If Chinese Were Phonetic | The New Yorker
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How would the country’s culture differ if its forefathers had never started writing with characters?
Save this story Save this story Illustration by Joon Mo Kang It’s not personal. I never learned anything in the Saturday-morning Chinese school I was forced to attend as a child, but that’s not what motivates my choice here. There were plenty of reasons for my poor performance in those classes—my resentment at having to miss the “Super Friends” cartoon being just one of them—so I don’t blame Chinese characters for my failure. No, my objection is a practical one: I’m a fan of literacy, and Chinese characters have been an obstacle to literacy for millennia. With a phonetic writing system like an
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