Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and JapaneseChinese, Japanese, South (and North) Koreans in East Asia have a long, intertwined and distinguished cultural history and have achieved, or are in the process of achieving, spectacular economic success. Together, these three peoples make up one quarter of the world population.They use a variety of unique and fascinating writing systems: logographic Chinese characters of ancient origin, as well as phonetic systems of syllabaries and alphabets. The book describes, often in comparison with English, how the Chinese, Korean and Japanese writing systems originated and developed; how each relates to its spoken language; how it is learned or taught; how it can be computerized; and how it relates to the past and present literacy, education, and culture of its users.Intimately familiar with the three East Asian cultures, Insup Taylor with the assistance of Martin Taylor, has written an accessible and highly readable book. Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese is intended for academic readers (students in East Asian Studies, linguistics, education, psychology) as well as for the general public (parents, business, government). Readers of the book will learn about the interrelated cultural histories of China, Korea and Japan, but mainly about the various writing systems, some exotic, some familar, some simple, some complex, but all fascinating. |
Contents
1 Introduction | 1 |
Chinese | 25 |
2 Spoken Chinese | 28 |
Hanzi | 43 |
4 Meaning Representation in Characters | 62 |
5 Sound Representation by Characters | 79 |
6 Logographic Characters vs Phonetic Scripts | 87 |
7 Text Writing in Chinese Korean and Japanese | 102 |
16 History of Education and Literacy in Korea | 255 |
Summary and Conclusions | 272 |
Part III Japanese | 279 |
17 Japanese Language | 282 |
Chinese Characters | 295 |
Japanese Syllabary | 306 |
Roman Letters | 315 |
21 Why Keep Kanji? | 323 |
8 Reforming Spoken and Written Chinese | 112 |
9 Learning Hanzi Pinyin and Putonghua | 131 |
10 History of Education and Literacy in China | 144 |
Summary and Conclusions | 174 |
Korean | 185 |
11 Korean Language | 188 |
Chínese Characters | 203 |
Alphabetic Syllabary | 211 |
14 Learning Hangul and Hancha | 231 |
15 Why Should Hancha be Kept? | 243 |
22 Learning Kanji and Kana | 342 |
23 The Japanese Educational System | 354 |
24 History of Mass Literacy in Japan | 364 |
Summary and Conclusions | 374 |
Postface | 380 |
Glossary | 381 |
393 | |
410 | |
The series Studies in Written Language and Literacy | 413 |
Other editions - View all
Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese Insup Taylor,Martin M. Taylor Limited preview - 1995 |
Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Insup Taylor,Maurice Martin Taylor No preview available - 1995 |
Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Insup Taylor,Maurice Martin Taylor No preview available - 1995 |
Common terms and phrases
Beijing century chap China Chinese characters Chinese language Chinese words compound words Confucian classics consonant letters content words culture dialects dictionary dynasty East Asian European words exam example Furigana Grade grammatical morphemes Han dynasty Han'gul Hancha Hanzi Hiragana homophones horizontal Japan Japanese language Japanese words Kana Kanji words Katakana Korean and Japanese Korean language Kun/Japanese learning linguistic loan words logographic Mandarin meaning middle school modern national language native words newspapers noun number of characters official On/Chinese Paspa phonetic script phrase pictographs Pinyin postpositions preschoolers primary school pronounced Putonghua radical readers represent Rōmaji Roman alphabet S-K words scholars semantic component sentence Seoul shapes shi shi shi shi shi simple simplified Sino-Japanese words Sino-Korean Song dynasty sound speakers speech spelling strokes syllabary syllable blocks Table Taiwan taught teaching tend Tokyo tone syllable University verb vertical vowel letters writing system written