Until 1443 the Koreans are reputed to have used Chinese characters to commit their thoughts to paper, oracle bones, tortoise shells, lavatory walls or whatever could be written upon.

However, during that memorable year of 1443, Korean King Seijong and a troupe of mighty Korean scholars developed the phonetic writing system of 'Han-Gul'. This important change meant that being literate was not for the gifted, the wealthy and those who managed to pass the Imperial examinations only but that every farmer could now learn to read and write by way of only a few dozen phonetic "letters".

The Koreans realized nearly 600 years ago that the multi-stroke, one word per character, Chinese-style way of writing was complicated, time wasting, hard to learn and inflexible as sounds cannot be accurately represented by an individual character (think of the Chinese way of writing Mozart: MO-ZHA-TE).

A recurring question which I was invariably asked was; "How is it that students in Europe and the US seem to have such a good time in high school and have plenty of time for parties and fun while the Chinese student is slaving away on his homework seemingly 24 hours a day and even during weekends and holidays?"

It is a great pity that Mao Zedong, rather than merely simplifying the traditional characters, did not take that extra step of Latinizing Chinese characters.

Every Chinese I have proposed this to told me that the Chinese language is so very special because a word written in pinyin can have four meanings on account of the tones. From my perspective, this is a non-issue as the tone indicator or sound changer can be superimposed, as with Vietnamese and, indeed, French and German and the Slavic languages.

Another frequently voiced objection is that many words sound the same but are represented by a different character. Well, yes, but the correct meaning can be made out from the context. After all, most other languages have the same problem.

I am told that the average high school student needs to have at his command about 7,000 Chinese Characters. An awful lot that is. As these all have to be learnt and practised, an enormous amount of time is spent (wasted?) on that, while his European and American buddies learn just 26 letters. This huge advantage translates into a time saving over a 12-year study period of around two whole years!

I am amused to see my Chinese friends writing in Chinese on the computer. The speediest and easiest way to learn seems to be the pin yin way.

So why not stick to pinyin in the first place?

I am aware that my suggestions are an oversimplification of the solution and that there will be hurdles to overcome. But when they are overcome and when they have got used to it, a billion Chinese will wonder why they ploughed on with such a cumbersome and hard to learn way of writing for 5,000 years.

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