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Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William C. Hannas. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997. 339 pp., $45.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.
Sinographies-writing systems employing Chinese characters-are perhaps one of the most conspicuous characteristics of the East Asian cultural sphere. Westerners knowing little or nothing about Confucianism or Buddhism are quickly able to recognize complicated combinations of strokes as Chinese characters.
A huge mythology has grown around sinographies, both in the East and in the West. On the basis of this mythology, sinographies have been claimed to be equal or even superior to Western alphabetic systems of writing. Over the last century, advocates of writing reform in East Asia have time and again engaged in a seemingly futile struggle to overthrow the sinographic colossus and refute this mythology. The myths underpinning this struggle have been described in a handful of excellent works in English by authors such as John DeFrancis and J. Marshall Unger.
Wm. C. Hannas's Asia's Orthographic Dilemma (AOD) is a monograph in the antisinographic tradition established by DeFrancis and Unger. When asked to write this review, I wondered what Hannas could say that had not already been said by his predecessors. Did the world really need another diatribe against sinography? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. The mythology still lingers, even among those of my fellow linguists who ought to know better. Although I had found previous arguments against sinography sufficiently convincing, many are still unaware that such arguments exist at all. Thus I began reading with the belief that, even should Hannas simply repeat points already made by others, another voice raised against sinography was better than none.
It turns out that Hannas, for better and for worse, goes beyond the work predecessors. The scope of this monograph is unprecedented. In contrast to earlier antisinographic literature, which focus on the writing systems of single languages, Hannas's book covers not only Chinese and Japanese, but also Korean and Vietnamese. AOD is a convenient English-language compendium of information on East Asian writing systems never before available in a single work. The first four chapters describe the past and present writing systems of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Besides sinography proper, the mixed kana-and-kanji script of Japan, hang ul, and the goat ngu' alphabet of Vietnam, Hannas also...