众所周知韩日文字一直深受着中国汉字的影响，虽然韩国已经逐渐地用韩文替代掉汉字，但有些重要场合与文件的书写仍然能看到汉字的应用，甚至于出土的文物和博物馆的文物上都写着汉字，这会对后代产生什么影响又如何去解释文物中的汉字呢？至于为什么日语中保留了汉字，这几乎需要一本书来回答。然而，简而言之，如果没有汉字，书面的日语会变得有些含糊不清，也就是说，会失去很多清晰的意思。至于他们使用或丢弃汉字的利弊，这个问题又变得相当复杂。也有网友在国外论坛上发出这样的一个话题：为什么韩国人放弃汉字?相反，日本人为什么要保留汉字呢?使用或丢弃汉字的优点或缺点是什么?
问题：为什么韩国人放弃汉字?相反，日本人为什么要保留汉字呢?使用或丢弃汉字的优点或缺点是什么?
我们挑选了一个韩国网友的观点，让我们来看看他是怎么说的吧？
韩国网友的观点
Let me answer your third question about the pros and cons of using Chinese characters first. Chinese (Hanzi) is a logographic writing system, meaning that the characters represent words and ideas, not sounds as a phonetic system does. This means that in order to read and write Chinese fluently, you’d need to know thousands of characters — as many characters as words.
我想先回答你的第三个问题，关于使用汉字的利弊。中文(汉字)是一种符号书写系统，意思是汉字代表单词和思想，而不是语音系统所代表的声音。这意味着，为了能流利地读写中文，你需要认识成千上万个汉字——汉字和单词一样多。
This obviously comes at a huge learning curve. It takes many years of constant memorization and usage to master Chinese, unlike the Latin alphabet, which most children can learn within a year. Hangul in particular is even more intuitive and easy to learn because of its rational design (consonants are shaped like your mouth when you make the sound, and the vowels are extensions of the long e and o sounds). Chinese, on the other hand, has some semblance of order and reason in the way the characters are written, but for the most part, it just takes sheer memorization to learn the characters.
这显然需要一个巨大的学习曲线。掌握汉语需要多年的不断记忆和使用，不像大多数孩子在一年之内就能学会拉丁字母。特别是韩文，因为其合理的设计(发音时辅音的形状像你的嘴，元音是长音e和o的延伸)，所以更直观，更容易学习。另一方面，汉字的书写方式有一定的秩序和理性，但在大多数情况下，学习汉字只需要纯粹的记忆。
This extreme learning difficulty and unwieldiness is the reason why most logographic systems have either gone extinct or evolved to phonetic systems. But Chinese remained. Why? Well, first you need to understand that “China” is less a single nation and more of a concept. The original settlers of the Yellow River were the ones to first use Chinese characters and lay the foundations of civilization in East Asia, but over time, “China” came to include a progressively wider range of lands, people, and cultures. China was a melting pot of East Asian cultures, that not only absorbed new members through conquest, but also by being conquered (Mongols and Manchus are the most prominent of examples).
这种极端的学习难度和笨拙是大多数符号系统要么已经灭绝，要么进化成语音系统的原因。但中国依然存在。为什么?首先，黄河流域最初的定居者是最早使用汉字的人，奠定了东亚文明的基础，但随着时间的推移，“中国”逐渐包括了更广泛的土地、人民和文化。中国是东亚文化的大熔炉，不仅通过征服吸收新成员，而且通过被征服吸收新成员(蒙古人和满族人是最突出的例子)。
With all these different groups of people, all with different languages, it was important for there to be a standardized way to communicate. But a phonetic system only works when the writer and reader speak the same language. Think about it. This post is written using the same alphabet a French speaker uses, but because I speak and therefore write in English, the French speaker may be able to pronounce the words but they wouldn’t understand what it means. And that’s the fundamental issue with phonetic systems: they communicate sounds. It’s up to the reader to convert those sounds to meaning.
面对这么多不同的人群，说着不同的语言，有一种标准化的交流方式是很重要的。但是语音系统只有在作者和读者使用同一种语言时才会起作用。想想。这篇文章用的是和法语使用者相同的字母表，但因为我用英语说话，所以用英语写作，法语使用者可能会发这些单词的音，但他们不明白它的意思。这是语音系统的基本问题:它们交流声音。如何将这些声音转化为意义取决于读者。
But Chinese doesn’t have that problem. 北 can be pronounced in a number of different ways — Mandarin: bei; Cantonese: bak; Japanese (Kanji): boku; Korean (Hanja): buk — but it will always mean one thing: “north.” This means that regardless of what language you speak, as long as you know the characters and understand how to arrange them, you can communicate with anyone else who knows the characters.
但中国人没有这个问题。“北”字有很多不同的发音方式——普通话:bei;广东话:贝克;日本(汉字):boku;朝鲜语(汉字):buk——但它总是意味着一件事:“北”。这意味着不管你说什么语言，只要你知道这些字符并知道如何排列它们，你就可以和任何知道这些字符的人交流。
If that seems like an alien concept, keep in mind that most of the world today uses characters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0. Indeed, Arabic numerals are characters that represent an idea that remains constant despite having different names all over the world. 1 = one = uno = yi = hana = ichi.
如果这似乎是一个陌生的概念，请记住，今天世界上大多数地方使用的字符:1、2、3、4、5、6、7、8、9、0。事实上，阿拉伯数字是一种字符，它代表着一种不变的思想，尽管世界各地有不同的名字。1 = 1 = uno = yi = hana = ichi。
Today, the major Chinese languages are Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hunanese, along with many other dialects. With 70% of the population now speaking Mandarin as their first language, having a logographic system may seem a little excessive, but long ago, there were dozens if not hundreds of languages in the area that is today China.
今天，中国的主要语言是普通话、粤语、湖南话，以及许多其他方言。现在70%的人口把普通话作为他们的第一语言，有一个符号系统可能看起来有点过分，但很久以前，在今天的中国，有几十种甚至数百种语言。
The Chinese needed a way to keep their massive, multilingual empire together, and thus its solution was to retain a standardized logographic writing system. This system was so effective at bridging cultural and lingual gaps that countries that never were incorporated into China proper — ie. Korea and Japan — adopted Chinese as their official writing systems.
中国人需要一种方法来保持他们庞大的、多语言的帝国，因此它的解决方案是保留一个标准化的符号书写系统。这一制度在弥合文化和语言差距方面是如此有效，以至于那些从未被纳入中国的国家。韩国和日本采用中文作为官方文字系统。
So, to recap: Chinese is a logographic system that is extremely hard to learn and unwieldy compared to phonetic systems. But unlike a phonetic system, Chinese has the advantage of being able to be used across different languages.
所以，总结一下:汉语是一种文字系统，与语音系统相比，它是极其难学和笨拙的。但与语音系统不同的是，汉语的优势在于可以跨语言使用。
Now, back to the other two questions about Korea and Japan. As I said, since the dawn of their civilizations, Korea and Japan used Chinese characters not only because it was virtually the only cohesive writing system in East Asia, but because it allowed them to interact with China, each other, and other countries in the so-called “Sino-sphere.” And, perhaps even more importantly, China being the intellectual, cultural, and political heart of East Asia (which to the Koreans and Japanese meant the world), all books of learning were written in Chinese. That’s right. All of them. (I mean, after all, the Chinese make up 80–90% of the population of East Asia! OF COURSE they were the originators of most of East Asian literature, philosophy, statecraft, science, etc.)
现在，回到韩国和日本的另外两个问题。正如我所说的，自他们的文明开始以来，韩国和日本使用汉字，不仅因为它实际上是东亚唯一有凝聚力的书写系统，而且因为它允许他们与中国、彼此以及所谓的“中国圈”中的其他国家进行互动。而且，也许更重要的是，中国是东亚(对韩国人和日本人来说就是世界)的知识、文化和政治中心，所有的学习书籍都是用中文写的。这是正确的。他们所有人。(我的意思是，毕竟中国人占东亚人口的80-90% !当然，他们是大多数东亚文学、哲学、治国之道、科学等的鼻祖。)
And THIS is why the upper-class males of Korea and Japan dismissed native phonetic systems such as Hangul or Hiragana & Katakana until the 19th century. To become educated, you obviously needed to read, but in order to read, you absolutely had to learn Chinese characters. Until the 19th century, very few books of learning were translated to their respective native writing systems, and thus the educated elite of Korea and Japan (exclusively aristocratic men) looked down on Hangul or Hiragana/Katakana as wastes of time.
因此，直到19世纪，韩国和日本的上流社会男性都对韩文、平假名、片假名等母语语音体系不屑一顾。为了受教育，你显然需要阅读，但为了阅读，你必须学习汉字。直到19世纪，很少有书籍被翻译成各自的母语，因此，韩国和日本的受过教育的精英(完全是贵族男性)看不起韩文或平假名/片假名，认为这是浪费时间。
牌匾都是汉字
But for everyone else, phonetic writing systems weren’t all that bad. Korea and Japan are both ethnically and culturally homogenous countries, and thus they each spoke virtually one single language: Korean and Japanese, respectively. When all your neighbors and friends speak the same language as you, why bother learning thousands of characters when you can just learn a couple dozen of consonants and vowels? Thus, Hangul and Hiragana were used as a way to communicate and to write poetry, novels, and songs. But because the upper-class men were busy using Chinese to read the Chinese classics, history, and philosophy, only the upper-class women and some of the lower-classes used these systems.
但对其他人来说，语音书写系统并不是那么糟糕。韩国和日本在民族和文化上都是同质的国家，因此他们实际上都说同一种语言:朝鲜语和日语。当你所有的邻居和朋友都和你说同一种语言时，当你只会学习几十个辅音和元音时，为什么要费劲去学习成千上万个字符呢?因此，韩文和平假名被用作一种交流的方式，并被用来写诗、小说和歌曲。但由于上层社会的男性忙于用汉语阅读中国的经典、历史和哲学，只有上层社会的女性和一些下层社会的人使用这些体系。
That all changed in the 19th century, when the Imperial West finally turned its attention to East Asia. After Qing China was brought to its knees after the Opium Wars, it became increasingly clear to Korea and Japan that they needed to modernize quickly. But the key to modernization was first and foremost education — not in Confucian philosophy — but in mathematics, science, and, perhaps most importantly, one’s own national history.
这一切在19世纪发生了改变，西方帝国最终将注意力转向了东亚。鸦片战争后，清朝屈服了，朝鲜和日本越来越清楚地意识到，他们需要迅速实现现代化。但现代化的关键首先是教育——不是儒家哲学——而是数学、科学，也许最重要的是，自己国家的历史。
To do this, Korean and Japanese societies had to completely revamp their education systems, and indeed this was one of the first steps toward modernization that both countries took. But to educate the masses, they needed to learn how to read and learn quickly. To do this, both countries implemented a mixed system between Chinese characters and native phonetic systems — a method that Japan continues to use today.
为了做到这一点，韩国和日本社会必须彻底改革他们的教育系统，事实上，这是两个国家朝着现代化迈出的第一步。但是为了教育大众，他们需要学习如何阅读和快速学习。为了做到这一点，两个国家都实施了汉字和本土语音系统的混合系统——日本今天仍在使用这种方法。
日本每年评选的年度汉字
Generally, Chinese characters were usually used for the actual semantics (words with meaning) of a sentence, while the phonetic system (Hangul in Korea, and usually Hiragana and sometimes Katakana in Japan) was used for grammatical words. This system isn’t exactly new — both the Koreans and Japanese did this to a smaller degree for hundreds of years — but these reforms standardized and elevated Hangul and Kana.
一般来说，汉字通常用于句子的实际语义(有意义的词)，而语音系统(韩国是韩文，日本通常是平假名，有时是片假名)用于语法词。这种体系并不完全是新的——韩国人和日本人几百年来都是这样做的，只是程度较低——但这些改变使韩文和假名标准化并得到提升。
There was a huge debate in Meiji Japan about making writing Japanese easier, with some arguing that Chinese characters be almost entirely replaced by Kana. This ended up not happening for various reasons, one of them being that Hiragana and Katakana were never meant to be used on their own. Hiragana in particular was actually derived from the cursive form of Chinese characters to make reading and writing Japanese smoother.
在明治时期的日本，关于如何让书写日文变得更容易的争论非常激烈，一些人认为汉字几乎完全被假名取代了。这最终没有发生，原因有很多，其中之一是平假名和片假名从来就不是单独使用的。平假名实际上是由汉字的草书形式衍生而来的，以使日文的阅读和书写更流畅。
Then comes the fact that both Kana forms are syllabaries, not alphabets, meaning they denote syllable sounds, not consonants and vowels. This post is already long, so just take my word for it that syllabaries are not as easy to use on their own compared to alphabets. A happy medium was found, which is more or less what the Japanese use today.
然后，两个假名形式都是音节，而不是字母，这意味着它们表示音节，而不是辅音和元音。这篇文章已经很长了，所以请相信我的话，与字母相比，音节表本身并不容易使用。人们找到了一个折衷的办法，这差不多就是今天日本人所使用的方法。
But while the Japanese kept the mixed system, the Koreans began adopting Hangul — which, unlike Hiragana or Katakana, is a full-fledged alphabet designed to be used on its own — more and more. The rise in Korean nationalism further raised Hangul’s popularity, and by the turn of the century, Hangul was used almost exclusively in many major publications and books.
但是，当日本人继续使用混合系统时，韩国人开始越来越多地采用韩文——与平假名或片假名不同，韩文是一种完全独立使用的字母表。韩国民族主义的兴起进一步提高了韩文的受欢迎程度，到世纪之交，韩文几乎只出现在许多主要出版物和书籍中。
That said, the government continued to use Chinese characters or a mixed system until Korea’s annexation in 1910, but even during the first decades of Japanese colonization, Hangul continued to develop and was even taught at some public schools in Korea. By the time Imperial Japan prohibited Korean and Hangul in 1938 as part of its attempts at wiping out Korean culture, Hangul had been firmly implanted in the Korean psyche and cultural identity, so much so that it was taught in secret in underground schools.
也就是说，他们一直使用汉字或混合文字，直到1910年韩国合并，但即使在日本殖民统治的头几十年，韩文继续发展，甚至在韩国的一些公立学校教授。1938年，日本帝国主义为了消灭韩国文化而禁止使用韩语和韩文，直到那时，韩文已经深深植入了韩国人的心理和文化认同，甚至在在暗地里秘密教授。
But to finally get to your question, it wasn’t until after the Japanese left and both North and South Korea were firmly established when Hangul nearly completely supplanted Chinese. For the North, the change occurred in 1949, when, in true authoritarian fashion, the government proclaimed Hangul as the only legitimate writing system and banned Chinese characters altogether. For the South, the process was more gradual. The South Korean government did push for Hangul’s exclusive use in the 70s, but the transition was also partly natural.
但最后说到你的问题，直到日本人离开，朝鲜和韩国都牢固建立起来，韩文才几乎完全取代了汉语。对朝鲜来说，1949年发生了变化，政府宣布韩文是唯一合法的书写系统，并完全禁止使用汉字。对于南方来说，这个过程是循序渐进的。韩国政府确实在70年代推动了韩文的专用，但这种转变在一定程度上也是自然的。
韩国春联
Now that Hangul was fully standardized and taught nation-wide, there was little need to use Chinese characters in Korea. Books and letters can always be translated, after all. And I’ll go ahead and add that because Hangul is SO MUCH easier to type on a keyboard than Chinese, Chinese characters’ decline in modern Korea has only accelerated in the last couple decades with very little chance of a revival in the near future.
现在，韩文已经完全标准化，并在全国范围内普及，在韩国几乎没有必要使用汉字。毕竟，书籍和信件总是可以翻译的。我还要补充一点，因为在键盘上输入韩文比中文要容易得多，汉字在现代韩国的衰落只是在过去几十年里加速了，而且在不久的将来复兴的可能性很小。
And there you have it, an abridged (but still long) explanation of the pros and cons of Chinese characters and how Korea and Japan got to where they are today. It all boils down to what these societies needed. The Chinese needed a system to bring its diverse people together, while the Koreans and Japanese needed to use this system to tap into China’s vast intellectual wealth and diplomatic network.
以上就是对汉字利弊的简短(但仍然很长)解释，以及韩国和日本是如何走到今天的。这一切都归结于这些社会需要什么。中国人需要一个系统来把不同的人聚集在一起，而韩国人和日本人需要利用这个系统来利用中国巨大的知识财富和外交网络。
你认同他的观点吗？欢迎大家留言讨论或点赞。
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