Impact of Language-Computer-Interface

On National Economy and Productivity

By Sing Lin, Ph.D.

Member of National Council of Chinese Institute of Engineers – USA

Member of Board of Directors of National Taiwan University Alumni Association – Greater New York

April 2001

E-Mail: sing-lin@monmouth.com

Web Site: www.singlin.com

Mobile Phone: 732-670-5686, Fax: 732-946-7148

Abstract

The Japanese economic power was number one in the whole world in the 1980s. However, in the 1990s and beyond, the relative economic powers of Japan and the USA were reversed. The Japanese economy has slumped for more than a decade and still has not recovered. Paul Krugman, an MIT Professor in Economics, pointed out that the combined effect of language and the Internet revolution started in the 1990s is one of several important factors causing such a dramatic reversal of economic power.

This paper focuses on the language-computer-interface issues and provides more detailed information and examples to illustrate the serious impact of language-computer-interface problems on the national economy and productivity in the modern Internet and pervasive computing environment. These language-computer-interface problems put the Asian industries and economies at a great disadvantage to compete at the Internet speed in the Information Age with those highly developed countries with alphabet-based languages.

This paper also points to the Phonetic Chinese Language (PCL) invented by Dr. Victor C. Yeh as an effective solution to eliminate the language-computer-interface problems for Chinese industry and its economy. Adoption of PCL can eliminate such language-computer-interface obstacles and provides the necessary condition for Chinese industry and its economy to advance into the very elite group of highly developed countries competing on high-profit-margin type of Hi-Tech and intellectual based industries.

1. Reversal of Relative Economical Powers of Japan and USA from 80s to 90s

1.1 Japan as Number One in 1980s

In 1980s, Japan had the strongest economic power in the whole world while USA was in a recession with a lot of bankruptcies of companies and individuals and a lot of failures of Savings-and-Loan financial institutions. Many American workers were laid off and had no jobs during those difficult years. On the other hand, with their great wealth, many Japanese companies and people came to USA to buy up many companies, real estates, fancy hotel chains, and even the Rockefeller Center in New York City. The Rockefeller Family and the Rockefeller Center had been a very proud symbol of US wealth for many decades. When the Japanese company purchased and took over the Rockefeller Center, it caused quite a big uproar among many American people, almost equivalent to that of Japanese bombing of the Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The bookstores in USA carried many best-seller books on the superior Japanese management styles that many US managers were working very hard to study and to learn.

One of such books in the 1980s entitled "Japan as No. 1" — predicted that Japan would dominate virtually every industry worth being in, and that the United States in decline would be left to play a supporting role.

1.2 Can Japan Compete in 1990s and Beyond?

However, in 1990s and into the new millennium, the relative economic powers of Japan and USA reversed. USA is enjoying the longest economic growth while Japanese economy slumps for more than a decade with slow growth, bankruptcies and record unemployment. The Japanese economy cannot recover from the slump in spite of many economic stimulation initiatives taken by the Japanese government. The Japan’s public debt is the biggest in the world in absolute terms, and Japan has the highest percentage of debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), now approaching 129%, among major industrialized nations. In testifying before Japan Parliament on March 9, 2001, Kiichi Miyazawa, Japan’s finance minister, warned that the Japan’s economy is near collapse.

One of the most widely talked about Japan books these days, written jointly by two Japanese and one American scholar, bears the stark title "Can Japan Compete?" During the 5-day 2001 Annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland in the last week of January 2001, there was a discussion session devoted to Japan. In this Japan Session, there was much grim talk about the depressed stock prices, the possible collapse of Japan banking system, and what has become a perennial flirtation with recession in Japan. Many Japanese banks remain saddled with an untold (and undisclosed) sea of unrecoverable debts. In his closing remarks at the session, a leading Japanese industrialist, Minoru Makihara, the chairman of Mitsubishi, reportedly raised a copy of the book "Can Japan Compete?" and recommended it to the audience.

1.3 What Caused Such Reversal?

What caused such a dramatic reversal of the relative economic powers between Japan and USA from 80s to 90s? The attached article entitled “Want Growth? Speak English” written by Paul Krugman, an MIT Professor in Economics, in the April 26, 1999 issue of the Fortune Magazine provides some clues. The combined impact of the language-computer-interface and the Internet revolution started in the 1990s on the high speed competition on the information superhighway is one of several important reasons causing such reversal as explained in the following sections.

1.4 Competition at Internet Speed

According to John Chambers, President and CEO of Cisco, "If you're not driving your productivity up by 5 to 10 percent per year, you're not going to have profits in the future," he said. "It will be an era where the fast beats the slow. It's not the large beating the small or the small beating the large." 

In a new book entitled "Creative Destruction" by Richard Foster, a senior partner and director at McKinsey and Company, and his colleague Sarah Kaplan, Foster and Kaplan divide the business landscape into the quick and the dead: companies not quick enough to reinvent themselves will soon be dead. The authors note that of the original Standard & Poor's 500 companies selected in 1957, only 74 remained on the list in 1998 and only 12 outperformed the index over that span. In 25 years, they predict, two-thirds of today's most prominent corporations will have died or been acquired. "They are too damn slow to keep pace with change in the markets," the authors say.

2. Impact of Language-Computer-Interface on National Productivity in the Internet based Information Technology Era

In the International Standard Meeting on the Global Third Generation (G3G) Wireless Mobile System Standard in London in March 1999, Japanese representatives pressed very hard on the FAX capability of 3G wireless systems. There was a lot of discussion of FAX related issues in this wireless standard meeting.

In Japan, mainland China and Taiwan, the written or printed words are characters that are more like picture drawings (i.e., ideograms or pictographs) and are not alphabetical. The process for language-computer-interface of such characters (ideograms) by common people is very slow and troublesome as compared to those for alphabets in the western countries.

2.1 Efficiency of Language-Computer-Interface and Fax in Asia

A 5-minute typed English letter may take one to two hours of computer input for Japanese or Chinese characters for the same content of the letter. In Asia, it is still much faster to write a Japanese or Chinese letter by hand writing than by computer typing for common people (i.e. not specially trained as full-time dedicated typists). The difficulty in generating Asian computer files quickly is caused not only by the slow speed of computer input of Asian language characters but also by several other serious language-computer-interface problems described in Sections 4.1 to 4.8.

Due to such big difference in the efficiency of language-computer-interface, many people in Asia are still using hand written notes, instead of computer typed notes, for quick communication. Obviously, such hand written notes need to be transmitted by Fax, not by E-Mail.

In 1997-1998 timeframe, I, in USA, worked with a Chinese engineering manager, Mr. X, in Taiwan on a project for about one year. We exchanged a lot of information frequently during that one-year period. I sent him many E-Mails typed in English. Mr. X received my English E-Mails and his responses to my E-Mails were often hand written Chinese notes sent by Fax. He could have typed those notes by Chinese computer word processor and sent them by E-Mails to me. But he often uses hand written Chinese notes and Fax because the Chinese language computer input is much too slow as compared to the speed of handwriting.

Therefore, the usage of Fax transmission in Asia is almost equivalent to that of E-Mail in the USA and in Europe. Efficient Fax transmission capability is, therefore, very important in Asia.

2.2 Disadvantage of Fax Communication vs. E-Mail Communication

However, the Fax transmission of hand written notes in Asia is still far less efficient than E-Mail transmission of computer typed notes in western world. Hand written notes lack:

(1)      The great advantage of software based highly flexible “cut and paste” revision and editing capability, and

(2)      The highly automatic spelling-and-grammar checking and correction capability

of computer word processing in the western world to compose and to issue a high quality and precision letter quickly and efficiently. To produce a professional high quality letter by handwriting, the handwritten letter has to be re-written several times very carefully because hand-written letter has no revision capability. Any revision or mistake means that the whole document has to be re-written again carefully. Due to this disadvantage, most hand written notes are not of the professional quality, especially if they are written quickly. Some add-on revisions on the paper margins or between the lines and corrections on the lines often make the handwritten note looks like chicken scratches and are often difficult to read and to understand accurately.

Furthermore, the handwritten notes are often sent through Fax transmission multiple times from person A who sent it by Fax to person B who in turn sent it to person C, etc. Such multiple Fax transmissions can cause very severe degradation of the quality of the pages such that the notes become very difficult to read.

Reading such chicken-scratch style of handwritten notes with added impairments of poor Fax transmissions is more error prone leading to frequent misunderstandings in such “sloppy” communications relative to the E-Mail communication.

2.3 Disadvantage of Paper Mail vs. E-Mail

The contrast in the efficiency is even more obvious when a document of many pages needs to be sent to a large number (e.g., > 100) of recipients.

I was the president of the Chinese Institute of Engineers – USA/Greater New York Chapter (CIE-USA/GNYC) in 1998 and 1999. In this capacity, I often need to distribute information to several hundred members of CIE-USA/GNYC. When the information is in English, it often comes to me in soft copy (in the form of an E-Mail). I can easily forward it to all members by E-Mails (and attachments) with only a few keystrokes on the computer and the whole process takes only a couple minutes.

On the other hand, when the information is in Chinese language, the document often comes to me in the form of a multiple-page hard copy (paper document) through Fax or through postal mail. Distributing such multiple-page Chinese paper document to several hundred members then becomes a very big job for me either by Fax or by paper mail. The whole process often takes several days instead of a couple minutes.

For example, paper mail in this case means that I have to go through the following 20 tedious steps involving heavy work of many people over several days:

(1)     Go out of my office to a stationary store to buy several hundred envelops,

(2)     Call Membership Officer of CIE-USA/GNYC to print and to mail me the name- and-address labels of all members,  (Sometimes, I have to wait for several days for such package of address labels to arrive by postal mail, especially if the Membership Officer happened to be out of town on a business trip.)

(3)     Come home to peel off several hundred name-and-address labels from the label papers and glue them onto several hundred envelopes,

(4)     Stamp my return address on several hundred envelops,

(5)     Go to a suitable copy center to make several hundred photo copies of the multiple-page document,

(6)     Staple several hundred sets of photo copies of multiple-page documents,

(7)     Fold several hundred sets of multiple-page documents so that they can fit into the envelopes, (At this point, I had several big piles of folded documents and envelopes occupying a lot of space on my desks,)

(8)     Squeeze several hundred sets of folded documents into several hundred envelopes,

(9)     Seal several hundred envelopes,

(10) Go to post office to buy several hundred US domestic stamps and some foreign-country-bound-stamps because some members of CIE-USA/GNYC now work and live outside of USA (e.g., in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore or mainland China),

(11) Come home to peel off several hundred stamps and glue these stamps onto several hundred envelopes,

(12) Peel off and glue “Via-Air-Mail” labels on those envelopes going to members living outside of USA to make sure that those envelops go by air mail instead of surface mail,

(13) Carry three big bags containing several hundred heavy envelopes and go to post office to mail these hundreds of documents,

(14)  I did Step (13) once during an evening near Christmas day. After I pushed one big bag of many heavy envelopes into the postal box, the postal box became full because of many other Christmas cards in the box. I, then, had to drive around several streets in the evening to find another postal box so that I could push the remaining two big bags of heavy envelopes into the postal box,

(15) Come home to gather all the receipts of expenses in steps (1) to (14),

(16) Generate a list of itemized expenses in steps (1) to (14) and the total cost,

(17) Mail the list of itemized expenses and total cost with all the receipts to the treasurer of CIE-USA/GNYC,

(18) After receiving the list of itemized expenses and the receipts, the treasurer writes and mails a check to me to reimburse me for these expenses,

(19) The treasurer enters the total cost into the accounting book of CIE-USA/GNYC,

(20) After receiving the check from the treasurer by postal mail, I write a bank deposit slip and bring the deposit slip and the check to the bank to deposit the check into my checking account through a bank teller.

Furthermore, the paper mail typically takes several days, instead of seconds, to reach the recipients. The responses from the recipients back to the sender again will go through the tedious and slow process as compared to the speedy E-Mail response.

In addition to the tedious and slow process described in (1) to (20), the paper mail process is also much more expensive than the E-Mail process because of the costs of several hundred postal stamps, envelops, name-and-address labels, via-air-mail labels, photocopies of multiple-page documents, and the time-value for days of work of an engineering manager plus the involvements of three additional people (i.e., the membership officer and the treasurer of CIE-USA/GNYC and a bank teller).

Worse yet, there were cases when I was simply too busy with my regular engineering job and had no time to do the tedious process (1) to (20), I simply did not distribute such multiple-page paper documents such that several hundred members missed such information. At this point, some readers may question whether the president of CIE-USA/GNYC is always doing its job well. My response is that the soft copy of English document for E-Mail distribution vs. the hard paper copy of Chinese document makes a big difference for efficient distribution to several hundred members.

The paper-document process (1) to (20) involves the work of many people including President, membership officer and treasurer of CIE-USA/GNYC, a bank teller, many post service people, mail truck drivers and even airplane pilot(s) to sort and to deliver several hundred sets of paper documents to several hundred recipients. It is obvious that this paper-document process involves heavy work of many people and definitely cannot be completed within one day as a sharp contrast to the speedy and efficient Internet based E-Mail process that involves only one person and only 2 minutes of work to get it done.

How can Asian countries ever catch up with the west if such inefficient processes had to be repeated millions of times each year in business, industry and government?

2.4 Efficiency, National Productivity and Per Capita Income

I hope that you begin to see the big picture on the serious impacts of language-computer-interface on the national productivity and economy in the new era of Internet and pervasive computing. In English world, business activities and HiTech R&D activities are taking place at lightening speed whereas in Asia, not only business activities and R&D activities are taking place at much slower speed but also the tedious process (1) to (20) often causes some business activities to breakdown or to simply drop dead.

During the year 2000, the US postal services delivered 101 billion pieces of mail.  During the same year, there were 4 trillion E-Mails sent in the US.  This 40 to 1 ratio is another illustration of the importance of Internet and E-Mail in the highly productive US industry and economy.

The per capita incomes of under-developed countries, developing countries and highly developed countries are in the order of a few hundred US dollars, a few thousand US dollars and twenty-five thousand US dollars or more respectively. The majority of the world population is still in the under-developed and developing countries.

Even though computers are all over the place in highly developed countries such as USA, U.K., Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, etc., only about one percent of the world population own computers as of the year 2000. In this sense, most people who live in the highly developed countries can be considered as a very elite group enjoying very high standards of living and doing high-profit-margin type of intellectual based jobs.

When a country moves from the status of an under-developed country into the status of a developing country, the per capita income may increase from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars with a fantastic growth of 1000 % without the use of E-Mails, Internet and alphabetical language. Many people in such developing countries may be very busy working very hard. But they are working very hard in the brute-force mode of tedious process (1) to (20) described in Section 2.3 on the low-profit-margin cheap-labor type of industries. If a country is content with staying at this level of low-margin and cheap-labor industries, then the language-computer-interface issues described in this paper are not important and can be ignored. An obvious consequence of staying at this level is relatively low per capita income and low quality of life as compared to those in highly developed countries.

On the other hand, if a country wants to advance into the elite group of highly developed countries competing on high-profit-margin type of HiTech and intellectual based industries, then the impacts of language-computer-interface, E-Mail, Internet and Information Technologies on national productivity and economy become very important issues. The brute-force cheap labor type of work done by a team of 30 people in a developing country working for one week can be accomplished easily by one person in 2 minutes using suitable IT tools in a highly developed country as demonstrated by the example described in Section 2.3. Such big difference in productivity and efficiency is an important factor contributing to the big differences in the per capita incomes and in the qualities of life among the under-developed countries, the developing countries and the highly developed countries.

3. Internet Revolution and the Efficiency

We are going through the Internet revolution. The Internet has been growing exponentially in the 90s. It has been changing the landscape of many things such as re-shuffling of the rank ordering of the financial performance of many companies and even many countries. The English language with efficient language-computer-interface coupled with the explosive growth of Internet enabled the US industry and economy to take off in the 1990s and to leave the Japanese economy behind in the dust.

On the other hand, the inefficient Asian language-computer-interfaces and the Fax transmitted chicken scratches put the Asian countries and economies at a great disadvantage with respect to the lightening speed in the English based Internet world.

4. The Problems

4.1 Homonym Problem in Computer Input

An article in The New York Times entitled “In China, Computer Use Erodes Traditional Handwriting, Stirring a Cultural Debate” by Jennifer Lee on February 1, 2001, indicates that more than 97 percent of computer users in mainland China type by phonetically spelling out the sounds of the characters in a transliteration system, called Pinyin, that is based on the Latin alphabet (English alphabet) Since the official Mandarin pronunciations of Chinese characters have four possible different tones, the Pinyin system adds a number, ranging from 1 to 4, at the end of the Pinyin spelling to represent the correct tone for the sound syllable.

Similarly, most computer users in Taiwan type by phonetically spelling out the sounds of the characters by another system known as Zhuyin (i.e., Bo Po Mo Fo). The Zhuyin system uses one of four different symbols to represent the correct pronunciation tone of a Chinese character in Mandarin.

However, a common problem in both Pinyin and Zhuyin input methods is that there are often a large number (e.g., > 30) of Chinese characters that sound the same for each and every sound syllables (i.e., homonyms everywhere) including the tone. The Chinese word processing software then offers the user two or three long lists of characters that fit the same pronunciation. The computer user then has to scroll through these two or three long lists and stare very hard at these long lists of homonyms to pick the right one before the user can complete the input of one Chinese character into the computer.

Since Chinese characters often pact a lot of complicated strokes into a very tiny space, the user often has to stare very hard at these long lists of homonyms to pick the right one because the font sizes for these lists of homonyms in the Chinese word processors are often very small. Such frequent long lists of homonyms are the root cause for the slow speed of Chinese character computer input.

Both the Pinyin and Zhuyin systems of typing and character selection are time-consuming and awkward, but they are popular because they require less training. Other Chinese character computer input systems may be faster but require a large amount of memorization and more intensive training and, therefore, are not very popular.

4.1.1 The Keys To National Productivity

In the issue of slow computer input, we are NOT comparing the computer input speeds of specially trained typists. By special intensive training, these specialized typing people can memorize and use various special tricks or special input methods to speed up their computer input speeds no matter which language is involved.

What we are comparing in this paper are “national” productivities that involve everybody in the entire nation. They include accountants, lawyers, secretaries, engineers, scientists, librarian, physicians, pharmacists, workers, supervisors, managers, department heads, general managers, vice presidents, Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), teachers, professors, students, bankers, newspaper writers, editors, sales people, travel agents, attendants of airline counters or rental car counters, clerks, managers and high-level officials in various government offices and private industry offices, etc. (Please also see more examples in Section 4.6.) These average citizens do not have time for specialized intensive typing training and cannot remember many special tricks to speed up their computer input speeds.

On the other hand, there is no homonym problem in English. People just keep on typing away as fast as they can without the need for special training and without having to use any special tricks. In English world, typing on computer is faster than handwriting for most people. Practically everybody use computer and E-Mail as tools to do his/her work and job more efficiently. Very few people in English world use handwriting to produce letters or reports to be issued to other people these days.

The efficiency and the productivity of these average citizens are the keys to the national productivity and economy. The critical questions on language-computer-interface and national productivity in the modern Internet and pervasive computing environment are:

How user friendly is the computer input process for average citizen?

How fast and easy can the “average citizen” in the whole nation input information into the computers?

4.2 Problems in Data Processing and Database Management

In addition to the impacts of the speed of computer inputs, there are other aspects of language that can also have strong impacts on the national productivities and economy. For example, in the modern Information Technology world, a lot of important data are stored in various kinds of computers ranging from mainframe computers to desktop PCs to notebook PCs and down to handheld PCs (e.g., PDAs). To be useful, these computer stored data need to be sorted, listed, processed, categorized, filed, managed, searched, matched and retrieved efficiently. Nothing could surpass the power of a natural alphabetic sort for a language!

For information stored in the format of Chinese characters/ideograms:

How do we sort, list, process, file, search and retrieve such Chinese information efficiently and easily?

Is there a simple and logical sequencing for sorting many thousands of Chinese ideograms that is easy to use and to remember?

How do we manage large Chinese database efficiently?

How easy it is for average citizens to search and to retrieve important information from large Chinese database in the computers?

The most efficient information processing is based on alphabetic sort and list.  Efficient search engines for categorical, topical, geographical, biographical, medical, etc. information could then be developed.

Since neither Pinyin nor Zhuyin can uniquely identify with a single Chinese ideogram, let alone thousands of ideograms, it is completely impossible to develop an alphabetic sort for Chinese information based on Pinyin or Zhuyin.  This inevitably leads to poor and inefficient database management for Chinese information.

4.3 Problems of 2-Byte Coding for Asian Ideograms

4.3.1 Reason for 2-Byte Coding for Asian Ideograms

The computer internal code for English alphabet is a 7-bit code known as the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), which is a part of the United Nations Standards (now known as the International Standards Organization, or ISO). To minimize transmission errors, however, a leading bit is added for parity checking. Thus, the one-byte (8 bits) format became the telecommunication transmission standard throughout the world since the 1950s. Although the parity checking is no longer used in modern days, the byte-size transmission standard and the 7-bit language code remain. A 7-bit code provides a total coding space for 128 characters, of which 34 characters are reserved for telecommunication use and others, such as "shift", "space", "delete", etc.  The permissible coding space for a 7-bit code is only 94 characters, which is sufficient for all phonetic based alphabetical languages.

However, the Asian languages, such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, have many thousands of ideograms (characters) which far exceed the capacity (i.e., coding space) of the 256-character set of the 8-bit byte. Therefore, the Asian languages need to use the 16-binary-bit based 2-byte coding systems to have enough capacity.

Thus, two-byte coding systems have been used to code the Chinese ideograms. The 2-byte coding system used in mainland China is known as GB (Guo Biao) code and the 2-byte coding system used in Taiwan is known as BIG 5 code. They all have the leading-bit set to "1".

In current telecommunication practice when the leading-bit is set to "0" (lower half of the byte) it signifies one-byte format.  When the leading-bit is set to "1" it signifies two-byte format, i.e. the two successive bytes are to be taken as a single unit (character).

4.3.2. Problems in Editing 2-Byte Coded Chinese Files

However, the computer systems and the telecommunication networks have been designed mostly based on the single byte system in English. The use of 2-byte coding systems for Asian languages in such single-byte based computer and telecommunication environment is much more fragile and vulnerable to errors.

For example, when a user using the “Delete” key or the “Backspace” key on the keyboard to delete a Chinese character, the user must press the key twice to delete the two-byte pair representing a single Chinese character. Pressing such key only once will result in an error in the Chinese document file. Worse yet, when the automatic Space Padding function of some Chinese word processing software systems is activated, then each Chinese ideogram is represented by three bytes including the padded space, which is counted as one byte. In this case, the user must press the “Delete” key or the “Backspace” key three times to do the correct task of deleting the Chinese character. Otherwise, it will cause an error in the Chinese document file. When a user uses various editing functions such as Move, Delete, Copy, Change Size. Change Color, etc., the user must make sure that the curser has marked the complete 2-byte pair of each Chinese character to be edited. Otherwise, the editing operation will result in errors in the Chinese document file.

4.3.3 Chain Reaction and Impact of One Error Bit

According to Dr. Victor C. Yeh, the 2-byte coded Chinese ideograms are also very vulnerable to bit errors when such computer-generated files are either transmitted over the telecommunication networks or are copied. In the computer and telecommunication standard, if a leading-bit of a byte is a "0" it is treated as in the one-byte format (ASCII - English), and each byte and successive bytes represent a letter.  On the other hand, if a leading-bit is a "1" then each pair of bytes (two bytes) is treated as a unit as:  (AB) (AB) (AB) ...... for code-table look up for 2-byte coded characters such as Chinese or Japanese.

However, in the transmission or copying of two-byte formatted files, if the leading-bit "1" of the A byte is in error (i.e., flipped from 1 to 0), then A byte is interpreted as an ASCII character (an English letter) instead of one-half of the 2-byte coded Asian character AB. Then the remaining string becomes (BA) (BA) (BA) .....  instead of the intended (AB) (AB) (AB) ….. Thus the interpretations of all the following Chinese (or Japanese) characters are completely wrong till the end of a paragraph.  This is true either using GB code in mainland China or BIG 5 code in Taiwan since both are in two-byte format. In other words, one bit error can affect not only the particular byte containing the errored bit, but can also cause a chain reaction (or error propagation) such that all 2-byte coded Asian characters following this error in a long paragraph are all wrong.

Therefore, the editing errors in Section 4.3.2 and error propagation problem in Section 4.3.3 can give Asian computer users a lot of troubles and greatly slow down their efficiency in using computers to do their Asian language based work.

4.4 One-Year Lag in Language Proficiency for Chinese Children

My classmate, Dr. Ephrem Cheng, indicates that our legacy ideogram-based Chinese language is more artistic with great depth as compared to those alphabet-based languages. However, the artistic nature of Chinese language with its great depth requires a lot of repeated practices and a lot of memorization by Chinese children to master many thousands of highly complicated Chinese ideograms. It usually takes at least one more year of intensive training for Chinese children to reach a comparable level of proficiency in the use of the (more complex, analog like) Chinese language vs. English school children of the same age and school grade, say in North America.

On the other hand, in this modern world of Internet speed competition and global economy (enabled mainly by the PC and Internet proliferation), one years of time lag is a very big factor in the intellectual development of the whole generation of Chinese children. The artistic depth and difficult learning process have to give way to efficiency and productivity in modern fast-paced and technology-driven societies.

This unpleasant phenomenon of losing Chinese handwriting ability is already happening among the Chinese frequent users of computers anyway and is stirring cultural debates in China. According to the article in The New York Times entitled “In China, Computer Use Erodes Traditional Handwriting, Stirring a Cultural Debate” by Jennifer Lee on February 1, 2001, the Chinese frequent users of computers are gradually losing their artistic skills of handwriting Chinese ideograms due to the lack of frequent practices. It becomes a one-way process for these frequent computer users. They can read, recognize and understand Chinese ideograms, but their artistic skills for handwriting many thousands of complicated ideograms are fading away. This is an inevitable trend as the use of computer become more popular in the increasing technology driven economy and societies in the future.

Dr. Ephrem Cheng further elaborates that our legacy Chinese ideogram-based language can be considered as an analog language which is more artistic whereas the Phonetic Chinese Language (PCL), described in Section 6, can be considered as a modern scientific system to “digitize” our legacy analog language and to make it more suitable and efficient in the modern Internet and pervasive computing environment.

4.5 Incompatibility due to Lack of Standard

4.5.1. Incompatible Internal Coding Systems

At least six different kinds of computer internal coding systems (GB code, GBCJK code, BIG5 code, BIG5CJK code, TBCJK code, and Unicode) are being used to code Chinese ideograms and they are not compatible. When the wrong internal coding system is activated on a received Chinese file, sometimes all the Chinese characters show up such that the Chinese file looks normal on the surface. However, when one reads the file for contents, the file makes no sense at all. Then the reader realizes that all those Chinese characters in the file are garbage because of the use of wrong internal coding system.

Some Chinese files are generated on the Microsoft Chinese Windows Operating System whereas some other Chinese files are generated by Chinese application software programs that run on Microsoft English Windows Operating System. These files from Chinese Windows and from English Windows are often incompatible because of the use of different internal coding systems (e.g., Unicode, Big-5 code or GB code).

I use TwinBridge Chinese Partner (Version 4.98) software on Microsoft (MS) English Windows 98 to handle Chinese files. I often receive Chinese document files from Asia. Sometimes the files can be handled by my system without problem. However, sometimes I cannot open a Chinese file that I received from Asia because of some of the incompatibility problems listed above. Some other times I can open a Chinese file and can read all the Chinese characters on the computer monitor screen. But when I print the file, all the Chinese characters are printed as blank squares. I have called several times and sent several e-mails to the technical supports of these Chinese application software suppliers for help and followed several sets of their suggested procedures including downloading new fonts from their web site. In spite of all these effort, my blank-square printing problem still persists on some of these Chinese files from Asia.

It seems that the Chinese files generated by the MS Chinese Word Processor in Chinese Windows are based on Unicode whereas the Chinese files generated by TwinBridge V-4.98 on MS English Windows are based on Big-5 code or GB code. Even though I have downloaded the Unicode fonts from TwinBridge web site into my PC with English Windows 98 and TwinBridge V-4.98, these Unicode fonts only help me to see and read the Chinese files, received from Asia, on the monitor screen, but these downloaded Unicode fonts do not help me to print these Chinese files from Asia.

To print these Chinese files from Asia properly, I have to go through the following tedious process to use “Super Code Converter” in TwinBridge to convert these Unicode files to Big-5 coded files or GB coded files:

A.     Since the Super Code Converter in TwinBridge handles only Rich-Text-File (RTF) files, I have to convert the Chinese word files with .dot extension into RTF files by opening up the files and re-save them into new files with RTF extension.

B.      Activate the Super Code Converter in TwinBridge and fill in all the necessary parameters, the old file name and the converted new file names, etc. in the conversion table.

C.     Execute the Super Code Conversion.

D.     Print the converted RTF file.

In other words, just changing the font of the file does not solve my printing problem. It requires going through this tedious conversion of the internal coding system of the file to solve my printing problem.

4.5.2. Different Chinese Font Types

Three different Chinese font types: text font type, symbol font type and C/P Win Compatible font are being used and they are not compatible.

4.5.3 Different Keyboard Layouts for Chinese Spelling Letters

For example, for Zhuyin method of Chinese computer input method, there are three different kinds of keyboard layouts for the Zhuyin spelling symbols: Eten layout, Standard layout and TwinBridge layout. Such differences will force the user to stare at the keyboard carefully to find the position for each Zhuyin spelling symbol that the user wants to input. Such process certainly will slow down the speed of the Chinese computer input.

These incompatibility problems often cause a lot of troubles for the users of Chinese computer files. Asian computer users have to struggle with all these problems described in Sections 4.1 to 4.5 constantly when they use their ideogram-based languages on the computers. These problems greatly slow down their speed and efficiency in using the computers as a tool to do various Asian-language based work.

4.6 The Trap of Vicious Cycle and Downward Spiral for Asian Managers

In western world, the computers, E-Mail systems, Internet, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and various new Information Technology (IT) devices are being used as powerful and excellent tools to help busy managers to do their heavy management jobs more efficiently. Proper utilization of these modern IT tools elevates these managers to operate at a much high level of efficiency and productivity.

On the other hand, the combined effect of all the problems, troubles and errors described in Sections 4.1 to 4.5 caused by Asian language-computer-interfaces tends to discourage the Asian managers from using these IT tools because these Asian managers are too busy to waste their precious time to fool around with all the troubles described in Section 4.1 to 4.5. Therefore, some Asian managers tend to shy away from PCs, E-Mails, Internet and PDAs.  In other words, some Asian managers avoid these modern tools and revert back to the tedious and bare hand brute-force process (1) to (20) described in Section 2.3 to do their busy management jobs. This obviously will make these Asian managers even busier because of the inefficiency of the tedious process (1) to (20). In this busy way, these Asian managers have even less time to learn the usage of these new IT tools to improve their efficiency and productivity. Since the paces of technology advance, of HiTech R&D activities and of business activities are getting faster and faster. These bare-hand managers are getting more and more overloaded with work. Such increasing overloading inevitably leads to lower efficiency and productivity.

Therefore, many overloaded busy Asian managers are trapped in such vicious cycle and downward spiral into low efficiency and low productivity even though they are very busy and are working very hard on long working hours by brute force. Since these managers are generally in important and influential positions, such trap of vicious cycle and downward spiral is becoming a serious roadblock for Asian industries to try to improve their efficiencies and productivities.

As a sharp contrast, most high-level managers in USA are using E-Mail and IT tools heavily to manage their work and personal life efficiently. This is not limited only to the high-level managers in the HiTech industry but also include high-level managers in many other fields. For example, according to an article entitled “The Last (E-Mail) Goodbye, from ‘gwb” to His 42 Buddies” on the front page of The New York Times on March 17, 2001, the newly elected President of the USA, George W. Bush, had been using E-Mail heavily to correspond with 42 close friends for many years when he was the Texas governor, including advisors, lawyers, industry executives, finance chairmen, professional golfer, Texas secretary of state, marketing executives, telephone company executives, governors of other states, media advisors, relatives, family members and even his mother, Barbara Bush. His friends said that George W. Bush had been very accessible and prompt in responding to E-Mails, most of the time within a couple hours. However, less than three days before he was sworn in as the president of USA, his lawyers told George W. Bush to discontinue his E-Mail correspondence because of the legal concern that all correspondence of the president of USA by E-Mail become part of the federal president record and subject to legal and archival requirements. Therefore, George W. Bush sent that last goodbye E-Mail to his 42 buddies and told them to use telephone instead of E-Mail to keep in touch while he is the US President.

Even the former US Vice President, Al Gore, has a Palm PDA hanging on his belt. These examples are clear demonstration of the sharp contrast between the western and the eastern high-level managers in their effective use of modern IT tools to do their work efficiently.

4.7 Old Fashioned Manager Out of Touch with Modern IT Tools

My late wife used to work in the laboratories of a world-class major pharmaceutical company in New Jersey, USA. About 15 years ago, my late wife asked her boss for permission to buy a Personal Computer (PC). Her boss was an old scientist in the field of biology & medicine and had no experience of using PC at all. He asked my late wife about why she wanted to buy a PC. My late wife talked about producing experiment reports faster and doing analyses of laboratory test data faster. He rejected the PC purchase request and told my late wife that: “You are Ph.D. We hire you to do Ph.D. level of work. You can use our corporate mainframe computer to analyze the laboratory data. You should not waste your valuable time doing typing of reports. You should write your draft reports by hand, give the draft reports to the secretary, and ask the secretary to type the reports for you.”

This old man was sincere and honest because that was the way he worked for more than 30 years in that laboratory without using a PC and that process worked very well for him in the past 30 years. This old fashioned manager did not believe in wasting time to fool around with these new gadgets and toys.

This old fashioned manager was obviously totally out of touch with the modern Information Technology (IT) tools and did not understand and appreciate the values of using these IT tools. There are probably still some of such old fashioned managers in under-developed countries and in developing countries today. Such old fashioned managers can be serious roadblocks for the younger generation workers under the control of these old fashioned managers to try to use modern IT tools to work more efficiently.

4.8 Ineffective Protection Against Computer Virus

In highly developed countries, the typical method to protect against computer virus is to have an antivirus software program in each PC and to have the virus database in the PC updated weekly either automatically or manually from the Internet web site of the provider of the antivirus program. Such antivirus program with weekly updated virus database provides very effective protection against computer viruses.

However, in Asia, I know quite a few PC users who are unaware of or unfamiliar with such virus protection method. I know one person in Taiwan who knows only one antivirus method: to re-format the entire hard disk and to re-load all operating and application software programs and all data files.

The antivirus method in another company in Taiwan that I know is for a computer “expert” in the company to issue frequent warning e-mails to all employees in the company about the names of some new virus files and to warn all employees not to open such e-mails or such files.

It is obvious that such antivirus methods used by some people and companies in Asia are ineffective, cumbersome or very tedious. Consequently, computer viruses are causing a lot of problems and difficulties for many PC users in Asia. Such problems just add to the big pile of computer problems that discourage many people in Asia from using PCs, e-mails and Internet and revert back to the use of handwritten notes and Fax.

4.9 Repeat of I-Ho Chuan

My classmate, Dr. Benjamin Chung-Peng Fan, indicated that this paper reminds him of the sad histories of Asia in the 1900s. In those years, western countries came to Asia equipped with then “modern tools” of iron ships, cannons and machine guns. Many patriotic Asian people were fighting these western countries very hard by bare-hand brute force methods without effective tools. The most well known example is the “I-Ho Chuan” or “The Society of Righteous Fists” and is known as the “Boxers Rebellion” in western world. The history showed us very clearly that such bare-hand brute force methods are futile efforts to try to compete with those countries that are well equipped with modern tools.

Ben sees the similar problems being repeated now again. The western counties are well equipped with the modern IT tools operating at very high efficiency and productivity whereas the Asian people cannot compete with these western countries effectively because of all the problems described in Sections 4.1 to 4.7.

5. A Major Challenge To Asian Engineers

The HiTeh industry is increasing becoming a very strong driving force for the economy. The pace of technology advances and the technology R&D activities are getting faster and faster. To compete effectively in such fast-paced HiTech driven economy, a country needs to have a language-computer-interface that fits well with the lightening speed of Internet to keep up with the high-speed competition on the information superhighway.

The growing gap in the national efficiency and productivity between English world and Asia is a major challenge to the Asian engineers to develop an effective solution to speed up and to increase substantially the efficiency of Asian language-computer-interfaces.

6. A Solution For Efficient Chinese Language-Computer-Interface

6.1 Phonetic Chinese Language (PCL) – Invented by Dr. Victor C. Yeh

The Phonetic Chinese Language (PCL) invented by Dr. Victor C. Yeh makes spelling of Chinese language (in one-byte format) very similar to English with all the necessary attributes to be a very efficient Chinese language-computer-interface system. This PCL system:

(A)        Eliminates the homonym interference problem (i.e., homonym resolution) described in Section 4.1 and provides a unique spelling for more than 10,000 Chinese characters (ideograms),

(B)        Is an alphabetical system with a simple logical sequencing for sorting PCL Chinese data in a way very similar to English. This eliminates the problems of data processing and database management described in Section 4.2,

(C)        Uses single-byte coding format and eliminates the error vulnerability problems of 2-byte coding systems described in Section 4.3, and

(D)        Is an alphabetical system with 85 letters, similar to English's 52 letters, instead of many thousands of ideograms. This alphabetical system will eliminate the problem of one-year lag in the language proficiency of Chinese children described in Section 4.4.

Victor C. Yeh received his Doctor of Science Degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was a Professor in New York University and Princeton University. Information about PCL is available on the following web site:

            http://www.pcl-institute.org/linguistic_solution.htm

The contact information for the inventor - Dr. Victor C. Yeh is

            E-Mail: victor-yeh@China-PCL.com             Phone:  (732) 545-1520.

6.2 Four-Dimensional Structure for Spelling Chinese Words

The English alphabet is a two-dimensional alphabet consisting of a consonant group of letters and a vowel group of letters. These two dimensions (consonant and vowel) are sufficient to spell and to define uniquely all English words.

On the other hand, the Chinese Language (Mandarin) has four tones in addition to the consonants and vowels. (It is noted that the Cantonese and the Taiwanese Chinese dialects have more than four tones.) Therefore, the Pinyin spelling system uses four numerals, 1, 2, 3 and 4 to represent the four tones of each Mandarin sound syllable. Similarly, the Zhuyin spelling system uses four special diacritical marks to represent the four tones of each Mandarin sound syllable. In this sense, the Mandarin requires a third dimension (i.e., the tone dimension) in addition to the consonant dimension and the vowel dimension in any Chinese phonetic spelling scheme such as Pinyin, Zhuyin and PCL systems.

However, having these three dimensions of alphabets is still not sufficient to specify uniquely all the Chinese ideograms because for each 3-dimensionally specified pronunciation, there are often corresponding many (e.g., >30) Chinese ideograms known as homotones that they are pronounced with the same sound and the same tone. Therefore, the Chinese language needs a fourth dimension in its alphabetic structure to distinguish these homotones. In other words, to achieve the homonym resolution, the Chinese language requires an alphabet with a four-dimensional structure. In PCL invented by Dr. Victor C. Yeh, the fourth dimension of the alphabets is called the “Icon”.

In PCL, there are 85 letters in its alphabet.  This set of 85 letters is used for double duties in PCL. In the first duty, these 85 letters are used to represent the consonants, the vowels and the tones to specify the pronunciation of a Chinese ideogram. Then in the second duty, one of these 85 alphabets may be used at the end of a pure tone syllable spelling as a silent “icon” for the purpose of homonym resolution. Furthermore, these 85 letters are used to point to a radical (i.e., the basic building blocks or the roots of Chinese ideograms.) Most people who know the Chinese ideograms well usually also know these radicals. Therefore, it is not difficult for Chinese people to learn the use of these icons to identify the desired ideogram among a group of homonyms.

Unlike many thousands of ideograms, the set of 85 letters in the alphabet of PCL is well within the limit of the coding space of one-byte computer internal coding system for efficient Language-Computer-Interface. Therefore, PCL does not require the 2-Byte coding and eliminates the homonym problems and the problems of 2-byte coding for Chinese ideograms described in Sections 4.1 and 4.3. Furthermore, this set of 85 alphabets has well defined logical sequencing similar to those in English alphabets. Such well-defined alphabetic sequence makes the sorting, listing, processing, categorization, filing, management, searching, matching and retrieval of Chinese information very efficient. It, therefore, also eliminates the problems of managing large Chinese database described in Section 4.2.

6.3 My Exposure to PCL

Many Chinese engineers, including myself, know about the language-computer-interface problems of Chinese language for many years. However, I did not and could not do anything about these Chinese language-computer-interface problems for many years because I did not know any solution for such problems and my understanding of these problems was fuzzy.

It was in the New Year Eve Party on December 31, 2000 where Dr. Victor C. Yeh was invited to make a presentation on his work on PCL. That was my first exposure to PCL. Wow! I was so excited and happy to learn from Dr. Yeh that there is an effective solution to these long standing problems that had been hanging in the minds of many Chinese engineers for many years.  Knowing that there is an effective solution, I feel an urgency to raise the general awareness among the Chinese community about these language-computer-interface problems and their solutions.

Both Pinyin and Zhuyin systems suffer from not just one drawback but many serious drawbacks described in Sections 4.1 to 4.8 whereas PCL is designed to eliminate all these serious problems. It is important for us to recognize the great advantages of adopting PCL's solution; so that Chinese industry and economy will have a much better chance to advance into the very elite group of highly developed countries to enjoy very high standards of living and to compete effectively on high-profit-margin type of HiTech and intellectual based industries.

7. Multiple Factors for Strong Economy and High National Productivity

Having an alphabet-based language is an important factor contributing to a strong national economy and high productivity in the modern Internet and pervasive computing environment. However, this is not the only factor contributing to a strong economy. There are several other factors, described in Paul Krugman’s article, that are also very important for a strong economy.

For example, there are some countries that have been suffering from chronic serious political instability - having frequent political revolution, military coup and civil wars. Such political instability prevents these countries from achieving strong economy and high productivity in spite of having alphabet-based languages. Due to the impacts of various factors, there are substantial differences in the economic strengths among those countries that have alphabet-based languages.

Therefore, having an alphabet-based language is only a necessary condition, but not the sufficient condition, for achieving a strong national economy and high productivity in the modern Internet and pervasive computing environment.

8. Concluding Remark

Several Asian countries, including China, Japan and Korea, lack this important necessary condition of having an alphabet-based language. This deficiency is increasingly becoming a serious handicap that limits the capabilities of these Asian countries to compete effectively with the front-runners of the highly developed countries. Adoption of PCL invented by Dr. Victor C. Yeh will provide this important necessary condition for Chinese industry and the Chinese economy to advance into the elite world group of highly developed countries to enjoy very high standards of living and to compete effectively on the high-profit-margin type of HiTech and intellectual based industries.

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Want Growth? Speak English

By Paul Krugman            [MIT Professor in Economics; Now at Princeton University]

Fortune Magazine

April 26, 1999

Page 57-60

There’s been a lot of bad news out there in the world economy lately. Supposed economic superpower like Germany and Japan have fallen on hard times; Asian tigers that thoughts the future belonged to them suddenly find that it belongs instead to Westerners with ready cash; Latin Americans who thought they had put their past behind them are watching with horror as financial crisis strikes once again. And yet there are also some surprisingly happy economic stories out there. What do they have in common?

The biggest favorable surprise is, of course, the amazing performance of the U.S. economy. But there is Australia as well – smack-dab in the middle of the crisis zone, riding the storm out without pain. (Australia’s economy grew 5% over the past year, while neighboring Indonesia’s shrank 14%.) There is Ireland, the recently dubbed “Celtic tiger,” growing at an amazing 8% rate for the past five years. Then there are the British: They have been suffering a bit of a wobble recently, but the fact remains that not long ago they had the highest unemployment rate among major European countries, and now they have the lowest. Nor should we forget Canada (it’s that cold place north of here, with all the female singer-songwriters): While it has lagged behind the U.S., it has strongly outpaced Europe and Japan in growth and job creation.

A lot of effort has gone into figuring out what the world’s crisis countries have in common – indeed, the search for “indicators of vulnerability” has become a substantial industry. But what about indicators of invulnerability? What do the countries that have managed to remain prosperous while the world suffers have in common? Well, the answer is plain to naked eye – or make that the naked ear. Yes, the common denominator of the countries that have done best in this age of dashed expectations is that they are countries where English is spoken.

As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up. Statistical analysis suggests that there is a real sense in which the English-speaking economies tend to have a common destiny, even when they seemingly shouldn’t. Consider the case of the U.K. – which is, say sensible people, a European nation even if some of its politicians wish it weren’t. The U.K. does much more trade with its European neighbors then with its transatlantic cousins. But the U.K. business cycle, it turns out, is highly correlated with that of the U.S. (since 1982 the unemployment rates have had a correlation coefficient of 0.74; a 1.0 means perfectly correlated) and not at all correlated with the new Euro zone (correlation coefficient of –0.08!). Australia may be a sheep-raising and mining economy on the other side of the world, but its cycle, too, is remarkably correlated with what happens in the U.S.

So what do the English-speaking countries have in common that might explain why they are all doing relatively well right now? I’ve done some research – namely, talked to a couple of colleagues over lunch – and come up with the following speculations:

First, there’s the Alan Greenspan theory – or is it the Larry Summers theory? Economic policy in English-speaking economies tends to be run by smart economists with one foot in the academic world, who therefore make better decisions than the doctrinaire mandarins who run ministries of finance. And in a world where the rules have suddenly changed, the story goes, clever men and women who went to MIT are better able to adapt than bureaucrats whose only expertise is in office politics.

A slight variant is the Margaret Thatcher theory. In the 1980s there was an ideological groundswell in the English-speaking world in favor of markets and against government intervention; perhaps the rest of the advanced world missed the tide because it couldn’t read Milton Friedman in the original.

Then there’s the globalization theory. English is the language of the global economy – business must use some lingua franca, and no other tongue has the necessary critical mass. That means people who have grown up speaking English have an automatic head start.

Finally, there’s the Internet theory. Not long ago, French President Jacques Chirac lamented that the Internet is an “Anglo-Saxon network”; what he probably meant was “English speaking.” And it is, as is the whole new technological universe. One particular point that a friend made to me is that e-mail and the Internet put people who use non-alphabetic writing, like the Japanese, at a particular disadvantage.

On the whole, I’d probably place most of the emphasis on Greenspan and Thatcher. But one thing is clear: Something about the zeitgeist – sorry, I mean the spirit of the time – favors those of us who speak English. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.