Subject: more about *CHINPUT*

From: John Delacour <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1993 01:59:00 GMT0BST-1

To all, and particularly to Ed Lai.

I am most gratified to have such a long response to my posting on  "Chinput" from Ed Lai, who is so active in the field.

There are more philosophical and psychological points brought up in Ed's  posting than strictly technical ones, and they are all interesting.   Before I comment on these matters I would like to expand a little on my  reasons for advocating Chinput or more generally ShuangPin (I make no  fundamental distinction between the two and have _still_ not had time to  make a detailed comparison between the two -- nor, as I said in my  original posting, do I consider that "my way is best".  All I know is  that I was very pleased with my transcription eighteen years ago when  nobody in Shanghai wanted to know about it, and I'm equally pleased with  it now, when it seems noone in the whole world wants to know about it.)

I wrote in a posting the other day why I thought Chinput might be  slightly more mnemonic than ShuangPin (that 1. every reduplicated letter  represents an existing Chinese syllable and 2.  as far as possible,  letters with "descents" are used for the --ng finals and letters with  ascents for the --n finals, eg. ll=lin; gg=guang) but these are just nice  details; a few days' practice with any two-letter syllable input system  would be enough to commit either method to memory.  My argument is that,  since ShuangPin is not an established standard, then it should be  presented in the most perfect and least arbitrary form just in case one  day people decide they had rather type two letters than three and a half.

My attitude to the English language is similarly minimalistic.  English  spelling is quite absurd and cannot be justified on any etymological  grounds at all.  Much time is wasted teaching people an archaic  orthography that is of no use to them since nobody now learns latin or  greek or is interested in the proper meaning of words.  Why can't we have  rational spelling like the Italians or half the rest of the world?  - -  but this is not to the point..

I see the question from the point of view of that blessed mass of men (ci  nei ziran baokuo nuren a!) who are not computer-literate and who wish  only to get their work done as quickly as possible and go home for tea.   If they can get a ZI4 on screen by typing two letters on their keyboard  rather than four (I can't remember if I mentioned the exact percentage  relationship between Chinput/ShuangPin and PinYin, but the reduction in  effort is very significant) then everyone will be happier, bosses will be  richer and goods will be cheaper and, as we say in England, pigs might  fly! - we all know how the computer has created a world for us where we  can be rich with only ten hours of work per week while the computers get  on with the work!

Now to PinYin --- I myself welcomed the hegemony of PinYin, having  learned my Chinese with Wade Giles and every system under the sun.   PinYin kicked over the traces, told the Jesuits where to take their  pedantic notions etc. etc. and emerged as a rational, no-nonsense  transcription.  But I speak as a red-haired devil, (ang mo gui) as my  ChowChou relations would say, and I think that PinYin is of more benefit  to the foreign learner than to the Chinese.  Like the other phonetic  transcriptions before it, it was born and weaned in the minds of liu  xuesheng - it does not respect the duality of the Chinese syllable and it  adds quite unnecessary elements to the transcription -- and who for?   Why, for the foreigners, of course!  Why should I type ZHUANG when I  could type XY and get the same result?  The reason for the ZH is that in  English (NOT in Italian, please note, nor in romanized Greek, nor in  German nor...probably not in Swedish either  +++ZhongWen please
comment!  +++) CH is pronounced as it is, and ZH is therefore chosen as the voiced  equivalent of the unvoiced CH.  In English, of course, we use J, but that  needs to be distinguished in PinYin and reserved for the more hissy  consonant (I hope no pedantic phoneticians are reading this!).  Jiu  suanle, I'm getting pedantic myself!  What I mean to say is that Chinese,  in whatever dialect, will remain an essentially monosyllabic language and  each syllable in every dialect will have a preordained duality.  Twenty  years ago I was afraid that the beauty and the history of Chinese  calligraphy might give way to the dreadful tide of romanization, and the  advent of personal computers augmented that fear, but on the contrary the  Japanese (god bless them <g>) have shown that the universal computer is  in fact the saviour of Hanzi.  All over the world (probably a very small  world) people are working out how to create outline fonts for Tang, Sung,  Ming styles -- goodness knows,
there may even be someone out there  creating a font for (Chinput tr.)  Mt Zedy (genuflect > > ) calligraphy.  We all miss him so much!  I had to mourn for the bastard for three weeks  before I decided I couldn't afford a new sleeve for my coat and stopped  wearing the black armband.  All this is off the point too!!  We must  never get political.

So let's get philosophical and psychological - It seems, Ed, that you've  decided to take a defeatist road - SHIBAIZHUYI de DAOLU!!!!  That is not  the way.  Look at the work you have done and the hours you've spent  creating something which is really of value, and you diminish your  efforts and say that the world does not recognize you.  OK, the kid's  three and needs attention (would that my kids were so young!) but the  work you ought to be doing now would make that kid a lot happier when  he's 13!  So keep working!

A very great friend of mine, a Jewish professor in Paris, once said to me  as a young man that you should regard your neighbour as a wild animal  asleep -- don't disturb him.  My friend is also now dead.  Of course he  was right.

                         _IN PARENTHESES_

                (???? is Liedong... the same as Cindy...Zheng?)

The terrible truth is that Qinshihuangdi formalised the cart-tracks and  the weights and measures, William the Bastard compiled the Domesday  Book,  Napoleon got Paris looking nice and Hitler and Mao also did the  same sort of thing.  They were all bloody murderers, but they left their  mark.  I don't think we want to see a million or ten million people die  in order to establish a standard Chinese Input protocol, but maybe we're  wrong <g>.

I'll carry on with my "Chaozhouput" but 26 letters are not enough for  that.  Ed says that PekingTalk is refined - I find it far too refined,  like French music.  I prefer the variety and directness of the peripheral  dialects (EXCEPT for Shanghai, which is the most awful thing I have ever  heard or ever hope to hear this side of hell!)

And so to bed.

                       John