Striving to revive the flagging sinographic cosmopolis
Language Log 2025-04-26
If we take stock of the sinographic cosmopolis at the end of first quarter of the 21st century, it is evident that it is increasingly moribund. Vietnam has jettisoned chữ Hán for the Latin alphabet; North Korea has switched exclusively to hangul; South Korea now uses very few hanja; the Japanese script currently consists of draconically limited kanji, many of which are simplified, often in ways that are different from the simplified characters adopted by the PRC, plus two types of syllabaries and roman letters; the PRC itself now uses radically simplified and limited characters and the Latin alphabet, not to mention that all of the hundreds of millions of students in China learn English, which is a primary index of success for rising in the world of education, and entering sinographs into computers and other digital devices is overwhelmingly accomplished through the alphabet; while the ephemeral Sinoform scripts of Inner Asia (Tangut, Jurchen, Khitan) disappeared around a millennium ago; Sinitic Dungan speakers write their language in Cyrillic…. For those who are advocates of the sinographic script, naturally all of this would be cause for alarm.
From a time when the sinographic script had a monopoly on writing in East Asia, its position is now indeed shaky at best. It is no wonder, then, that adherents of the sinographs in East Asia are fighting back.
Yonhap News Agency: Korea-China-Japan Forum on Common Chinese Characters to be Held in China
The Korea-China-Japan Common Chinese Characters Forum will be held on April 20 in Anyang, Henan Province, China. This forum is hosted by the Korea-China-Japan Cooperation Secretariat, with the Korean Institute of Hanja, the Chinese Characters Museum, and the Japanese Kanji Museum participating as supporting organizations. “Common Chinese characters” refers to Chinese characters shared among the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese languages.
The forum will consist of two sessions. In the first session, experts from Korea, China, Japan, and ASEAN will discuss topics such as the use and promotion of common Chinese characters among the participating countries, as well as the role of Chinese character museums. In the second session, participants will focus on comparative research on Chinese characters among young researchers from the three countries.
The “Common 808 Chinese Characters List for Korea, China, and Japan” was officially released at the 9th Northeast Asia Celebrities Conference in April 2014. In the same year, the cultural ministers of the three countries agreed to promote this 808-character list to enhance cultural exchange. This forum aims to commemorate the 11th anniversary of the 808-character list’s release and implement the initiative to designate 2025-2026 as the Korea-China-Japan Cultural Exchange Years.
Source: Yonhap News Agency (South Korea), April 3, 2025
It is noteworthy that the forum was held at Anyang, where oracle bones — the first attestation of sinographs around 3,300 years ago — were discovered. The whole tenor of the forum is backward looking, a sort of rump action — what used to be, with an emphasis on museums and other custodians of the past. The vaunted “Common 808 Chinese Characters List for Korea, China, and Japan” was officially released eleven years ago, and not much has happened with it since. Anyway, it is not much to build a new sinographic cosmopolis upon
Selected readings
- "Against Spherespeak and Sino-speak" (2/7/21)
- "Nomadic affinity with oracle bone divination" (11/25/20)