LINGUIST List 14.1249

Sun May 4 2003

Media: NYT: Arts: Chinese writing

Editor for this issue: Steve Moran <stevelinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Karen Chung, Media: NYT: Arts: Chinese writing

 The Arts section of the May 3, 2003 online edition of the New York
Times has the following article:

 Writing as a Block for Asians
 By Emily Eakin

 The first two paragraphs:

 Western theories about Chinese writing have often been tainted by
ignorance and prejudice, oscillating between wide-eyed veneration and
smug disdain.

 Though he could not read Chinese, Leibniz, for example, held it in
high repute, dreaming of a universal script �X intelligible to
speakers of all languages �X modeled on Chinese characters. By
contrast, Hegel dismissed Chinese "hieroglyphics" as primitive. More
recently, Ezra Pound, a famous admirer and translator of Chinese
poetry, helped spread the still-popular misconception that Chinese
characters are simply "ideograms": visual symbols of things and ideas.

 The URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/03/arts/03ASIA.html?tntemail0


 Karen Steffen Chung
 http://ccms.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/
 http://www.topica.com/lists/phonetics/