语言与文风2009zompist.com
如果英语像中文那样书写
If English was Written Like Chinese
导读
这篇文章做了一个思想实验：如果把英语改写成类似汉字的“英字”（yingzi），会是什么样子。作者用构造出来的荒诞样本，让英语母语者亲身体会汉字学习者的负担。对写作者来说，它示范了如何用“反事实演示”把抽象论点变得可感，也提醒我们：书写和表达系统的约定会带来真实的认知成本。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
与其直接断言“这套系统很难”，不如把它套用到读者熟悉的材料上造出一个样本，让读者自己感受到难：演示胜过论证。
- 02
先给读者一个熟悉的参照系（英语拼写），再引入陌生系统（汉字），对比能让抽象差异立刻变得可感。
- 03
让读者意识到“约定”的存在：把习以为常的规则改写一遍，才能看清它替你省掉了多少记忆负担。
- 04
写解释性文章时要估算读者的“认知成本”：每一组任意规定的对应关系，都是读者要多背的一笔负担。
HN 评论精选
母语的文字系统会塑造人拆解单词的直觉，这种习惯很难后天补上。
作为在美国出生、中文相当流利的人（在北京打电话能冒充本地人，读写大约相当于小学三到五年级水平，这在中文里比听起来难），我看到标题的第一反应是“图什么？”，但文章确实有趣。更有意思的是我观察父母（在中国出生长大、二十多岁移民）学英语生词的方式。我以前只把妈妈糟糕的拼写当成移民的副产品，最近才认真想这件事：她拼写刚听来的新词时，会插入毫无意义的字母，或者漏掉极其明显的字母。以前这让我很受不了，觉得错误明摆着；现在才意识到，汉语的设计让“把词拆成片段”对二十多岁才开始学英语的人并不自然。不是说学不会，而是她在美国二十多年，拼写时仍不会默认进入“拆解”模式，部分原因是她从没受过正式的英语训练（我父亲在这方面好得多，我想是因为他在大学受过更多正式训练）。
albertni查看英文原文
I must admit, as someone who was born in the USA but is reasonably fluent in Chinese (can pass as a native in Beijing when speaking, at least on the phone, and can read/write at like a third-fifth grade level which is harder than it sounds in Chinese), as soon as I saw this I thought "why????". Still, the article did turn out to be quite interesting. What I've also found interesting in my own personal experience with my parents (born in China, immigrated in their 20s) is how they go about learning new words in English. For example, I used to dismiss my mom's horrendous spelling as simply a byproduct of immigration, but only recently have started to think about it more deeply and I've noticed a couple of things. First, she tends to insert nonsensical letters (or miss extremely obvious ones) when trying to spell words she's recently just heard for the first time. This used to bother me a lot because it seemed like the mistakes were so obvious to correct, but now I've realized that because of how Chinese is designed, the concept of breaking a word down into pieces just simply isn't natural for someone who only started learning English in their late 20s. Not to say it can't be learned, but just that even after 20+ years in the states, my mom still doesn't default to "break it down" mode when attempting to spell words, partly because she never had any formal English training (my dad is much, much better about this, and I think it's because of more formal training in a university environment) and just picked it up.
字母文字在“见字知音”和输入效率上有结构性优势，汉字的任意性把成本转嫁给使用者。
哈哈，我读这页时也在想：“怎么这个‘英字’越读越像中文？”比起汉字，英语拼写其实没那么痛苦：前缀、后缀和一些拉丁词根，跟偏旁的概念相当接近。但发音上，英语有字母和规则，至少能大致猜出一个词该怎么读；汉字单看字形没有这种便利。遇到不认识、又没法查的字，你最多只能靠某个偏旁或某个看着眼熟的形近字去猜。最后说说我学了几个月普通话的体会：打字和书写都让我挫败。笔画稍微拉长一点，字就完全变成另一个字；不知道拼音就要打很久（可惜我还没习惯别的键盘输入法），最后只好拿 iPhone 用手写识别。我汉字和拼音都写得惯，打字还是慢得像蜗牛。我从小双语（英语和韩语），但这是完全不同的体验……
silencio查看英文原文
hah, I was reading the page and going "why does this 'yingzi' sound more and more like chinese as I keep reading?" The English spelling system doesn't sound like that much of a pain compared to Chinese since some of the aspects of both spelling methods are similar enough: prefixes and suffixes and some Latin roots are pretty close to the idea of radicals. But consider this: pronouncing English words are nowhere near as difficult as pronouncing hanzi because English uses an alphabet and has pronunciation rules that make it easy to at least approximate what a word should sound like. Chinese has no such luxury with hanzi (i.e. the characters alone, without pinyin)...if you come across a character you don't know how to pronounce and you have no way to look it up, you might be able to guess at best if you see some sort of radical or character that looks like some other one you know. Lastly, I will say this having spent the last few months trying to learn Mandarin...both typing and writing is frustrating to me. One accidental lengthening of a stroke turns a hanzi into something completely different. If I don't know the pinyin for the hanzi it takes me forever to type it (and unfortunately I haven't gotten used to any other keyboard-based input method) and I end up going to my iPhone to use the handwriting recognition. I type slow as molasses despite being comfortable writing in both hanzi and pinyin. I grew up bilingual (english and korean), but this is a completely different experience. And of course, the page mentions the simplification of hanzi...I can't practice using the language because all my Chinese-fluent friends know Cantonese, and not Mandarin Chinese. Talk about a massive brainfuck because of the differences in writing (simplified vs. traditional, which affects lots of commonly written radicals and characters) and speaking, although it's interesting to see how the same characters can be pronounced so differently. On the upside, I would not mind dreaming that I could take the best of both worlds and combine it into one language. Chinese grammar is ridiculously simple while the English vocabulary simpler to use. I took French and Spanish back in high school and all I remember from then are nothing but conjugations while with Chinese I didn't have to stress over that and could focus on other things. Soooooo simple. Can't get over how simple it is ;)
书写系统的复杂度是一项长期、由全社会分摊的成本，值得用经济学的眼光衡量。
这引出一个我常想的问题：如果中国使用字母书写系统，会富裕多少？他们确实在这套“疯狂”的书写系统上花了很多 CPU 周期。英语正字法在西班牙人或意大利人看来也许别扭，但仍比汉字书写领先好几个数量级。这总该值点什么。
mhartl查看英文原文
This raises an issue I've often wondered about: how much richer would China be if Chinese used an alphabetic writing system? I mean, they sure are spending a lot of CPU cycles on their crazy writing system. English orthography, though it may seem perverse to the typical Spaniard or Italian, is nevertheless light-years ahead of written Chinese. That has to be worth something.
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