Chinese Language and Esperanto - The May Fourth Movement

The generation of the May Fourth Movement aimed at a form of writing, which fulfilled the following conditions. It should be:

A) the same all over China,

B) a phonetic representation of

C) the vernacular language as spoken by the people

D) making the meaning of any word clear

E) and which was easy to learn.

The most discussed options were the following: One, an alphabet specific for each Chinese language; two, one alphabet with and one Chinese language becoming the standard for all of China; three, keeping the traditional characters; four simplifying the characters and finally five giving up Chinese and switching over to Esperanto.

Their dilemma has logical, political and linguistic features: Logically A can only be fulfilled when either B or C are not fulfilled. Linguistically, when B is fulfilled D cannot be fulfilled and if D is fulfilled, which is only possible through a logographic representation, then E is not fulfilled. There is no good solution possible and one has to make a choice among lesser evils.

Looking at the options this way, none seems any better than the other. If faced with a dilemma, one should look more closely at the particular circumstances. What is the one essential feature of a writing system and what are dispensable ones? A writing system has to make the meaning of a sentence clear, that is its purpose, the one essential feature, all others are dispensable.

Using this way of looking at it, the reasonable thing would have been to give up Chinese and adopt Esperanto. However, switching to Esperanto is not an option, as it would evolve changing the mother language of a whole nation. Option 1 was dropped too, as it would question the unity of China - no Chinese government what to put this unity at any risk. After these were dropped, number 4 - the simplification of Characters - looks as if it would be the smallest evil and therefore the best option.

Now what are the options of the newly formed Communist government? They could take 2, 3 or 4. Another option is to take two systems, both aiding each other in their shortcomings. Since option 3 and 4 exclude each other you can either take 2 and 3, or 2 and 4.

China opted for the complementary use of two systems. This policy was named by Mao Dun "walking on two legs? linguistically this is a case of digraphia. More specifically China, in the course of the next decades, adopted an alphabet based on Latin letters known as Pinyin. Its pronunciation was based on the Beijing dialect (option 2) as well as a simplification of the Chinese characters (option 4). As the graphic shows this was not a bad choice as both systems perfectly complemented each other in every point.

Once it was decided that the People's Republic of China would keep its characters, the writing reform got on its way. Between the 1950s and the 1980s several language reforms were implemented. This was achieved by several means. The main tool was to reduce the number of strokes. The result was a reduction around 16% in the numbers of strokes. Many of those new simplified characters were already in use as informal abbreviations such as? for the traditional character?. More radical simplifications or impromptu inventions were strongly opposed by the Chinese people themselves and in the last decades no greater change could be implemented due to the support of a conservative view on the written language by the Chinese people themselves.

The great success of China's alphabetisation also shows the wrongly underestimated capacity of children to learn any writing system. It also is worth thinking about how the cultural system of China, including the great Confucian emphasis on learning, developed together with this unique challenge of language. Today, the complex Chinese script, irreducible to an independent phonetic representation, should not be viewed as a problem that has to be solved. Instead, I want to suggest that beyond its important influence on the art of calligraphy and possibly painted art in general, the Chinese writing system constitutes a cultural capital.

The May Fourth Generation considered Chinese characters as pre-modern even archaic and wished to substitute it by a modern alphabet. I would like to suggest quite an opposite view. In their resistance to forms of reduction Chinese characters are quite post-modern. Their meaning is intimately connected to their tantalising complexity. Only in the last decades post-modern thinkers in the West have come to this realization too. Meaning is irreducibly complex as is life itself.

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