This article seems to completely ignore the fact that languages change over time on their own and attributes all differences between Literary Chinese and Modern Standard Chinese to contact with European languages, which is rather excessive. Lu Xun was interested in translation, but he was even more interested in writing for the common folk, i.e. not in some relexified foreign language. There are definitely some innovations that were originally used in translations (e.g. different characters for gendered pronouns that are pronounced identically) and of course there are loanwords, but I think most of the claims about grammar are false.
> I think most of the claims about grammar are false.
This part about "forced the English plural We [..] injecting mandatory number-specificity where context once sufficed" really struck me. Sounds cool for poetry to be ambiguous about this, but really now, how is an advanced society handling the practical matters of writing contracts and keeping records without it
> how is an advanced society handling the practical matters of writing contracts and keeping records without it
By "it" I guess you mean grammatical plurals? It's indeed semantically redundant. Say in a context of contracts, how is "3000.00 dollar" in any way more ambiguous than "3000.00 dollars"? The Chinese language indeed has been supporting an advanced society without grammatical plurals for thousands of years.
Fun fact: Luxun proposed dropping Hanzi entirely. The communist party conveniently forgets to teach that part to the youth because it doesn't fit their nationalist narrative.
We talked about this years ago. This is very much taught in the PRC (and I believe Taiwan for that matter). I specifically gave you examples of standardized tests that go over this material.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33312227
Luxun's works and opinions are far, far less well known in Taiwan than in the mainland.
Good to know!
You seem to be conflating "someone taught it at a university" with the apparently well evidenced view that Lu Xun's overwhelming coverage in popular media and secondary schooling neglects to point out his anti-character stance.
> apparently well evidenced view that Lu Xun's overwhelming coverage in popular media and secondary schooling neglects to point out his anti-character stance
What do you mean by "apparently well evidenced view?" No I'm not saying "someone taught it at university." That's a public high school exam. That is specifically secondary schooling.
Moreover, this gets mentioned in official publications and popular media frequently. See for example this official article from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (which is a state-run entity), which just happened to be the first article that caught my eye.
> 1935年12月，蔡元培、鲁迅、郭沫若、叶圣陶、茅盾、陈望道、陶行知等688位知名人士，共同发表文章《我们对于推行新文字的意见》，其中说：“中国已经到了生死关头，我们必须教育大众，组织起来解决困难。但这教育大众的工作，开始就遇着一个绝大难关。这个难关就是方块汉字。方块汉字难认、难识、难学。……我们觉得这种新文字值得向全国介绍。我们深望大家一齐来研究它，推行它，使它成为推进大众文化和民族解放运动的重要工具。” (http://ling.cass.cn/keyan/xueshuchengguo/cgtj/202112/t202112...)
And my very rough translation.
> In December of 1935, 688 well-known individuals including Cai Yuanpei, Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Ye Shengtao, Mao Dun, Chen Wangdao, and Tao Xingzhi, published "Our views on spreading Sin Wenz [Latinxua Sin Wenz, i.e. a Latin alphabetization of Chinese]." It stated in part, "China has already arrived at the point of life or death, we must educate the masses and organize [them] to solve difficulties. But the work of educating the masses, at its very beginning already runs into an enormous problem. That problem is Chinese square characters [Chinese characters usually are roughly proportioned as if they were in a square frame]. Chinese square characters are difficult to recognize, difficult to understand, and difficult to learn.... We believe that Sin Wenz deserves to be introduced to the entire nation. We deeply hope that everyone will study them, spread them and put them into practice, and make them into an important tool for improving the culture of the masses and the movement to liberate the people."
More broadly this is a very common topic among Chinese netizens. There are as I linked dozens of forum posts on this across Zhihu, Baidu, etc.
It's not the first thing people learn about Lu Xun. But it's definitely not hidden.
"Hidden" and "not taught" are two different things. I'm not claiming the knowledge is buried in a grand conspiracy, I'm just saying few know because it's not generally shared and this is policy. Source: 20 years of talking to people.
Even more than that: Romanization was the official goal of the Communist party until Stalin talked them out of it!
https://faroutliers.com/2004/04/24/how-stalin-and-the-cultur...
Nice! Didn't know that. I wonder if they Romanized transliterated 'Vissarionovich' as a test case. Regardless, with pinyin they certainly did a better job than the Taiwanese!
Pretty chilling evidence for the emergence of post-revolution Mandarin as newspeak, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
While pinyin might be "better", there's still a lot of room for something better than it