John DeFrancis (1911–2009)
Autor von Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy
Über den Autor
Werke von John DeFrancis
ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary: Alphabetically Based Computerized (ABC Chinese Dictionary Series) (1996) 57 Exemplare
Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems (Asian Interactions and Comparisons) (1989) 33 Exemplare
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Wissenswertes
- Geburtstag
- 1911-08-31
- Todestag
- 2009-01-02
- Geschlecht
- male
- Nationalität
- USA
- Geburtsort
- Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA
- Sterbeort
- Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
- Ausbildung
- Yale University (BA|Economics|1933)
Columbia University (MA|1941; PhD|1948) - Berufe
- linguist
sinologist
lexicographer
professor - Organisationen
- Johns Hopkins University
Seton Hall University
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
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Statistikseite
- Werke
- 21
- Mitglieder
- 690
- Beliebtheit
- #36,666
- Bewertung
- 3.8
- Rezensionen
- 15
- ISBNs
- 52
- Sprachen
- 1
- Favoriten
- 1
It's by one of the most prominent Chinese linguists of the last century, who in the first half of the book tackles (and for the most part demolishes) many of the myths about the Chinese language held both by outsiders and by Chinese scholars themselves. For example: that Chinese characters are ideographic, expressing ideas directly without appeal to spoken language; that the language itself is monosyllabic; that Chinese is a unified language across China with only minor differences in pronunciation.
I would have rated it higher if the second half hadn't been so out of date. It consists mostly of discussions of the political history of the attempt to spread literacy in China, and the issues of the writing system--should the characters be replaced or at least supplemented by a phonetic system? Written in 1984, the whole discussion I believe has been or soon will be rendered obsolete by the widespread use of the internet and cell phones, for the way characters are input into computing devices is by typing phonetically. Once communication is mediated by computers, game over.… (mehr)