I agree that Prof. Pullum errs, but I do not think his error is rooted — as Prof. Hayot suggests — in silly chauvinism. Pullum’s mistake is to evaluate an organic social institution according to a rational purpose (which he feels to be self-evident) to which it is not very well suited. He is right that the Chinese writing system is difficult to learn and imposes an apparently unnecessary labor cost on the student who wishes simply to communicate. And there is nothing implausible about his assertion that this difficulty impedes the adoption of Chinese as an international language.
What he overlooks, as he marvels that the writing system wasn’t “ditched” long ago, is that it may serve multiple purposes, not all of them overt or even conscious. It connects communities whose speech is mutually unintelligible; for the mandarin class, it created a barrier to entry that kept their skills rare and therefore more valuable; and it has made possible a concision with both practical and artistic benefits. It may also have fostered an education ethic that cultivates sustained attention and accurate memory.
It is possible that changes in technology (keyboard entry to digital devices) and society (the dominance, whether evolved or imposed, of putonghua) will lead to a revolution in the writing system, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
A. E. Clark <aec@raggedbanner.com>