Honest question, why haven't china moved to a western (?) alphabet based writing? With my ignorant knowledge, it seems crazy that you are using that way of writing today. Using 24 letter combinations vs memorizing 3000 (min) to 20.000 icons!
When I was a kid, my best friend was chinese, and we could never do anything on saturdays because he had to go to a school to learn chines, and how to write in chinese was very hard and time-consuming.
Do you know? Care to explain?
EDIT: I am not from the US, but from Argentina.
EDIT2: I am talking about the effort to learn how to draw (not only read but draw!) very complex looking 3000 icons vs. the effort of learning 24/26 and some rules. With a western language, by just knowing a few pronunciation rules, you can read any word. At least in Spanish. I am not implying that Chinese are bad, or that the language should die or anything like that.
When I was a kid, my best friend was chinese, and we could never do anything on saturdays because he had to go to a school to learn chines, and how to write in chinese was very hard and time-consuming.
Do you know? Care to explain?
EDIT: I am not from the US, but from Argentina.
EDIT2: I am talking about the effort to learn how to draw (not only read but draw!) very complex looking 3000 icons vs. the effort of learning 24/26 and some rules. With a western language, by just knowing a few pronunciation rules, you can read any word. At least in Spanish. I am not implying that Chinese are bad, or that the language should die or anything like that.