Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern

Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern

  • Downloads:8325
  • Type:Epub+TxT+PDF+Mobi
  • Create Date:2022-01-20 01:19:20
  • Update Date:2025-09-06
  • Status:finish
  • Author:Jing Tsu
  • ISBN:B092V3XKKM
  • Environment:PC/Android/iPhone/iPad/Kindle

Summary

After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world's most powerful nations。 Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind。 In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China's most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology。

Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who adapted the Chinese language to a world designed for the Roman alphabet and requiring standardization, from an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language to the imprisoned computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup。 Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today。

With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China's tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded。

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Reviews

Danielle | Dogmombookworm

KINGDOM OF CHARACTERS |Examines the challenges the Chinese written script posed over the past 100 years in keeping up with the fast pace of our technological advancements。Putting aside the question of whether to abandon Chinese script altogether which has been hotly debated, Tsu examines the many situations in which the Chinese have had to consider how to systemize their written script so as to allow quick, efficient and accessible means to look up and use characters in modern times。 Should one KINGDOM OF CHARACTERS |Examines the challenges the Chinese written script posed over the past 100 years in keeping up with the fast pace of our technological advancements。Putting aside the question of whether to abandon Chinese script altogether which has been hotly debated, Tsu examines the many situations in which the Chinese have had to consider how to systemize their written script so as to allow quick, efficient and accessible means to look up and use characters in modern times。 Should one use stroke count, radical placement, quadrant and stroke count and placement? None of which is objectively as easy as the inherent ordered system of A- B - C。 Language reform has been debated and revised over multiple millennium, from standardization over 2,000 years ago to more recently with character simplification under Mao。 Tsu delves into the battles for how the Chinese dealt with creating a typewriter, telegraphy (for sending telegrams), bibliographic classification system, and computing technology。 How do you process text that is not alphabetic but is made up of thousands of characters before our digital age, pre-computers? I found this book absolutely enthralling。 It really is such an interesting topic and has been through so many thought debates。 。。。more