How does a modern civilization manage to still get by using a language that is made up entirely of single syllable...

No, i can't understand a sentence in german.
But if the written symbol for something means pig, even if i call it porc and the german calls it schwein, then i can roughly understand a sentence made by putting together these words.

when you use the latin alphabet, french grammar wont make sense to a spaniard and vice versa. But if you use Hanzi, you could understand Mandarin, Fokkien, Manchurian, and to a dergree Korean and Japanese. You don't need to really speak the language. All you have to do is remember is what these scribbles mean. For example the word 火山(volcano) which litterally means firemountain. If you read it in Japanaese, it would be read as kasen, in korean kasan, and in mandarin Huashan. Notice that it is read differntly but is written exactly the same. Thats why this writing system wasnt meant to be exactly just for the Hans who invented it but for the entire empire it compasses.

Oh, I get it.

But what I know of it, which is not a lot, the characters are originally supposed to be 1 character = 1 word. Which mustn't work very well nowadays.

Either way, if the written symbols have no relation to the sound of the spoken language, it makes it extremely hard to learn in the first place.

though mainland china did go semi-idiot when they simplified their writing system

Hard to learn is an understatement of extreme proportions buddy

though, after you get used to the basics, the more complicated words will make sense. You would even figure out what the characte is about by analyzing its construction.

Characters are single syllables. Most WORDS are two or more characters, thus multisyllabic.

A single written language is what allowed China to function as a single entity for thousands of years despite having multiple mutually unintelligible spoken languages ("dialects" as the Chinese say for socio-political reasons). Chinese "dialects" are as different from one and other as French is from Italian, or Romanian. However, the country could operate under a single unified administration that used a standardized written from. So the character system is extremely efficient with respect to governing a multi-lingual empire, even if it's not as efficient as alphabets for the promotion of general literacy. It's actually quite brilliant that the single written languages works equally well for every Sinic sub-language.

>t. I want to comment and question something I literally know nothing about.

Mindset of a ten year-old.

When a japanese person sees 漢字 He will read it as "kanji". The chinese person will read it as "hanzi". It means the same for both of them.

>Which mustn't work very well nowadays.
Actually it works quite well nowadays, especially in computer age. It works even more efficient than Phonograms languages.

>the written symbols have no relation to the sound of the spoken language
Actually it has relation to spoken languages, the sounds are mainly originated from Archaic Chinese(Shang ~ Han dynasties)

Perhaps you should study it a bit more before you keep making judgments.

Still it must have been less suited to the movable printing press compared to the Latin alphabet.

they did have their own versions of movable types. Though it wasn't that convenient, they did make it.

Anyone defending logographic language in this thread is 馬鹿。 it's universally agreed they are less useful and harder to learn for no good reason.
>
>How does a modern civilization manage...
Litterally just tradition and history . It's pretty impossiable to unorganiclly change a written language once it's there, historical cases of stuff like this, was really just a very small scholarly class of people doing it while 99% of others couldn't write. Then it gets mashed with the peoples language anyways and causes more problems like Chinese lettering mashed into 日本語 pronunciation.

why are you using japanese insults though

That part is true, which is why while the Chinese invented the movable type press, it didn't catch on in the same way it did in the west.

Literacy in China was very low until the 1900s, and only shot up after the Communists simplified the language in 1950 and instituted rural public schools.

>That part is true, which is why while the Chinese invented the movable type press, it didn't catch on in the same way it did in the west.

>Yuan-Qing period Book Culture.
>Tokugawa Book Culture.
Not really?

You even have the first Pop-Culture fandoms in Asia when Water Margin came out.

It's less suited to traditional typewriters, but it's well suited to computers, more efficient than Phonograms. For example, like the word "漢字", it's wrote as "Chinese characters" in English which have 17 computer characters in total, and it still has 5 characters when I write it in Homophonic translation such as "Hanzi" or "Kanji", but it only takes 4 characters in computer when I write it in Chinese directly as
"漢字".

Although Chinese take more characters to type in computer (1 alphabet equal to 1 computer character; 1 Chinese character equal to 2 computer characters), but it actually spent less computer characters in total than Phonograms languages when they're wrote as individual "words".

*when they're combined as individual "words".

>it's universally agreed they are less useful and harder to learn for no good reason.
Not really. See this

So, japanese and chinese can understand some words from each other's written language? What's the use of this? It still sucks

It's what allowed the whole of China to be administered by a single central bureaucracy for over two thousand years.

Furthermore, Chinese sentence don't need "space" between words to write and comprehend like many Phonograms languages, so it can cost even less computer characters than Phonograms in total.

Besides. it's not really that hard to learn for native Chinese speakers. Native speakers only need about 3000~4000 characters to perform basic reading and writing, 7000~10000 characters if they want to acquire good academic education. It may looks a lot but not in actual use.

Literacy in China didn't catch up Europe until 20th century mainly because China didn't have universal compulsory education nor have such idea like western countries did after 18th century, and when China wanted to enforce such policy, the whole country went to chaos and wars again until 1950's, not really because they didn't simplify their languages.

>What's the use of this?
"This" gives Chinese language the same cultural and political status as Latin in Europe and Arabic in Middle East. "This" allowed China to form a highly centralized multi-ethnic empire for thousands of years. And "This" establishes the so-called "Sinosphere culture" which still posses great influence to half the world.

Sinosphere is a meme, asians hate each others guts

No, you are meme, and a moronic autistic.
I guess you might be OP. Do you start this thread just for bashing Chinese/ East Asian culture and waiting people to join your ride? Why bother to ask and learn all this if you hate China and Asians in the first place? This thread obviously is not your echo chamber.

>Europe is a meme, Europeans hate each others' guts
>Islamic civilization is a meme, Muslims hate each others' guts
>Latin America is a meme, South Americans hate each others' guts

Don't the Chinese write in Pinyin which gets translated through software?

so that chinese weeaboos can watch anime with japanese subtitles and read hentai without translation

There are multiple input methods. Pinyin, zhuyin (bopomofo), stroke, and handwriting.