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Comment by insane_dreamer | Hacker News Reader

For all the boneheaded/bad decisions that Mao Zedong made, simplifying the Chinese script turned out to be an excellent one, greatly increasing literacy and having a good side effect of making Chinese writing much accessible and legible at smaller sizes (found in modern print and on screen).

When it comes to typing on computer/phones, nowadays Chinese type Latin letters (pinyin) that approximate a Chinese sound, which then reveals Chinese characters that relate to that sound, which they can then select. it's much faster than using root strokes to "build" the character. I was wondering if any similar technique is used in Arabic?

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> it's much faster than using root strokes to "build" the character.

In fact, input methods like this not only exist—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method—but are in more common use than you might expect! I've met more than one (regular-person, non-technical) office worker who could barely hunt & peck on a coworker's Chewing but could fly with Cangjie. e.g., https://youtu.be/sVAQSBU5OOo?t=98

Coïncidentally (or not,) they also had very high written character recall and speed… (a skill that is notably very weak among syllabic-IME users…)

But doesn’t Taiwan use the traditional script? And over in Taiwan they don’t seem to have issues with literacy or using smaller screens?

Arabic doesn't need it because it's based on a finite number of letters and each letter is a sound, pretty much like latin. It does also contain a 4x2 nunation[1] system that acts as short vowels and/or stress but it's apart from the stress, it's optional and can be mostly* derived from context.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunation

Simplified Chinese don't make much sense. The idea is that humans write everything manually forever, so simplifying saves time. But that's moot with computers that system coupled with high resolution monitors, and IMO it just leaves less clues for learners and less literate to infer meanings. They're also less visually balanced than the traditional.

Mao did not simplify Chinese. The First Chinese Character Simplification Scheme simply adopted simplified characters in common use.

But if it was such a great idea, why is it not an issue in Hong Kong which does not use it?

Your comment could be read as implying that Unified Arabic, the subject of this post, must have been useless as an idea because it wasn't widely adopted.

In reality, there are many factors, not only pure practicality, that lead people to reject reforms like these. In the case of Arabic, it was deeply held traditional values; in the case of Hong Kong and Taiwan, well, I imagine it's simply an unwillingness to appear to be aligning with a regime one politically disagrees with.

It’s not needed. There are strict rules on how a letter is rendered based on where in the word it is.. and there are 28 letters (plus some variants).

There's an Arabic version of pinyin called Arabizi which consists of the Roman alphabet plus the numbers 3,5,7 and 9. It's written left to right and was created for texting on feature phones. Everyone can read it in any Arabic-speaking country. Given that so little is published in Arabic, a change to this grassroots script is long overdue.

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