Why didn’t Chinese evolve to use some form of alphabet?
為什麼中文沒進化到使用字母表呢？
【美版知乎quora問答】
Mats Andersson, Professional translator, B. Sc. in Physics, M. Sc. in Applied Computer Science
Answered Dec 28 · Upvoted by Logan R. Kearsley, MA in Linguistics from BYU, 8 years working in research for language pedagogy.
The reason is political. 「Chinese」 is, linguistically speaking, not a language, but a group of languages. The spoken languages are no more similar to each other than English and German, and are not mutually intelligible. Consequently, any writing system based on pronunciation—like alphabets or syllabic scripts—would have to be based on one of the Chinese 「province languages」, and could not be understood by anyone from the wrong province, any more than the average Englishman is able to read and write German.
原因是政治上的。「漢語」不是一門語言，而是一組語言構成。其方言的差異不會超過德語和英語之間的差異，彼此聽不懂。因此，任何基於發音的書寫系統，如字母和音節，都必須以中國方言為基礎，其他省就看不懂了。而任何一個普通的英國人都能讀寫德語。
With ideograms, the entire country can share one writing system. It will not matter that the ideograms have wildly different pronunciations: they will stand for the same concept. You can imagine English and German using the same symbol for 「bicycle」, a small stylised picture of a bike, maybe consisting only of a pedal and four spokes so that you wouldn’t recognise it. It doesn’t matter that it’s pronounced 「Fahrrad」 in German—as long as you use the little picture, you both understand, much like the Smiley is used in virtually all languages today.
有了表意文字，整個國家都能使用同一個書寫系統。形意文字的發音不同，那沒關係，它們代表相同意思。你能想像英語和德語使用同一個符號代表「自行車」嗎。關於它的德語發音並不重要，只要你使用小符號，你們就能理解，正如現在幾乎所有語言都使用微笑符號一樣。
William Fisher, Speaks Chinese
Answered Thu · Upvoted by Logan R. Kearsley, MA in Linguistics from BYU, 8 years working in research for language pedagogy.
Tell me which is easier to read:
xià mén shì （ mǐn nán yǔ ： xià mén shì ， bái huà zì ： ē -bn ? g-chh ī ， mǐn pīn ： ê -bb ń g-c ? ， guó jì yīn biāo ： / e ? ? b ? ? ? ? ? ? i ? ? / （ shà mén huà dú yīn ） ， yóu zhèng shì pīn yīn ： Amoy （ lái zì zhāng zhōu huà dú yīn ） ） ， bié chēng lù dǎo ， jiǎn chēng lù ， shì zhōng huá rén mín gòng hé guó 15 gè fù shěng jí chéng shì zhī yī ， wǔ gè jì huá dān liè shì zhī yī ； shì zhōng guó zuì zǎo shí xíng duì wài kāi fàng zhèng cè dí sì gè jīng jì tè qū zhī yī ， wǔ gè kāi fā kāi fàng lèi guó jiā zōng hé pèi tào gǎi gé shì yàn qū zhī yī （ jí 「 xīn tè qū 」 ） ； shà mén piàn qū nà rù zhōng guó zuì zǎo dí sì gè zì yóu mào yì shì yàn qū zhī yī 「 zhōng guó （ fú jiàn ） zì yóu mào yì shì yàn qū 」 ， wéi liǎng àn xīn xīng chǎn yè hé xiàn dài fú wù yè hé zuò shì fàn qū 、 dōng nán guó jì háng yùn zhōng xīn 、 liǎng àn qū yù xìng jīn róng fú wù zhōng xīn hé liǎng àn mào yì zhōng xīn 。 2016 nián ， xià mén shì shì qū jiàn chéng qū 334 . 64 píng fāng gōng lǐ ， zhǔ chéng qū rén kǒu 392 wàn ， liǎng xiàng shù jù jūn jū fú jiàn dì yī wèi 。
Or,
廈門市（閩南語：廈門市，白話字：ē-bn?g-chhī，閩拼：ê-bbńg-c?，國際音標：/e?? b???? ??i??/
（廈門話讀音）
，郵政式拼音：Amoy
（來自漳州話讀音）
），別稱鷺島，簡稱鷺，是中華人民共和國15個副省級城市之一，五個計劃單列市之一；是中國最早實行對外開放政策的四個經濟特區之一，五個開發開放類國家綜合配套改革試驗區之一（即「新特區」）；廈門片區納入中國最早的四個自由貿易試驗區之一「中國（福建）自由貿易試驗區」，為兩岸新興產業和現代服務業合作示範區、東南國際航運中心、兩岸區域性金融服務中心和兩岸貿易中心。2016年，廈門市市區建成區334.64平方公裡，主城區人口392萬，兩項數據均居福建第一位。
Without even second guessing myself I can fully understand the Chinese character version of this text.With your supposed 「evolved」 alphabet I would be spending a few minutes scratching my head trying to decipher what all the ambiguous alphabets mean.
I often see the argument for romanized Chinese come from non-chinese who don’t have much understanding of the written Chinese language. Some of them can spit out a few 「你好嗎’s」 and 「麥當勞在哪裡’s」 and they come to the conclusion, 「Wow, this language is so simple, why even have characters?」
不用多想，就能完全明白這段話。你們所謂的「進化」字母，我要花幾分鐘絞盡腦汁地，試圖破解模稜兩可的字母到底什麼意思。
我經常看到那些以羅馬音化的中文作為論據的人，他們並非中國人，並不能理解漢字。他們能說出「你好嗎」「麥當勞在哪裡」，然後得出結論，哇，這門語言這麼簡單，為什麼沒字符？
Well, I can tell you, try to read a few novels in Chinese before you state that the language is so simple. I would rather blow my brains out than attempt to read through a piece of Chinese literature only using pinyin. For things like simple 口語, I guess Pinyin could suffice. However, with all the idioms and literary styles (like in classical Chinese) that the written chinese language has to offer, it would be a pain to read because every time I don’t understand something I would have to go look it up in a dictionary.
好，那我告訴你，在說這門語言簡單之前，試著讀幾本中文小說。我寧願腦袋開花，也不想用拼音讀一本中國文學作品。口語之類的簡單東西，拼音足以。但有成語和文學風格（如文言文），中文書面語就很重要了。每當不理解某個東西時，我不得不去查字典，那很痛苦。
For example, I just saw the idiom 花容月貌 , and I assumed that it had something to do with describing a beautiful woman or something, which seems to be the correct interpretation. However, if I saw this in pinyin I would once again have to look it up.
例如，我看到成語「花容月貌」，我猜這是描述某個漂亮的女人，這樣理解似乎正確。但如果用拼音看到這個詞，我就會再檢查一遍。
It honestly is a whole lot easier to just read Chinese in Chinese characters and not Pinyin. If you’re learning Chinese, then please learn it to the point where you can read literature. In my opinion, people who advocate fully romanizing Chinese and getting rid of the characters are either short sighted in the consequences or are ignorant of the complexities of written chinese, and the ambiguity and inefficiency in reading that romanizing the language would produce.
This is my opinion based in practicality.
老實說，用中文讀漢字而非採用拼音，更簡單。如果學中文，那請你學到能讀文學作品的程度。我認為，那些提倡羅馬音化中文的人，要麼對結果見識短淺，要麼無視了書面漢語的複雜性。在閱讀中，羅馬音化的語言會產生意義模糊、效率低下的情況。