The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

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**Title** **The Chinese Language**
Author	John DeFrancis
Language	English
Genre(s)	Nonfiction
Publisher	University of Hawai'i Press
Released	1984
Media type	Hardcover, Paperback
Pages	330
ISBN	ISBN 0-8284-0866-5, ISBN 0-8248-1068-6 (paperback)

The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy is a book written by John DeFrancis, published in 1984 by University of Hawaii Press. The book gives an introduction to some of the concepts underlying the Chinese language and writing system.

There is no "Chinese language". There is a group of related ways of speaking, which some may call dialects, others call topolects (DeFrancis uses the term "regionalects"), and still others would regard as separate languages. One such variant, based on the speech of the Beijing area, has been chosen as the national standard in the PRC, and is now known as "Putonghua", or common language.
The Chinese script has a heavy phonological basis, shown in the phonetic elements common in more than half of Chinese characters. Unfortunately they are missing from many common characters, causing many foreign scholars to miss the point that they are a necessary resource for Chinese readers. It is not a brilliant ideographic script; it is a lousy phonetic script.
There can be no such thing as an "ideographic" script, where symbols stand for ideas unrelated to words. Human brains don't work that way. Therefore, Chinese isn't such a script either.
The Chinese script, with its thousands of characters, is not a benefit to the Chinese society, and needs to be abandoned if China is to achieve the benefits of modernization.