為何韓國人放棄漢字而日本人選擇保留？韓國網友給出了深刻的見解

眾所周知韓日文字一直深受著中國漢字的影響，雖然韓國已經逐漸地用韓文替代掉漢字，但有些重要場合與文件的書寫仍然能看到漢字的應用，甚至於出土的文物和博物館的文物上都寫著漢字，這會對後代產生什麼影響又如何去解釋文物中的漢字呢？至於為什麼日語中保留了漢字，這幾乎需要一本書來回答。然而，簡而言之，如果沒有漢字，書面的日語會變得有些含糊不清，也就是說，會失去很多清晰的意思。至於他們使用或丟棄漢字的利弊，這個問題又變得相當複雜。也有網友在國外論壇上發出這樣的一個話題：為什麼韓國人放棄漢字?相反，日本人為什麼要保留漢字呢?使用或丟棄漢字的優點或缺點是什麼?

問題：為什麼韓國人放棄漢字?相反，日本人為什麼要保留漢字呢?使用或丟棄漢字的優點或缺點是什麼?

我們挑選了一個韓國網友的觀點，讓我們來看看他是怎麼說的吧？

韓國網友的觀點

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個問題，關於使用漢字的利弊。中文(漢字)是一種符號書寫系統，意思是漢字代表單詞和思想，而不是語音系統所代表的聲音。這意味著，為了能流利地讀寫中文，你需要認識成千上萬個漢字——漢字和單詞一樣多。

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.

這顯然需要一個巨大的學習曲線。掌握漢語需要多年的不斷記憶和使用，不像大多數孩子在一年之內就能學會拉丁字母。特別是韓文，因為其合理的設計(發音時輔音的形狀像你的嘴，母音是長音e和o的延伸)，所以更直觀，更容易學習。另一方面，漢字的書寫方式有一定的秩序和理性，但在大多數情況下，學習漢字只需要純粹的記憶。

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).

這種極端的學習難度和笨拙是大多數符號系統要麼已經滅絕，要麼進化成語音系統的原因。但中國依然存在。為什麼?首先，黃河流域最初的定居者是最早使用漢字的人，奠定了東亞文明的基礎，但隨著時間的推移，「中國」逐漸包括了更廣泛的土地、人民和文化。中國是東亞文化的大熔爐，不僅通過征服吸收新成員，而且通過被征服吸收新成員(蒙古人和滿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.

面對這麼多不同的人群，說著不同的語言，有一種標準化的交流方式是很重要的。但是語音系統只有在作者和讀者使用同一種語言時才會起作用。想想。這篇文章用的是和法語使用者相同的字母表，但因為我用英語說話，所以用英語寫作，法語使用者可能會發這些單詞的音，但他們不明白它的意思。這是語音系統的基本問題:它們交流聲音。如何將這些聲音轉化為意義取決於讀者。

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.

但中國人沒有這個問題。「北」字有很多不同的發音方式——普通話:bei;廣東話:貝克;日本(漢字):boku;朝鮮語(漢字):buk——但它總是意味著一件事:「北」。這意味著不管你說什麼語言，只要你知道這些字元並知道如何排列它們，你就可以和任何知道這些字元的人交流。

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.

如果這似乎是一個陌生的概念，請記住，今天世界上大多數地方使用的字元:1、2、3、4、5、6、7、8、9、0。事實上，阿拉伯數字是一種字元，它代表著一種不變的思想，儘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，中國的主要語言是普通話、粵語、湖南話，以及許多其他方言。現在70%的人口把普通話作為他們的第一語言，有一個符號系統可能看起來有點過分，但很久以前，在今天的中國，有幾十種甚至數百種語言。

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.

中國人需要一種方法來保持他們龐大的、多語言的帝國，因此它的解決方案是保留一個標準化的符號書寫系統。這一制度在彌合文化和語言差距方面是如此有效，以至於那些從未被納入中國的國家。韓國和日本採用中文作為官方文字系統。

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，總結一下:漢語是一種文字系統，與語音系統相比，它是極其難學和笨拙的。但與語音系統不同的是，漢語的優勢在於可以跨語言使用。

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.)

現在，回到韓國和日本的另外兩個問題。正如我所說的，自他們的文明開始以來，韓國和日本使用漢字，不僅因為它實際上是東亞唯一有凝聚力的書寫系統，而且因為它允許他們與中國、彼此以及所謂的「中國圈」中的其他國家進行互動。而且，也許更重要的是，中國是東亞(對韓國人和日本人來說就是世界)的知識、文化和政治中心，所有的學習書籍都是用中文寫的。這是正確的。他們所有人。(我的意思是，畢竟中國人佔東亞人口的80-90% !當然，他們是大多數東亞文學、哲學、治國之道、科學等的鼻祖。)

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世紀，韓國和日本的上流社會男性都對韓文、平假名、片假名等母語語音體系不屑一顧。為了受教育，你顯然需要閱讀，但為了閱讀，你必須學習漢字。直到19世紀，很少有書籍被翻譯成各自的母語，因此，韓國和日本的受過教育的精英(完全是貴族男性)看不起韓文或平假名/片假名，認為這是浪費時間。

牌匾都是漢字

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.

但對其他人來說，語音書寫系統並不是那麼糟糕。韓國和日本在民族和文化上都是同質的國家，因此他們實際上都說同一種語言:朝鮮語和日語。當你所有的鄰居和朋友都和你說同一種語言時，當你只會學習幾十個輔音和母音時，為什麼要費勁去學習成千上萬個字元呢?因此，韓文和平假名被用作一種交流的方式，並被用來寫詩、小說和歌曲。但由於上層社會的男性忙於用漢語閱讀中國的經典、歷史和哲學，只有上層社會的女性和一些下層社會的人使用這些體系。

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.

這一切在19世紀發生了改變，西方帝國最終將注意力轉向了東亞。鴉片戰爭後，清朝屈服了，朝鮮和日本越來越清楚地意識到，他們需要迅速實現現代化。但現代化的關鍵首先是教育——不是儒家哲學——而是數學、科學，也許最重要的是，自己國家的歷史。

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.

為了做到這一點，韓國和日本社會必須徹底改革他們的教育系統，事實上，這是兩個國家朝著現代化邁出的第一步。但是為了教育大眾，他們需要學習如何閱讀和快速學習。為了做到這一點，兩個國家都實施了漢字和本土語音系統的混合系統——日本今天仍在使用這種方法。

日本每年評選的年度漢字

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.

一般來說，漢字通常用於句子的實際語義(有意義的詞)，而語音系統(韓國是韓文，日本通常是平假名，有時是片假名)用於語法詞。這種體系並不完全是新的——韓國人和日本人幾百年來都是這樣做的，只是程度較低——但這些改變使韓文和假名標準化並得到提升。

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.

在明治時期的日本，關於如何讓書寫日文變得更容易的爭論非常激烈，一些人認為漢字幾乎完全被假名取代了。這最終沒有發生，原因有很多，其中之一是平假名和片假名從來就不是單獨使用的。平假名實際上是由漢字的草書形式衍生而來的，以使日文的閱讀和書寫更流暢。

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.

然後，兩個假名形式都是音節，而不是字母，這意味著它們表示音節，而不是輔音和母音。這篇文章已經很長了，所以請相信我的話，與字母相比，音節表本身並不容易使用。人們找到了一個折衷的辦法，這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，當日本人繼續使用混合系統時，韓國人開始越來越多地採用韓文——與平假名或片假名不同，韓文是一種完全獨立使用的字母表。韓國民族主義的興起進一步提高了韓文的受歡迎程度，到世紀之交，韓文幾乎只出現在許多主要出版物和書籍中。

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.

也就是說，他們一直使用漢字或混合文字，直到1910年韓國合併，但即使在日本殖民統治的頭幾十年，韓文繼續發展，甚至在韓國的一些公立學校教授。1938年，日本帝國主義為了消滅韓國文化而禁止使用韓語和韓文，直到那時，韓文已經深深植入了韓國人的心理和文化認同，甚至在在暗地裡秘密教授。

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.

但最後說到你的問題，直到日本人離開，朝鮮和韓國都牢固建立起來，韓文才幾乎完全取代了漢語。對朝鮮來說，1949年發生了變化，政府宣布韓文是唯一合法的書寫系統，並完全禁止使用漢字。對於南方來說，這個過程是循序漸進的。韓國政府確實在70年代推動了韓文的專用，但這種轉變在一定程度上也是自然的。

韓國春聯

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.

現在，韓文已經完全標準化，並在全國範圍內普及，在韓國幾乎沒有必要使用漢字。畢竟，書籍和信件總是可以翻譯的。我還要補充一點，因為在鍵盤上輸入韓文比中文要容易得多，漢字在現代韓國的衰落只是在過去幾十年里加速了，而且在不久的將來複興的可能性很小。

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.

以上就是對漢字利弊的簡短(但仍然很長)解釋，以及韓國和日本是如何走到今天的。這一切都歸結於這些社會需要什麼。中國人需要一個系統來把不同的人聚集在一起，而韓國人和日本人需要利用這個系統來利用中國巨大的知識財富和外交網路。

你認同他的觀點嗎？歡迎大家留言討論或點贊。