language that has a Marxist feel to it, so I interpreted that term as coming from a Hegelian standpoint (I'm not familiar at all with it, but here's the core text).

I'll replace it with something else if anyone has a better rendering.

Thanks, that's some weighty stuff. I'm not nearly good enough at continental philosophy to even begin to understand it, so I'll just accept subjective spirit as the standard translation. Either way, what Tang is saying is pretty unsupportable.
"The Chinese language is connected to the current plight of the Chinese people;" "modern Chinese does not have a very stable foundation;" This kind of bizarro dogma about language pierces my linguist's heart.
In one way, what Shan said is right: it's nice that people are talking about language. But it's disappointing that what Tang Yi says is so crude and broad-brush. Where's the inquiry? Where's the joy?

English has also strayed too far from its traditional roots. This is how it shoud be written:

http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~beowulf/main.html

Personally, I blame Chaucer. (Ah... I see Du Yisa beat me to it.)

This is a good topic, I and some chinese i know have predicted that the mainland will eventually revert completely to the traditional characters. You can see more traditional characters around BJ and SH, and alot more down south.

As for changing the vernacular, that would demand sending everyone back to school.

More? OK.

It seems to me that Tang Yi is hinting at a couple of things which should be more widely debated and discussed -- hence my post using the words "encouraging" and "argument".

Notice I didn't say "Tang Yi is correct on every point". Or even "Tang Yi argues well". Here's what I thought was useful:

1. Tang Yi talks about the fact that simplifying characters has _not_ resulted in widespread literacy. As "increased literacy" is falsely held up as a huge success of the simplification, it's good to see that widely known but "academic" fact getting out there.

The sooner a wide-ranging and fact-based public debate about the serious issues in Chinese public literacy occurs, the better off the generations of Chinese kids yet unborn will be.

2. Tang Yi talks about "business-wave" writing. Many academics and non-academics have lamented -- some making very persuasive cases (Don Watson's brilliant 2003 essay "Death Sentence" springs to mind) -- the damage to public language of "business-speak" in English. Tang Yi makes a closely related point.

3. Finally, although Tang Yi doesn't make this point explicitly, he's spent a year on a "cultural reader". The idea of Chinese reclaiming their idiom (knowing, for example, more of the stories behind chengyu, which are fast being forgotten, for proof ask a taxi driver near you what your favourite chengyu means and why) is a great one, and anyone who is actively working on making a new generation of Chinese aware of their cultural/linguistic heritage pre-WWII gets a gold star in my book.

Saying that simplifying the Chinese script in the mainland hasn't led to widespread literacy is a product of impulsive thinking. How can we ever measure what literacy rates would be in the countryside today had simplification not occured in '49? And what of the dozen other factors that make up effective literacy campaigns? Perhaps the taiwanese were more dedicated to spreading literacy on their island, undaunted by the complexity of the product they were pushin, while mainland programs remained underfunded and undermanned. Perhaps physical conditions on the island made farmers more at leisure to learn words rather than till frozen or dried out fields. I am actually aware of all the ins and outs of both literacy programs, but it just really bugged me to water it down to "simplified Chinese didn't lead to widespread literacy among farmers".