扒车喵最近，美国知乎Quora问答网站贴出一个问题：为什么中文没“进化”到使用字母表呢？（Why didn’t Chinese evolve to use some form of alphabet?），引起了国外网友热议，让我们看看他们都是怎么说的吧。
Mats Andersson, Professional translator, B. Sc. in Physics, M. Sc. in Applied Computer Science
Answered Dec 28 · Upvoted by Logan R. Kearsley, MA in Linguistics from BYU, 8 years working in research for language pedagogy.
The reason is political. “Chinese” is, linguistically speaking, not a language, but a group of languages. The spoken languages are no more similar to each other than English and German, and are not mutually intelligible. Consequently, any writing system based on pronunciation—like alphabets or syllabic scripts—would have to be based on one of the Chinese “province languages”, and could not be understood by anyone from the wrong province, any more than the average Englishman is able to read and write German.
原因是政治上的。“汉语”不是一门语言，而是一组语言构成。其方言的差异不会超过德语和英语之间的差异，彼此听不懂。因此，任何基于发音的书写系统，如字母和音节，都必须以中国方言为基础，其他省就看不懂了。而任何一个普通的英国人都能读写德语。
With ideograms, the entire country can share one writing system. It will not matter that the ideograms have wildly different pronunciations: they will stand for the same concept. You can imagine English and German using the same symbol for “bicycle”, a small stylised picture of a bike, maybe consisting only of a pedal and four spokes so that you wouldn’t recognise it. It doesn’t matter that it’s pronounced “Fahrrad” in German—as long as you use the little picture, you both understand, much like the Smiley is used in virtually all languages today.
有了表意文字，整个国家都能使用同一个书写系统。形意文字的发音不同，那没关系，它们代表相同意思。你能想象英语和德语使用同一个符号代表“自行车”吗。关于它的德语发音并不重要，只要你使用小符号，你们就能理解，正如现在几乎所有语言都使用微笑符号一样。
William Fisher, Speaks Chinese
Answered Thu · Upvoted by Logan R. Kearsley, MA in Linguistics from BYU, 8 years working in research for language pedagogy.
Tell me which is easier to read:
xià mén shì （ mǐn nán yǔ ： xià mén shì ， bái huà zì ： ē -bn ? g-chh ī ， mǐn pīn ： ê -bb ń g-c ? ， guó jì yīn biāo ： / e ? ? b ? ? ? ? ? ? i ? ? / （ shà mén huà dú yīn ） ， yóu zhèng shì pīn yīn ： Amoy （ lái zì zhāng zhōu huà dú yīn ） ） ， bié chēng lù dǎo ， jiǎn chēng lù ， shì zhōng huá rén mín gòng hé guó 15 gè fù shěng jí chéng shì zhī yī ， wǔ gè jì huá dān liè shì zhī yī ； shì zhōng guó zuì zǎo shí xíng duì wài kāi fàng zhèng cè dí sì gè jīng jì tè qū zhī yī ， wǔ gè kāi fā kāi fàng lèi guó jiā zōng hé pèi tào gǎi gé shì yàn qū zhī yī （ jí 「 xīn tè qū 」 ） ； shà mén piàn qū nà rù zhōng guó zuì zǎo dí sì gè zì yóu mào yì shì yàn qū zhī yī 「 zhōng guó （ fú jiàn ） zì yóu mào yì shì yàn qū 」 ， wéi liǎng àn xīn xīng chǎn yè hé xiàn dài fú wù yè hé zuò shì fàn qū 、 dōng nán guó jì háng yùn zhōng xīn 、 liǎng àn qū yù xìng jīn róng fú wù zhōng xīn hé liǎng àn mào yì zhōng xīn 。 2016 nián ， xià mén shì shì qū jiàn chéng qū 334 . 64 píng fāng gōng lǐ ， zhǔ chéng qū rén kǒu 392 wàn ， liǎng xiàng shù jù jūn jū fú jiàn dì yī wèi 。
Or,
廈門市（闽南语：廈門市，白話字：ē-bn?g-chhī，閩拼：ê-bbńg-c?，國際音標：/e?? b???? ??i??/
（廈門話讀音）
，郵政式拼音：Amoy
（來自漳州話讀音）
），別稱鷺島，簡稱鷺，是中華人民共和國15個副省級城市之一，五個計劃單列市之一；是中國最早實行對外開放政策的四個經濟特區之一，五個開發開放類國家綜合配套改革試驗區之一（即「新特區」）；廈門片區納入中國最早的四個自由貿易試驗區之一「中國（福建）自由貿易試驗區」，為兩岸新興產業和現代服務業合作示範區、東南國際航運中心、兩岸區域性金融服務中心和兩岸貿易中心。2016年，廈門市市區建成區334.64平方公里，主城區人口392萬，兩項數據均居福建第一位。
Without even second guessing myself I can fully understand the Chinese character version of this text.With your supposed “evolved” alphabet I would be spending a few minutes scratching my head trying to decipher what all the ambiguous alphabets mean.
I often see the argument for romanized Chinese come from non-chinese who don’t have much understanding of the written Chinese language. Some of them can spit out a few “你好吗’s” and “麦当劳在哪里’s” and they come to the conclusion, “Wow, this language is so simple, why even have characters?”
不用多想，就能完全明白这段话。你们所谓的“进化”字母，我要花几分钟绞尽脑汁地，试图破解模棱两可的字母到底什么意思。
我经常看到那些以罗马音化的中文作为论据的人，他们并非中国人，并不能理解汉字。他们能说出“你好吗”“麦当劳在哪里”，然后得出结论，哇，这门语言这么简单，为什么没字符？
Well, I can tell you, try to read a few novels in Chinese before you state that the language is so simple. I would rather blow my brains out than attempt to read through a piece of Chinese literature only using pinyin. For things like simple 口语, I guess Pinyin could suffice. However, with all the idioms and literary styles (like in classical Chinese) that the written chinese language has to offer, it would be a pain to read because every time I don’t understand something I would have to go look it up in a dictionary.
好，那我告诉你，在说这门语言简单之前，试着读几本中文小说。我宁愿脑袋开花，也不想用拼音读一本中国文学作品。口语之类的简单东西，拼音足以。但有成语和文学风格（如文言文），中文书面语就很重要了。每当不理解某个东西时，我不得不去查字典，那很痛苦。
For example, I just saw the idiom 花容月貌 , and I assumed that it had something to do with describing a beautiful woman or something, which seems to be the correct interpretation. However, if I saw this in pinyin I would once again have to look it up.
例如，我看到成语“花容月貌”，我猜这是描述某个漂亮的女人，这样理解似乎正确。但如果用拼音看到这个词，我就会再检查一遍。
It honestly is a whole lot easier to just read Chinese in Chinese characters and not Pinyin. If you’re learning Chinese, then please learn it to the point where you can read literature. In my opinion, people who advocate fully romanizing Chinese and getting rid of the characters are either short sighted in the consequences or are ignorant of the complexities of written chinese, and the ambiguity and inefficiency in reading that romanizing the language would produce.
This is my opinion based in practicality.
老实说，用中文读汉字而非采用拼音，更简单。如果学中文，那请你学到能读文学作品的程度。我认为，那些提倡罗马音化中文的人，要么对结果见识短浅，要么无视了书面汉语的复杂性。在阅读中，罗马音化的语言会产生意义模糊、效率低下的情况。
你身边有外国朋友吗？他们是如何看待汉字的呢？欢迎下方留言分享你的观点。
