Strength and Weakness of Chinese Ideograms
Subject
The English Alphabet will Become Like Chinese as We Lose Phonetic Spelling
i ui iu to knsider is Alfabet, and giv mi Instanses f st Ili Urds and Sunds az iu mee ink kannt perfektli bi eksprest bi it. i am persueeded it mee bi kmplited bi iur help. i greeter difiklti uil bi to bri it into ius. Huevr, if Amendments eer nevr atemted, and is kntinu to gro urs and urs, ee mst km to bi in a reted Kndin at last; st indiid i ink ur Alfabet and Riti lredi in; bt if ui go n az ui hev dn e fiu…
Contrast
Object
The Power of the Chinese Ideogram
As everyone knows, the Chinese do not have letters, as we do, but symbols for whole words. This has, of course, many inconveniences: it means that, in learning to write, there are an immense number of different signs to be learnt, not only 26 as with us; that there is no such thing as alphabetical order, so that dictionaries, files, catalogues, etc., are difficult to arrange and linotype is impossible; that foreign…
Why they relate
Franklin saw their decoupling from phonetics as a weakness, but Russel saw it as a strength.