It is actually not a myth to say that writing unified the Chinese cultures.
There are many many small groups of dialects in China, but we
all use this one written system which are the characters.
That makes things easier for people speaking different languages.
How do they understand each other? by written language -which is great!
So how does Chinese work?
A mountain may look just like a mountain with a peak in the middle.
And fire resembles some blazing logs. Put them together and you get volcano.
I know this bit is dog... So, like, my dogs are really cute, I guess?
Universal language schemes were particularly popular in the 17th century.
People would have assumed that the origin of language theologically was in
the Garden of Eden so the whole world would have spoken one language but then
with the Tower of Babel languages were broken into a multitude of languages.
Francis Bacon assumed that a language like Chinese and its writing system
would have qualified because of this special relationship between the sign and what it symbolised.
Tons... How many are there Hongping?
Oh I'm sorry, I don't know.
I don't know.
Obviously, it's too many.
2,000?
8,000?
9,000?
... A million?
Not quite, but it is is very hard to say.
That dictionary has around sixty four thousand characters.
If you know five thousand characters you're doing very well.
No!
Oh my God!
What do you think it means?
Oh right. It's "biang"!
This one word means that noodle?!
Yep, in fact...
The trouble is not just inventing one but getting people to use it.
Language needs a cultural context.
You cannot really just borrow or create.
Every year we lose hundreds of languages from this planet
and I would fear that a universal language might lead to cultural impoverishment.
I use very simple "like" and "dislike" and then I design my own sometimes.
They have to guess!