That true, but I definitely remember my Chinese teacher (born and studied in China, did grad school here) telling us that it takes much longer for Chinese students to learn to read.
Some more googling looking for something similar to compare is that Chinese students know enough characters to read simple newspaper articles at age 11 or so. While a 6 or 7 year old American student can read simple newspaper articles.
Most Chinese in urban schools are mostly literate by sixth grade, and can probably read simple articles by 7-8 years old. The average time to read is probably brought down by rural schools, people forget China still isn’t all rich cities with college-bound students in public schools past the last compulsory 9th grade.
It’s likely that the rural students are bringing the average down, but it seems less likely they could bring the average down so far given that only 1/3 of the country is rural.
Either way there seems to be a pretty strong consensus that one of the advantages of a phonetic alphabet is ease and time to learn.
Obviously a phonetic language has other disadvantages compared to a logographic language.
Kids going to trade school after 9th grade are fairly common in many lower tier cities, and many of the poorer provinces. Technically urban, but bringing the average down.
But ok, Chinese is semi-logographic/semi-phonetic (many words are made just by characters with the right sound) at this point, which is a confusing hot mess and requires more effort to be completely literate, but only a year or two of more effort compensated for by a more accelerated math in elementary school (well, at least for city kids).
I’m talking about kids between 6 and 11 years old so dropping out in 9th grade seems not completely relevant. But if we’re talking about subsegments of the population bringing down the average, removing a few low performing states from the US would drastically change the average here too.
>requires more effort to be completely literate, but only a year or two of more effort compensated for by a more accelerated math in elementary school
I’m not sure what you meant by compensated for. I’m discussing the differences between writing systems. Not which country has a better education system.
To be followed by a life of trying to remember the f**ing classical Chinese character that you read once 30 years ago, used twice and now can neither remember nor find in a dictionary.
I see this almost every time I meet with Chinese friends: they have forgotten one or more particular ideograms that have a particular meaning and simply cannot recover them w/o extensive discussion with their educated Chinese peers. They chalk it up to their faulty memory: I chalk it up to a faulty language.
sachertorte (well, "sarchertech") says "Obviously a phonetic language has other disadvantages compared to a logographic language."
Apparently not enough to be mentioned on this thread!8-))
Here's an interesting Reddit thread that discusses modern languages on a scale ranging from purely phonetic to purely logographic:
https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/bv7r1p/wh...
While I must admit I would give a rat's ass (but not much more) to know any common logographic language today, I would never go to the trouble to learn one. The effort is simply too great, the payoff too limited, and there are other better ways to use the rest of my life.