A Pan-Asian Look at Chinese Characters with Professor Handel

A Pan-Asian Look at Chinese Characters with Professor Handel

By Bruce Rutledge
The North American Post

Did you know that at one time in history, the spoken languages of Korea, Vietnam and Japan were all written in Chinese characters? Today, only Japan still incorporates Chinese characters into its written language, but at one point, Chinese script was used to write words and sounds in several totally different languages.

◀︎ Professor Zev Handel will deliver a free lecture at Kane Hall on April 3 entitled “Chinese Characters across Asia: Continuity an Transformation in Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese.”

If that piques your interest, then be sure to register for the free Washi Kai lecture at the University of Washington (UW) Kane Hall on April 3rd by UW Professor Zev Handel.   The lecture is titled “Chinese Characters across Asia: Continuity and Transformation in Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese.”   The lecture will provide an overview of Handel’s forthcoming book from UW Press.

Handel’s new book is not aimed at academia, and neither is his April 3 lecture. No prior knowledge of Chinese characters is required. Curiosity is all you need. However, if you do have knowledge of Chinese characters, Handel will be glad to help you dispose of some myths about them.

First, they are not pictographs. “There’s absolutely this belief, especially with people who know Chinese, that the characters convey their meaning just from the way they look,” he says. That is just not true.

The second myth is one of universality. It is the idea that “despite all these differences in what languages people speak, the character has this unwavering universal meaning that inheres inherits into it and thus can be used by people who speak any language,” Despite this, that is just not true. Handel says. “You can very much understand why people think that and come up with evidence that purports to support that, but when you dig into it deeper, what you realize is that it is the typical borrowing history that has created this illusion of inherent universality.”

Handel plans to turn part of his lecture into an interactive game where the audience is asked to imagine that they have no writing system. His goal is to have the lecture attendees use Chinese characters to express ideas in English.

This program is sponsored by Washin Kai, in collaboration with Seattle Chinese Post (Xi Hua Bao) Innovation Fund in Asian Languages, Literatures and Cultures.  Washin Kai, also known as Friends of Classical Japanese at UW, is a group of volunteers working to preserve and strengthen classical Japanese studies at UW.    To find out more about the group, go to www.washinkai.info.