Another Short History of Linguistics (80)

Japan was a country that in the history it never born a greater thinker, perhaps the only idea of Japan that has been accepted by the world was alphabet language is an advanced language and pictogram is a backward and primitive one. In fact the history gave them a good chance to discover secrete of language, for they were the first pictogram country that met the matured alphabet language in recent centuries, but the Japanese loved simple solution for everything. Their nature seemed to be fickle and when they saw the prosperous of European country in 19^th century, they thought that it was the different of language that caused the situation. Then suddenly they got the sublimation that the alphabet language is the best of the world. They thought it could be a perfect idea, because if the alphabet language had problem, they would not take the responsibility (Europe would) but if the language is real good, at least they are better than China. Thinkers of other country is looking for the best thing for their own country but scholar of Japan always looking for something that someone could be worse than them. In this way they got their confident.

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E6%94%B9%E9%9D%A9%E5%8F%B2

1719 A.D. certain Japanese scholars had pint out: “The Chinese language has too much characters, it is hardest language to learn in the world and on the other hand, the simple western language can express everything too.”