扒车喵韩国网友问：汉字这么难学，为什么中国不废除汉字，然后发明一种新的语言？这个问题引起外网一片哗然，各国网友争相给他科普汉语文字的优势和重要性。
问题：中国为什么不放弃汉字？
德国网友Greg的回答
For what? It’s impossible!
凭什么？这根本不可能！
Hanzi have many important advantages that Westerners usually don’t understand.
汉字有诸多西方人通常不了解的重要优势。
Hanzi have many hieroglyphs, which are more obvious visually than phonetics, so the average reading speed is faster. In contrast, languages like English are more phonetic than pictographic languages, so the average listening speed is faster.
汉字有许多象形文字，在视觉上比语音更加明显，因此平均阅读速度更快。相比之下，像英语这样的语言语音性比象形语言更加明显，因此平均听音速度更快。
People who don’t use Chinese will never feel this way. Take Japan as an example. In theory, Japanese is a phonetic language, because all Japanese can be expressed with pure phonetic characters. However, they still use Chinese characters in almost every field where “reading speed is crucial”. For example:
不使用中文的人永远不会有这种感觉。以日本为例，从理论上讲，日语是一种语音语言，因为所有日语都可以用纯粹的语音字符表示。然而，几乎在每个“阅读速度至关重要”的领域，他们仍然使用汉字。例如：
Below are road signs in Japan, almost 100%presented in Han zi.
以下是日本的路标，几乎100％都用的是汉字。
Metro line in Tokyo, guess 95%Hanzi.
东京的地铁线路，汉字所占比例大约为95％。
If Han zi are not so useful, why have they been used in Japan for a thousand years?
如果汉字不那么有用，为什么一千年来日本一直在使用？
As Korea, they’ve deceied to back to Hanzi – elementary schools will start to teach Hanzi in 2019.
至于韩国，他们近年来决定重新启用汉字—韩国小学将在2019年开始教授学生汉字。
As you mentioned, during the new culture movement, China tried to turn to letters, because at that time, China didn’t know that the reason why it lagged behind the West was not because of Hanzi. Today, China has proved that it can build a space station and develop various digital technologies in space without giving up its cultural roots.
正如你所提到的，新文化运动时期，中国曾经试图转向字母，因为当时的中国不知道落后于西方的原因并不是因为汉字，今天，中国证明了它可以在不放弃文化根源的条件下在太空中建造起空间站，发展各种数字科技。
Although the number of written characters is complex, the practical literacy rate of ordinary Chinese adults can reach more than a few thousand words.
尽管书面字符数量繁杂，但普通中国成年人的实用识字率可达到几千字以上。
Although this seems daunting, compared with dozens of characters in western languages, Chinese characters provide a large number of word combinations. After learning thousands of characters and their meaning and usage (including compound), they have a very rich available vocabulary, which is equivalent to thousands of words in English.
虽然这看起来令人生畏，但与西方语言的几十个字符相比，汉字提供了大量的文字组合，在学习了几千个字符及其含义和用法（包括复合）之后，就拥有了非常丰富的可用词汇，相当于在英文中可能是成千上万的单词。
In contrast, spending years learning the alphabet used in a language and culture, the basics of how to spell syllables or phonemes and the rules for assembling them are very complex in English and not much simpler in Latin, at least according to my own learning experience.
相比之下，花费数年时间来学习在一种语言文化中使用的字母表，如何拼写音节或音素的基础知识以及组装它们的规则，在英语中是非常复杂的，在拉丁语中也简单不了多少，至少根据我自己的学习经验是这样的。
English is one of the most widely used languages on earth, and it is relatively difficult to learn as a second language. As the Chinese people I tutor often say, many idioms “have no meaning at all”. However, it is the most common language in the world.
英语是地球上使用最广泛的语言之一，并且作为第二语言学习起来也相对困难。正如我所辅导的中国人经常说的那样，很多习惯用法“根本没有意义”，然而，它是世界上最为通用的语言。
Throughout Asia, 3 billion people use Chinese as the basis of their main language and are used as a second or third language in most parts of the world. Due to China’s economic development, speaking Chinese is becoming a necessary ability for business, despite protests: “well-educated Chinese should speak English.”
在整个亚洲，30亿人将中文作为主要语言基础使用，并且在世界大部分地区被用作第二语言或第三语言。由于中国经济的发展，会说中文正在成为一种商业必需的能力，尽管有人提出抗议：“受过良好教育的中国人应该说英语。”
华裔网友Eiorease Liu的回答
I will not study character-written Chinese. Even modern “simplified” Chinese or Japanese or Korean (NK stopped using Chinese characters… a part of their Path to Poverty, I suppose) is too much work for someone my age who value shaving a rich vocabulary in the languages I do use.
我不会学习用汉字写的字。即便是现代的“简化”汉字，日本字或韩国字对于我这个年龄的人来说，学习汉字的工作量太大了，我也不会拥有像我一样大的母语者所拥有的丰富的词汇量了。
I sympathize with foreign students who have moved to China and have to receive Chinese character education. Because in a real sense, you suddenly become a toddler.
我同情那些搬到中国并且必须接受汉字教育的外国学生。因为在真正意义上，你突然变成了一个蹒跚学步的孩子。
For those with means, there are plenty of English language schools (and competition among them to impress American, British or Australian English as the way to speak), as well as others.
对于那些有经济能力的人来说，有很多英语语言学校可以选择。
Countries that have stopped or are stopping the widespread use of Chinese characters seem to be countries that have been conquered by China or have had wars before. They prefer to give up the direct impact of Chinese characters on their culture. Mongolia now uses Cyrillic and Roman letters. Indonesians can read some Chinese characters, but they can’t use them skillfully. At least young people can’t use Chinese characters.
已经停止或正在停止广泛使用汉字的国家似乎是以前被中国征服或有过战争的国家，他们宁愿放弃汉字对其文化的直接影响。蒙古国现在使用西里尔字母和罗马字母，印尼人可以阅读某些汉字，但不会熟练使用，至少年轻人不会使用汉字。
However, China has cultivated and accumulated Chinese characters for thousands of years. I don’t think the Chinese government will let China stop using Chinese characters through painful changes of two generations.
然而，中国已经在汉字上耕耘积淀了数千年，我认为中国政府不会让中国经历两代人的痛苦改变来停止使用汉字。
Chinese people may want to be more like Westerners in many ways, but most of them don’t want to be Westerners.
中国人可能希望自己在很多方面更像西方人，但他们大多不想成为西方人。
Few things are closer to the heart of a people or culture than their written language.
很少有东西比他们的书面语言—汉字更贴近人们文化的核心。
I would not expect Hanzi to go away… it will continue to evolve, like all languages do, and will remain truly Chinese.
我不希望汉字消失…..我希望它将像所有语言一样继续发展，并将继续保持真正的中国化。
海外网友Johnny Bai的回答
Let me answer your question in three parts. First, point out the mistakes in the problem; Second, tell you a similar example in history. Third, briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages, some changes caused by technology and substitution cost.
让我分三个部分回答你的问题。第一，指出问题中的错误; 第二，告诉你历史上的一个类似的例子。第三，简要讨论优点和缺点，由技术和替代成本引起的一些变化。
I think in this information age, the media we use to convey information is not so important. What matters is who is speaking this language. Just as any language in the world is changing, and the trend is determined by the use of education, the dominant language in the world is changing in the same way.
我认为在现在这个信息时代，我们用来传达信息的媒介并不那么重要,重要的是谁在说这种语言。正如这世界上任何一种语言都正在发生变化，而且趋势是由教育的用法决定的，这个世界中的主导语言也在以同样的方式改变。
Centuries ago, most educated people should have learned Latin. I don’t think you will be surprised to see the question today: is Latin still practical in today’s world? As for the most popular language at that time, it was more similar to English than Chinese in any way.
几个世纪以前，受过大多数教育的人应该学习拉丁语，我认为今天看到这样一个问题时，你不会感到惊讶：拉丁语在今天的世界中仍然具有实用性吗？关于当时最流行的语言的问题，它与英语在任何方面都比中文更相似。
Education in China
中国的教育现状
Our statement (original question) shows that Chinese students are not outstanding in mathematics and science, and do not have great advantages compared with Western students. The following is a list of Pisa rankings for 2009 and 2012:
我们的陈述（原始问题）表明，中国学生在数学，科学等方面并不出众，与西方学生相比，并不具有很大的优势。
PISA is an authoritative study by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (PISA-OECD) every three years. As you can see, areas or countries such as Shanghai, Taiwan and Japan all keep their own traditional ideographic characters which, leave students short-sighted, stunt in ares such as logic and reasoning.
PISA是经济合作与发展组织（PISA -OECD）每三年进行一次的权威性研究。上海，台湾和日本等地区或国家都保留着自己的传统表意字符，这些字符会让学生无法看得长远，在逻辑和推理等方面有所欠缺。
Let me illustrate this issue using Japan’s efforts
让我用日本的努力来说明这个问题
The tour of Iwakura Embassy in Europe largely broadened the horizon of Japanese, and at the same time, made them to realize that China, the country they once worshiped, was poor and backward, especially compared to the U.K. and the U.S. Hence its language was inferior compared to the phonographic script used in Western countries. They began to research on language reform. What’s more, China lost the Jiawu war in 1894, which completely changed Japan’s attitude towards China, and consequently, Chinese/Kanji.
岩仓驻欧洲大使馆的访问在很大程度上拓宽了日本人的视野，同时让他们意识到中国这个曾经崇拜过的国家贫穷落后，特别是与英国和美国相比。因此他们开始研究语言改革。更重要的是，中国在1894年在甲午战争中失败，彻底改变了日本对中国的态度，从而改变了中国人/汉字。
As for the differences between thinking and reasoning, based on different languages, a large number of studies in linguistics show that language structure may determine the structure of habitual thinking in society, but it does not mean which is inferior and which is superior.
至于思维和推理的差异，基于不同的语言，语言学所做的大量研究表明，语言结构可能决定了社会中习惯性思维的结构，但并不意味着哪个是次等的，哪个更优越。
Costs of an alternative
替代成本
In addition, we assume that the current Chinese character system used in China is not “optimal design” from the perspective of language evolution trend theory. If you want to change, the conversion from phonetic writing system to phonetic writing system or any other form is very, very expensive.
另外，我们假设从语言演化趋势理论的角度来看，中国使用的当前汉字系统并不是“最优设计”。如果要改变的话，从语标书写系统到语音书写系统或任何其他形式的转换是非常非常昂贵的。
First of all, loss, the cultural crisis caused by the abolition of Chinese characters. Last week, I met two mothers with their children. I learned that they took classes in a Sinology class studying the book of changes, a book written by Confucius and other writers thousands of years ago. They told me that China’s wisdom is becoming more and more important to them.
首先，损失，废除汉字导致的文化危机。上周，我遇到了两位和他们孩子在一起的母亲。我了解到，他们在一个研究易经的国学班上课，这是一本几千年前由孔子等作家撰写的一本书。他们告诉我，中国的智慧对他们来说变得越来越重要。
Secondly, because China has vast land and uneven economic and educational development, the great change of abolishing Chinese characters may be very difficult. This is a completely different situation in South Korea. The larger and more diverse the country, the more difficult and costly the change will be.
其次，由于中国拥有广阔的土地，且经济和教育发展不均衡，废除汉字的巨大变化可能会非常棘手。这在韩国是完全不同的情况。这个国家越大越多样化，变化就越难，成本越高。
Finally, in terms of economy, the investment in foreign language learning is very large. Stopping the use of Chinese characters requires a lot of investment, which will go directly or indirectly into the pockets of western countries. Usually, as I know, the popularity of language is positively related to the impact of the world, or the relevant national economy.
最后，在经济上，对外语学习的投入非常大，停止使用汉字需要大量的投资，这笔开支将直接或间接地进入西方国家的口袋。通常情况下，正如我所知，语言的流行度与世界的影响正相关，或者说是与相关的国家经济有关。
China has become the second largest economic country in the world, and has expanded its Chinese characters and cultural influence in the world in the form of opening and operating Confucius Institutes.
中国已成为世界第二大经济大国，并以开放和经营孔子学院的形式在世界范围内拓展中国的汉字及文化影响力。
Chinese characters have disappeared in Korean for some technical reasons, but about 3000 Chinese characters remain in Japanese.
汉字在韩语中消失了由于一些技术原因，但在日语中仍然有大约3000个汉字遗留下来。
Chinese will change like other languages; More specifically, it will become more and more symbolic, but it will never be abandoned, at least when there are still Chinese people on this planet who are proud and confident of it.
中文将会像其他语言一样发生变化; 更具体地说，它将会越来越具有象征意义，但它永远不会被抛弃，至少在这个星球上仍有中国人为它感到自豪和自信的时候。
华裔网友Churning Song的回答
There is evidence that the Chinese tried to use phonetics instead of Chinese characters as early as the Zhou and Han Dynasties, and almost all of them failed. Why did they all fail?
有证据表明，中国人早在周朝、汉朝时就曾试图转而使用语音代替汉字，而他们几乎全都失败了。为什么都失败了？
Answer is actually pretty simple, and two fold:
答案其实很简单，有两个：
1. Written language is designed to convey ideas among a small number of people (officials, scholars, etc.), rather than convenient large-scale use. It is not in the collective interest to make it easy to read / write. This has been going on for thousands of years.
1.书面语言是为了在一小部分人（官员文人等）之间传递思想而设计的，而不是方便的大规模使用。使它易于读/写不符合该集体的利益。这种情况持续了几千年。
2. Even if the standardized Mandarin is widely used, the monosyllabic / disyllabic nature of the language makes reading still difficult It looks like nonsense, and characters usually contain easily recognizable meanings (especially the form of “partial / recognizable characters”), which will give you a hint when the whole Chinese character looks unfamiliar.
2.即使标准化的普通话开始被广泛使用，语言的单/双音节性质使得阅读依然很困难……看起来像废话，而字符通常包含易于识别的含义（尤其是“偏旁/认识的字符”形式，当整个汉字看起来不熟悉时会给你一个提示。
In addition, please feel free to use “Chinese characters” to express “Chinese characters”. We use “Kanji” because there are three ways of writing in Japanese.
另外，请随意用“中文字符”来表达“汉字”。我们之所以用“Kanji”，是因为在日语有三种书写方式。
