<p>Most people will say it is because there are too many homonyms in the Chinese language. But when I realize that homonyms do not bother people very much in oral communications, I begin to question this answer. As a matter of fact, Vietnamese writing system has been successfully romanized. They have a lot of homonyms too, but they are doing fine.   </p>

<p>Ever since Sejong the Great invented the Korean alphabet in 1446, Korean vocabulary has become a superset of the Chinese vocabulary. In other words,  hangul has no problem with Chinese homonyms.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-09T04:49:56.527Z
What are the real advantages of romanizing Chinese characters?
Henry HO
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-09T08:03:00.837Z
@HenryHO-Easy to learn, easy to expand, easy to import loan words. Traditional Chinese range of activity was mostly agrarian. Our vocabulary does not rise above our range of activity. Now all of a sudden we joined the world's merchant economy. There are many activities, ideas we don't really have words for.
George Chen
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-09T08:06:21.190Z
Russia had similar problem two hundred years ago. Pushkin simply borrowed roots from western European vernaculars and popularized them in Russia.
George Chen
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-09T08:52:24.380Z
Great poets herald great civilization. Pushkin to Russia is Homer to Hellas, Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare to Great Britain, together with Milton, with Shelley, Byron, Blake and many others. –
George Chen
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-09T08:52:49.907Z
Our great poets belong to a bygone era. Their languages are those of literati with no popular root.
George Chen
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-09T08:57:14.020Z
Great poets are unsophisticated people. Prudence is their enemy. They must be uneducated to preserve their wild creativity. Often times, one loses his creative impulse in the course of learning how to write Chinese.
George Chen
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-09T08:59:11.010Z
Most great poets die young for lack prudence. Most Chinese couldn't figure out the head and toes of written Chinese until they reach adulthood(if they are lucky).
George Chen
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-08T06:14:51.213Z
I personally think that it's great we can still read Yuan-Ming Dynasty vernaculars like  [*Nogeoldae*](https://web.archive.org/web/20160303172849/http://www.d1.dion.ne.jp/~pak/no-fram.htm). Alphabet-based languages are not advantageous at all - they may start off easy-to-learn, then progressively become harder as the sounds of the spoken language drifts away from the spelling over time, like the difficulty of English now. You either have to reform the spelling to make it easy to learn again but impossible to read older texts, or do nothing while the spelling gets progressively harder to learn.
dROOOze
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-08T06:16:28.703Z
Most language policy makers, I think, are well aware of the fundamentally non-advantageous nature of a phonetic system, so nobody cares for changing Chinese.
dROOOze
<writing><romanization>
What are the real obstacles of romanizing Chinese characters?
# What are the real obstacles of romanizing Chinese characters?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-09-08)

Most people will say it is because there are too many homonyms in the Chinese language. But when I realize that homonyms do not bother people very much in oral communications, I begin to question this answer. As a matter of fact, Vietnamese writing system has been successfully romanized. They have a lot of homonyms too, but they are doing fine.

Ever since Sejong the Great invented the Korean alphabet in 1446, Korean vocabulary has become a superset of the Chinese vocabulary. In other words, hangul has no problem with Chinese homonyms.

**Tags:** writing, romanization

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: What are the real advantages of romanizing Chinese characters?  
> **username_0**: @HenryHO-Easy to learn, easy to expand, easy to import loan words. Traditional Chinese range of activity was mostly agrarian. Our vocabulary does not rise above our range of activity. Now all of a sudden we joined the world's merchant economy. There are many activities, ideas we don't really have words for.  
> **username_0**: Russia had similar problem two hundred years ago. Pushkin simply borrowed roots from western European vernaculars and popularized them in Russia.  
> **username_0**: Great poets herald great civilization. Pushkin to Russia is Homer to Hellas, Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare to Great Britain, together with Milton, with Shelley, Byron, Blake and many others. –  
> **username_0**: Our great poets belong to a bygone era. Their languages are those of literati with no popular root.  
> **username_0**: Great poets are unsophisticated people. Prudence is their enemy. They must be uneducated to preserve their wild creativity. Often times, one loses his creative impulse in the course of learning how to write Chinese.  
> **username_0**: Most great poets die young for lack prudence. Most Chinese couldn't figure out the head and toes of written Chinese until they reach adulthood(if they are lucky).  
> **username_2**: I personally think that it's great we can still read Yuan-Ming Dynasty vernaculars like  [*Nogeoldae*](https://web.archive.org/web/20160303172849/http://www.d1.dion.ne.jp/~pak/no-fram.htm). Alphabet-based languages are not advantageous at all - they may start off easy-to-learn, then progressively become harder as the sounds of the spoken language drifts away from the spelling over time, like the difficulty of English now. You either have to reform the spelling to make it easy to learn again but impossible to read older texts, or do nothing while the spelling gets progressively harder to learn.  
> **username_2**: Most language policy makers, I think, are well aware of the fundamentally non-advantageous nature of a phonetic system, so nobody cares for changing Chinese.  

---

## 0 answers

