the zenophilia series graphics collection pages
CHINESE WRITING
IN EVOLUTION
Because written Chinese does not represent
(as do alphabetic languages) sound as the name of a thing,
it has remained little changed over 2500 years.
Being visual (a series of patterns) and independent of the pronounced /spoken word,
it directly and rapidly conveys meaning in less space than a totally linear (alphabetic) language.
Generally, it is faster to read and write than either capital or longhand alphabetics.
And, perhaps because it is visual, it has no distinctions between parts of speech :
no genders, declension, or conjugation; and interchangeability between many nouns , adjectives, and adverbs;
tense being expressed where necessary by a simple, single ideogram.
Thus, it can say and mean many things at once.
Precision is obtained by using compound words (e.g. womb birth, egg birth, metamorphic birth) plus
specific word order (e.g. back of hand, hand behind back).
Reading is therefore by pattern recognition,
rather than conceptualization.
By contrast, written Japanese incorporates
characters to designate its spoken syllables,
using a hybrid alphabetic-ideogram system generally considered difficult to
master.
Some insight into evolution from pictures /signs into the present day calligraphic artform
is illustrated below (courtesy Al Chuang-liang Huang, 1975).
