Is the Chinese Language Bad?

Hannas, William C. Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai'i Press, 1997.

Hannas, William C. The Writing on the Wall: How Asian Orthography Curbs Creativity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.

I'm currently consternated to find that a linguist with extensive knowledge of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese has decided that none of these languages offers much hope to their respective peoples. In his 1997 work, Hannas concludes, "As a human being, I am appalled by the tragic waste of resources and creativity that Chinese characters cause."

But at least in that work he found that Vietnamese and Korean made real progress in leaving Chinese characters behind. And he also took care in his earlier work to say that he did not consider Asians to have any lesser capacity for productivity. By 2003, the tune had changed:

"Although Korean and Vietnames writing do identify phonemes, the tutorial effect is subverted by....syllabic format, which constitutes the basic psychological unit" (248). No, I haven't figured out what he means by that yet. As for creativity, well, read the subtitle of the book!