Comments by "神州 Shenzhou" (@Shenzhou.) on "NativLang"
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Why do people insist on modifying the language to be all about the sounds? Just because they can't pronounce characters like "女"? "女" is Nǚ (Mandarin), Neuih (Cantonese), Neng (Teochew), Ng (Hakka) and even On'na (Japanese). You can even call it "Woman" in English because it has no phonetic component.
Chinese writing portrays meaning not pronunciation. It was developed to facilitate trade and communication among the various Chinese dialects and it fulfilled its requirements. How can you achieve that with words with fixed pronunciations?
Furthermore, Mandarin Chinese is monosyllabic and precise so an alphabet doesn't benefit Mandarin a whole lot. Think of the Pinyin system with similar sounding words like Cai, Kai, Chai, Cha, Jing, Jin, Qin, Qing, Xin, Xing, Zen, Zheng, Zhen. All of them have different sounds.
Granted, it is primitive and tiring to memorize so many characters but that's just the way Chinese is for thousands of years. Won't it be a shame to abandon all that history for an alphabet that is only marginally useful?
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+최민준 I agree that Chinese and Korean are two completely different languages just like Chinese and Japanese, and Korean and Japanese. The Hangul suited the Korean language and it is good for the country as a result. But you made some insults in your argument that would probably anger people who speak Chinese.
You said that "Chinese is made up of short words for a simple people, while Korean is an agglutinative and well composed language" Chinese words are short because Chinese believe that breath is important and we shouldn't waste words or breath while speaking. That is why one word represents one sound. That doesn't mean Chinese are "simple people". Those few sounds must be pronounced correctly using the proper tone or else it is wrong. With short words you can create complex sentences without sounding long-winded. For example, If complex ideas can be expressed in 1 or 2 sounds, how many ideas can you squeeze into a set of 8 sounds? Can you squeeze in the same amount with other languages?
As for the writing system, Chinese doesn't need an alphabetical system. Chinese words are difficult to pronounce even in English. Words like Xin, Qian, Cuo, Xie, Qi won't get easier to pronounce just cause you use an alphabetical system. Instead Chinese characters are used to unite all the different dialects of China. A picture has no sound associated with it, so 女 -> Nu in Mandarin, Neoi in Cantonese, Neng in Teochew and so on. Even 女 is On'na in Japanese. 女 means Woman in English btw.
I'm not trying to prove that Chinese is superior but I am defending it against people who say "Chinese is made up of short words for a simple people" It is well-known that Chinese a compact and precise language but you can still form long sentences if you want to.
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Chinese is definitely not inferior to Korean. Let me give some examples.
子 -> Child, 老 -> Old man, So 孝 -> Filial (Child supporting Elder)
If we add 文 -> Culture, we get 教 -> Teach (Elder talking to Child about Culture)
Also, 日 -> Sun, 月 -> Moon, So 明 -> Tomorrow (After 1 Day and 1 Night)
Add 日 into 木 -> Tree, and we get 東 -> East (Direction Sun rises through a Tree)
Add 田 -> rice field, above 木 -> Tree and we get 果 -> Fruit (Harvest of the Tree)
火 -> Fire, while 灭 -> Extinguish (Cover Fire and it will die out).
Characters can be paired to form new words.
后 -> After. Add Fruit 果 and 后果 -> Consequences ( "fruits of labor")
Fructose in Chinese is 果糖 (lit. "Fruit Sugar")
Anime is 动漫 (lit."Moving Comics")
Satellite is 卫星 (lit."Protective Star")
Extinction is 灭绝(lit."Extinguish Completely")
Finally, Chinese recycles ancient characters and puts them to modern use.
笔 -> Brush, consists of 毛 -> Hair and 竹(on top) -> Bamboo
The Ancient Chinese Brush which is made from bamboo and horse hair. Chinese still uses 笔 to represent modern writing instruments.
网 -> Fishing Net or Web. In modern society it also means Inter(net) or World Wide (Web). Website is 网站(lit. Web Post).
車 -> Chariot. Ancient Chinese battles were similar to the ancient Egyptian's. Nowadays 車 is used for cars and other vehicles. 火車(lit."Fire Chariot") -> Train
Plenty of other things and ideas can be expressed by Chinese. It is a language that has evolved from the ancient hieroglyphic writing style to its present form.
Of course one of its difficulties is in pronouncing the words. But my Chinese teacher used to say "Sounds change, words remain." Ancient Mandarin probably sounds different from modern Mandarin but the words still have the same meaning. That's why Kanji is exists.
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Ah maybe I should have phrased it differently.
When I meant forced on to natives I meant it being spread in a more subtle way. The invaders usually teach their language to a few educated (or holding positions of power) people and let them be the leaders and translators of the nation. The British and Spanish Empires are good examples (which is why Mexicans speak Spanish till today). A well-established language like English and France would only result in a few word transfers whereas less developed nations would probably be force to adopt an entire language. Even after the invaders have left, the language may be adopted by natives (it has been "seeded into the native soil, waiting to sprout in future generations"). Thus, we have the proliferation of English across the globe from the British Empire.
As for the second part, I did not claim that China was completely unique, but "one of the few". The method you described does occur, but it was difficult, dangerous and expensive to send people abroad. Only wealthy nobles with many children to spare could afford to do so. This form of language transfer probably has minimal effect on the local language.
I was actually trying to say that Kanji was not forced onto Japan by China and that they could choose to drop it anytime, like Vietnam and Korea. Chinese characters were created to suit China and that there will be problems if you borrow it as Kanji. There was no need to call this writting system horrible.
In fact let me show you an example.
子 -> Child, 老 -> Old person,
So 孝 -> Filial (Elder supported by Child, Confucius Belief)
and if we add 文 -> Culture, we get 教 -> Teach (Parent talking to Child about Culture)
Just to show that there's logic behind these characters.
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In my opinion, a alphabetical system doesn't make words like Xiang, Qi, Cuo, She, etc. anymore easier to pronounce. Chinese language is short and tonal so an alphabet wouldn't make it more efficient.
Without an alphabet, characters can have their own pronunciations. For example, 女 is Nu (Mandarin), Neuih (Cantonese), Neng (Teochew), Ng (Hakka) and even Onna (Japanese). 女 means woman by the way.
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@PhysicsGamer I don't think anyone in China really wants portray themselves as that "the sort of person who uses that particular stroke order" it is because it's the accepted stroke order (as prescribed by the Chinese education system). I mean, nobody in English writes from right to left (eg, writing PhysicsGamer by starting with r-e-m-a-G-s-c-i-s-y-h-P) because they want to be "that person". What are you trying to suggest by bringing this as a matter of style/identity? Perhaps it's those who deliberately follow wrong stroke order that do so out of a sense of identity, not the ones who observe proper stroke order. For those having grown up with a different stroke, more often they find that learning the proper stroke order is beneficial rather than the one they were brought up with.
You don't see the problem with your 台 character because it doesn't resemble any known Chinese character, it looks like Korean Hangul character. Someone looking at your character may not even realise you are writting Chinese, when it looks like Korean Hangul, so how can you say that there is no problem? Try asking other Chinese to decipher your illegible 台 character and how does that not constitute a problem in itself?
Chinese is not English or German and the Chinese character for gift is definitely different from the English or German word. And about in what possible set of circumstances that you'll wind up needing to write that character to a Chinese stranger, what if the Chinese stranger doesn't understand your Mandarin and you need to write 台 (let's say for Taiwan 台湾) and you ended writing a Korean Hangul character instead? That Chinese stranger could assume that you're from Korea or going to Korea or all manner of misunderstandings. Even today, Chinese people write characters on people's hands (following the proper stroke order) to communicate the meaning across. Just like some Japanese people do with Kanji (Hanzi)
Yes, my SCMP article does say "the speed of cursive is required" but it doesn't specifically say "cursive is faster than print" so where does my SCMP article say that "cursive is faster than print"?
When it says "start printing their letters, it's talking about learning to write the characters instead of "print" (as in computer print) Here's a printing exercise for example.
The next step after tracing letters is printing letters. Practicing printing letters helps kids learn the alphabet and is the first step towards learning to write. We provide a set of 26 printing letter worksheets, each with both upper case and lower case letters.
Source: Printing letter worksheets for preschool & kindergarten https://m.k5learning.com/free-preschool-kindergarten-worksheets/letters-alphabet/printing-letters
Can't you see your contradiction when you said "cursive has nothing to do with writing phonemes rather than letters" and "One also groups phonemes when one writes on print. That is not unique to cursive."? Since you admitted that you can also group phonemes in cursive, then how's it that cursive has nothing to do with phonemes? Either can be done, so both have something to do with phonemes, but the article is stating that cursive helps join phonemes together. Because each letter is connected to the next letter in proper cursive, and phonemes (like say Phy-sics-Ga-mer) have their letters connected in cursive and allows for better memorization according to the article.
You saying "Despite never having seen the character 神 before" could have been referring to me even though 神 is part of my username. And since you have seen my username yourself then you clearly seen 神 before, so why did you claim that you never seen (or encountered) this character before? Those were your exact words, and it meant that 神 was a completely new character that you never seen or encountered before.
I could tell you wrote 神 on digital input but had you written using pen or brush, then it's possible that you may have messed up the word many times before. Digital input allows for numerous "undo"s and deletion without much penalty, compare to making mistakes while writing on paper.
"I made every stroke of the character while expending the least effort towards legibility as possible"
No, it is apparent that this time that you expended additional effort to at least make 神 look legible, after your earlier mess up with 台. Your 台 character is an example where all notion of legibility is tossed out the window and had you applied the same mentality to 神, you wouldn't have acquired such a legible character. Even your "downward curve stroke" was clearly an attempt to make 礻look more legible, when following the proper stroke order would have resulted in a legible 礻radical.
And about your hand position is after each stroke, had you followed a loop (left, top, right) like you said then there would be a moment in time when you were acting against gravity (from left to top, for example) than had you followed the proper stroke order for 礻 if this was a written on a wall or chalkboard for instance.
Fewer strokes doesn't necessarily mean that you'll save energy or "expend less effort" if your hand positioning after each stroke isn't positioned to make the next stroke efficiently. Proper stoke order often take into consideration the hand position after each stroke in order to minimise energy spent.
"Drawing against gravity isn't difficult when one isn't using a calligraphy brush or feather pen."
Writing from top to bottom helps to minimise the affect of gravity on your writing, when your writing on a vertical surface like a wall or whiteboard or chalkboard. Sure, you may not be doing it right now, but what if when you encounter a situation where you have to write a character on the classroom chalkboard? Do you follow the proper stroke order or continue with your different stroke order, starting from bottom to the top? If you memorised the wrong stroke order since childhood, how can you apply the wrong stroke order every time to every situation in life? Rather than had you memorised the proper stroke order right from the beginning?
How did you draw your 口 then? A single continuous line? If doing so, then at least one of left or right lines would be going against gravity and results in more effort spent instead of following the proper stroke order. The rounding of top and rightmost side of the box is normal and accepted, but oftentimes not a single O to represent a box.
You've seen new students introduced to Chinese characters several different ways, but oftentimes those that don't stick to the proper stroke order may give up halfway through their studies or never fully realise the significance of stroke order until later when they reach the higher levels of the language. Learning different ways to write a single character results in less memorisation of a single proper stroke order and makes it more difficult to memorise the character if there are multiple ways to write them. Such students you described probably never advanced beyond learning basic Chinese characters.
Yes, 藏 is consist of different components 艹, 爿, 臣, 戈 and each component have their own stroke order. I don't which method you used, but 藏 is generally written in that order from 艹, 爿, 臣, 戈.
Your naive approach to writing 臧 was correct, because the inclination to start from left to right with 爿, 臣, 戈 is the proper stroke order. You don't start with 臣 in the middle before going to 爿 or 戈 because it's the wrong stroke order.
As for the hairy situation you described, the first two strokes are necessary to "gauge the height of width" of the character and that's why an exception to the stroke order is made to allow the first stroke of 戈 to be made. This is common in some Chinese characters resulting a sort of merger between the components. For example, 我 was originally 手 and 戈 that over the years, have been merged into a single character 我 with its own stroke order, because the horizontal line that's "shared" by the component stabilises the overall shape. It's a bit difficult to explain unless you write out the character and want it to look neat on paper.
And like I said earlier to blacklistnr1, for all my talk of stroke order, Chinese is an evolving language and microchanges are happening. The thing is that stroke order forms a proper basis for writing a certain character a certain way and over the course of thousands of years, the Chinese stroke order has been refined by scholars to what it is today.
臣 character has multiple stroke order. Some complete the internals first, others draw the outer boundary first. Both start from the top and ended on the bottom.
臣 stroke order (Method 1) strokeorder.info/mandarin.php?q=%E8%87%A3
臣 stroke order (Method 2) visualmandarin.com/tools/chinese-stroke-order/60682
I guess in this instance there are multiple ways to write 臣 but you started from the bottom, left and top sides, then doesn't it meant you drew against gravity at one point?
And about "Finally I added the 艹 as standard" what happened if say you forgotten to write 艹 after you written 臧? You would have ended up with a different word and that's one reason why Chinese insist you start from top to bottom. People are generally lazy, even in English, many students forget to "dot their i's" because its instinctive that once you reach the rightside or bottomside, you feel like you completed the character or word. Many other characters with 艹 like 草, 莲, 菊, 茞, etc would form different words had the 艹 been forgotten at the end. So proper stroke order helps minimise potential mistakes as well in this case.
About your totally different style of writing 藏, it's incorrect in the same way that 我 would be incorrect if 手 and 戈 were separated. Some people might even see it as 3 different characters, like 爿, 茞 and 戈 for instance.
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You're correct in that some Chinese words are tied to an idea.For example:
日 -> Sun , 月 -> Moon,
明 -> Tomorrow, (i.e. After one day and one night)
子 > Child, 乃> Woman, 老-> Old man
孕 -> Pregnant (Child in woman), 孝 -> Filial (Old man supported by child)
If you include 文-> Culture, then 教-> Teach (Elder teaching Child about Culture)
But languages are spoken first and written later. So sometimes similar sounding characters are used to write words.
In Mandarin, the Hu people are written as 胡. Lake is also Hu, so it is written as 湖 with a water radical. Butterfly is also Hu, so it is written as 蝴 where 虫 is added to denote insect.
And yes, you can read the characters based on what ever spoken form you choose and that's why Japanese are able to use Kanji. For example
子 -> Zi in Mandarin, Zai in Cantonese, and Ko in Japanese.
女 -> Nu in Mandarin, Neuih in Cantonese, and On'na / Jo in Japanese.
文-> Wen in Mandarin, Mahn in Cantonese, and Bun in Japanese.
A picture has no sound associated with it and can be pronounced differently by different cultures. That's the beauty of Kanji and Chinese characters; They're just pictures which you can attach a sound to.
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@PhysicsGamer I'm talking about writing the alphabets of the words from a different order instead of left to right. Take your name PhysicsGamer for example, do you write r-e-m-a-G-s-c-i-y-h-P (which is basically writing PhysicsGamer from right to left) when you spell your name? Or do you perhaps start in the middle, writing G-a-m-e-r first before writing P-h-y-s-i-c-s? No, you write it the proper way, from left to right, P-h-y-s-i-c-s-G-a-m-e-r because that's the way words are written in English. Likewise, Chinese characters have their own proper stroke order. I'm not talking about how each letter is written, I'm talking about how each word is written. Do starting writing words from right to left, or begin somewhere in the middle? No, just like there is a proper way to write Chinese characters according to stroke order.
How is "only one standardized font' choice in Chinese characters, kind of silly? I thought we are talking about stroke order. Besides, all other Chinese fonts follow the same stroke order as taught in the language, do you know of any fonts that follow a different stroke order as the one prescribed?
So because English cursive has fallen into disuse, means that it isn't taught in English classes? Just like Chinese calligraphy, there's a proper stroke order to Chinese calligraphy and learning the proper stroke order is fundamental to learning Chinese characters. Have you seen videos in which elderly men in China practice Chinese calligraphy using floor tiles as the backdrop?
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@PhysicsGamer Yes English letters are read left to write. But we are talking about stroke order so how do you write English words? Left to right, not right to left or starting in the middle (see the different ways I used to write PhysicsGamer for example) so why is following the correct stroke order in Chinese characters so difficult? That's just the way Chinese characters are written that's all.
"And again, plenty of English words are commonly written ending in the middle - such as, for instance, "middle" itself."
How is the word "middle" written such that it ends in the middle?
As for the your second paragraph, stroke orders are the way Chinese characters are written, who said anything about neon signs? Handwritten Chinese Signboards follow the traditional strokes of Chinese calligraphy, of course printed signs don't follow stroke order (just like printed English words don't follow any sort of stroke order) but like I said, we are talking about how the Chinese characters are written. I mean, if you don't have a neon sign or printer handy (or even a cell phone) then given a pen and paper, how would you write Chinese characters if you don't know the proper stroke order?
Regarding your digital fonts, how would you go about writing those Chinese characters onto a piece of paper? You need to learn proper stroke order else like I said earlier, a 台 might end up looking like a 合 which are 2 different characters. Stroke orders help minimise the amount of errors created while writing characters, of course when you digitalise everything then it becomes redundant. But Chinese characters are traditionally written down, not digitalised until the digital age.
About English cursive writing, the so-called "stroke order" is even more apparent, because each letter is properly connected to the letter before it, so it becomes even more important to know the proper "stroke order"
About cursive English disappearing, this is untrue and cursive English is still taught in the United Kingdom for example. It's the Americans that aren't interested preserving this tradition that's all.
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@PhysicsGamer Who's talking about the individual letters? I'm talking about writing the word PhysicsGamer itself not about how each letter is written. Do you write the P then u then a then e then G then a then s... in some random order? No, you write it from left to right, starting with P and ending with r. You don't start in the middle of PhysicsGamer you start with P and end with r so likewise, there is a correct stroke order for Chinese characters. Why compare writing Chinese characters to letters, when our characters are infinitely more complex to letters? It should be a comparison of Chinese characters to words itself.
Like I said, even if neon lights and printed words don't have a stroke order, then how do you write Chinese characters if you yourself don't even know the proper stroke order? Even English printed signs and neon signs don't have a stroke order, but written English has a sort of way to write of its own. Without a proper stroke order, how are you going to write Chinese characters on paper and still be understood?
And in your picture, the 合 is passable but what on earth is that character on the left? Is it a Korean character? Is it supposed to be a 台? Because you clearly don't know the proper stroke order or how the character is supposed to look like, then how will you be understood if you wrote it like that? You show that character to a Chinese teacher and he/she will ask you to write that character at least 50 times more. Because that's how Chinese characters are learnt.
Cursive English is still taught in the United Kingdom, the practice of teaching primary school-aged children the art of cursive (often called 'joined-up') handwriting has been a standard part of the UK's curriculum for decades. And if English language users decide not to pass on their language history, that does not mean that China should forget our stroke orders.
Is it necessary to learn the stroke order of Chinese characters? hackingchinese.com/is-it-necessary-to-learn-the-stroke-order-of-chinese-characters/
Short answer: Yes.
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@PhysicsGamer But you clearly start with "P" first isn't it? That's the "stroke order" of English, you don't start with some other letter, so that's why there's a stroke order in Chinese characters too. As for the world "middle" you begin with "m" so how do you begin in the middle? You don't start with one of the "d"s don't you? You start with "m" because it's the proper way to write.
How does your point stand when I can't even understand what the character on the left of your picture is? I can recognise the 合 but what on earth is that character to the left of it? Is it a Korean Hangul character? Because it looks nothing like 台 and of you don't believe me, show the picture to other Chinese and see if they can recognise what the character on the left is.
It's because you don't know the proper stroke order that's why your character turned out like that. You're just illustrating the need to learn the correct stroke order in Chinese. And of course you'll refuse to write that character 50 times more, because you're clearly not a student of Chinese language and you have no interest in learning Chinese, then why mock Chinese stroke order when you messed up the character? No self-respecting Chinese teacher would tolerate such a student without correction, and the same could be said for an English teacher who's student messed up his/her word.
Cursive English is even taught by countries learning English. Like in China, people learn cursive English as part of our English language program and Hong Kong SAR
Source: Why digital natives must still learn handwriting: so they can pass Hong Kong exams (and write birthday cards) amp.scmp.com/lifestyle/families/article/2085005/why-digital-natives-must-still-learn-handwriting-so-they-can-pass
And even in the digital age with keyboards and whatnot, how do you type out Chinese characters? There are 2 ways, phonetic readings or root shapes.
Methods under the phonetic category usually are easier to learn but are less efficient, thus resulting in slower typing speeds because they typically require users to choose from a list of phonetically similar characters for input; whereas methods under the root shape category allow very precise and speedy input but have a difficult learning curve because they often require a thorough understanding of a character's strokes and composition.
Other methods allow users to write characters directly onto touchscreens, such as those found on mobile phones and tablet computers.
Source: Chinese input methods for computers wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers
So even in this digital age, correct stroke order is important for Chinese character recognition software to be able to understand what you're writing. Most users use a combination of the two methods.
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@PhysicsGamer Why does my comparison to writing letters from left to right in English to stroke order when writing Chinese characters not make sense? I never said anything about reading a word from left to write, in English, people literally just recognise the word itself (PhysicsGamer for example) just like Chinese characters (my username 神州 for example). But how do you write the English word and Chinese characters? You use the proper method for English words (left to right) as well as for Chinese characters (stroke order). That's the way words and characters are written.
Your character on the left doesn't even resemble any known Chinese characters, it looks like Korean Hangul (님? ) or some other language. Because you didn’t even learn the proper Chinese stroke order, so aren't you clearly proving my point that stroke order is important? Because if not, then your character doesn't even look like a Chinese character 台 at all.
How is learning cursive a complete waste of time? It generally improves writing speed, allows kids to better string words together and improves spelling. You talk about print, but what if you don't have a keyboard nearby? Using print makes you lazy, you might start typing "r u alrite?" instead of "Are you alright?". And even if you use print, cursive writing has shown to improve a child's spelling, you know how many i's and s's there are in Mississippi for example if you practice cursive.
Where does my SCMP article claim that "cursive is faster than print"? Please quote where in the article does it even makes such a claim. And do you know what are phonemes? It's dividing words into pieces Like Phy sics Gam er in order to improve memorization and internalised "pronouncing" of the word as you write it out.
And you're writing a simple character 台 using OCR input. What happens when you have to write more complex Chinese characters like the 神 character in my username for example? Try writing 神 without knowing the proper stroke order.
And we haven't even touched on more complicated characters in the Chinese language. Stroke order serves as a "road map" on how to write the more difficult Chinese characters so even in the digital age, stroke order is going to play an important role to students of the Chinese language.
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@PhysicsGamer So English words are written in a specific order from left to right and Chinese characters have proper stroke order. You claim that it's a matter of convenience for English then it's also a matter of convenience for Chinese characters to follow the proper stroke order isn't it? How does it undermine my argument?
How do I know if you're writing in Chinese? Your left character beside 合 looks nothing like a character in the Chinese language, it looks like Korean Hangul or something else. Because you clearly did not follow the proper stroke order, and that's why your 台 character turned out to be unrecognisable. Did you shoe that picture to Chinese and see if they recognise that character?
Hey, you said my SCMP article contained inaccuracies, but where in my SCMP article did it ever said that "cursive is faster than print"? You quoted: "Studies show that joining letters not only helps to increase the speed at which children work but crucially aids their mental processing skills, helping them think more fluently." but where in this quote does it say that "cursive is faster than print"?
I mean, earlier you specifically said (and I quote): "The SCMP article you quoted is riddled with inaccuracies. Contrary to what it claims, cursive is slower than print, not faster, and cursive has nothing to do with writing phonemes rather than letters" but where in my SCMP article does it ever made the claim that "cursive is faster than print"?
And how doesn't phonemes have nothing to do with cursive writing? When you use cursive writing, you are subconsciously forming phonemes as you write out each word.
Your 神 character is passable, but because you said you "never encountered the character 神 before" then you are deliberately left stumbling in the dark, without a road map that is Chinese stroke order. I can already tell that your 礻radical is following the incorrect stroke order, resulting in a strange "curve" when it should be sharp. That's the problem without learning the proper stroke order. Even writing the 申 you deliberately tried to draw a square 口 but because you use a single continuous stroke, you could have mistaken drawn a circle O (when writing quickly) instead of a square 口. That's the danger of abandoning the stroke order. And just so you know, the proper stroke order for 神 can be found here:
Source: Stroke order for 神 strokeorder.info/mandarin.php?q=%E7%A5%9E
And 神 isn't even considered a complex character yet you're having difficulty writing it without knowing the stroke order. Could you imagine writing some of the more complicated Chinese characters? Like say, the character 藏 (hiding)? Without the stroke order acting as a guide map?
Whether you want to consider English 1 dimensional and Chinese 2 dimensional has little bearing on the learning the stroke order.
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@PhysicsGamer I said that English write from left to right as a matter of convenience, then Chinese follow the stroke order as a matter of convenience too. Following the correct stroke order IS the convenience, just like writing from left to right in English.
Why is my question "How do I know if you're writing in Chinese?" asinine? What's the context? You could just started writing that character on the left of 合 randomly out of nowhere to a Chinese stranger on the street and since your character does not resemble any known Chinese character (it looks like Korean Hangul or some other language) then how would people know if you're writing Chinese? When you didn't bother to learn the proper stroke order in the first place?
Your character could be confused with some other language like the Korean Hangul, say 님 for example. All because you didn't bother to learn the proper stroke order.
Where in my SCMP article did it ever mentioned "print" at all? Your quote "This is very misguided, as the sheer amount of note taking and work demands in secondary school require the speed of cursive more than ever." so what it says is that that the speed of cursive is "required" but not that "cursive is faster than print" like you are proclaiming. Where in this quote does it say that "cursive is faster than print"?
You said: "One also groups phonemes when one writes in print. That is not unique to cursive."
There, you have just proven your earlier statement ("cursive has nothing to do with writing phonemes rather than letters.") wrong, since cursive groups phonemes like in print. Thank you for proving your earlier statement wrong.
You said: "Despite having never seen the character 神 before, you were able to tell what I had written."
That's incorrect, I have seen the character 神 before (it's part of my username for crying out loud) And by talking to me, you have already seen the character 神 in my username, if not my profile picture, so why did you claim you never seen the character 神 before?
How to define "expand less effort"? The number of strokes alone doesn't determine the amount of effort spent. For example, in your writing of the the 礻radical, you had to curve your 2nd stroke awkwardly downwards, instead of naturally to the left, had you followed the proper stroke order. And you had to do an awkward stroke on the left (to make it seem as though it's joined) so it's possible that you expanded more effort than had you follow the proper stroke order.
And about drawing a circle O instead of a square 口 for the 申, where did your hand (or pen or brush) position ended up after completing that circle? If you were writing this character on a piece of paper on the wall (or phone held vertically), you would be drawing upwards (going against gravity) if you didn't follow the proper stroke order. The proper stroke order optimises the position of the hand (or brush or pen or stylus, whatever) after each stroke, allowing you to save effort with each stroke. So you can't just determine that you "expanded less effort" just from the number of strokes alone.
Additionally, a following the proper stroke order helps in memorization of the character itself. If you follow a random stroke order each time you write 神 then your brain will have a harder time memorizing different pathways to write the character, had you not followed the proper stroke order. Learning the proper stroke order helps you to write other characters as well. Once you know how to write 礻radical then it becomes easier to write 禅, 祖, 礼 and other characters with 礻radical. Just like 申 for other characters.
I didn't really ask you to write 藏 character in my previous comment, I merely said: "Could you imagine writing some of the more complicated Chinese characters? Like say, the character 藏 (hiding)? Without the stroke order acting as a guide map?" but since you did it anyway, isn't it difficult to do so without first learning the proper stroke order?
Of course Chinese characters can be subdivided down into character components. Like what I did with 礻+申 = 神. But did you know that even each subdivided component has their own stroke order? Here's the stroke order for 礻.
Source: Stroke order for 礻wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A4%BB#Translingual
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@venkatramakkineni I never said that language can be represented by only one writing system. Take Japanese for example and there's Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji for writing the same word. But is learning this additional writing forms (like you said Sanskrit has 5 different scripts) means that the language has practicality?
"Once you master English, Hindi, Telugu alphabet, you can read just about any text anywhere written in that language. You may not understand it, but that is beyond the point."
How many words does English have compared Chinese? Including all those scientific nomenclature for the sciences? And like I said earlier, you don't need to know every single character in the Chinese language. An educated Chinese person will know about 8,000 characters, but you will only need about 2-3,000 to be able to read a newspaper. And what's the point of reading words when you don't know their meaning?
Let's look at Chemistry for example and specifically at the Periodic Table of the Elements. In Chinese, the Chinese characters for metallic elements have the 钅radical for metal attached to them, such as 银(Silver), 铜 (Copper), 铁 (Iron), 铝 (Aluminium), 镍 (Nickel). The Chinese characters for elements which are gases have a 气 radical for gas attached to them, like 氧 (oxygen), 氮 (nitrogen), 氢 (hydrogen), 氯 (chlorine), 氟 (fluorine) and so on. The Chinese characters for non-metallic elements have the 石 radical for stone attached to them, such as 硼 (boron), 碳 (carbon), 硅 (silicon), 磷 (phosphorus), 碘 (iodine) and so on. You might even say that Chinese characters are more efficient than English words.
Source: The Periodic Table Song With Chinese Character 元素周期表之美丽的汉字 youtu.be/MKn5FmWn_ME
Again, adults have a harder time learning a new language because they already have their own 1st language and they're now learning a 2nd language. Compared than a kid learning a new language for the first time. And it's not that learning to write Chinese as an adult is hard, it depends on the adult's linguistical background. For example, Japanese adults often have an easier time learning Chinese characters (they have Kanji after all) compared to an adult English speaker learning Chinese for the first time. It depends on the adult's background, you can't just say that learning to write Chinese characters is not easy for adults.
"English has 26 unique sounds"
You're wrong, English has at least approximately 44 sounds, with some variation dependent on accent and articulation. The 44 English phonemes are represented by the 26 letters of the alphabet individually and in combination. You think that just because there are 26 letters in the English alphabets means that there are 26 unique sounds?
Source: The 44 Sounds in the English Language thoughtco.com/sounds-in-english-language-3111166
And compared to that, Mandarin Chinese has about 37 unique sounds which is smaller than English. So by your standards, doesn't this imply Chinese is more efficient and more practical than say, English? You only need to program less sounds into a Mandarin voice-output software, compared to the sheer amount of English sounds so isn't Mandarin Chinese more practical in this regard? Why have more sounds, when you can communicate with less sounds? How does it make a language more practical?
About decimal numbers, you aren't referring to spoken numbers so you're referring to written numbers? You can write in English all the numbers, such one, two, three, four, ... ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, ... twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven,... ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred and one, one hundred and two.. nine-hundred and ninety-nine, one thousand, etc and its difficult to write (and read) everything out. Whereas in Chinese it's 一，二，三,... 十 (ten)，十一(eleven)，十二 (twelve),... 二十 (twenty), 二十一 (twenty-one), 九十九 (ninety-nine), 一百 (one hundred), 一百一 (hundred and one)... 九百九十九 (nine hundred and ninety-nine), 一千 (one thousand) and so on.
In written numbers, written Chinese is much more efficient than written English numbers, so again, how does this make Chinese an impractical language?
China actually publishes more books than any other country in the world per year, according to the following source:
Books published per country per year
1. China (440,000)
2. United States (304,912)
3. United Kingdom (184,000)
4. Japan (139,078)
5. Russia (101,981)
6. Germany (93,600)
7. India (90,000)
...
Source: Books published per country per year wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year
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