First, I'm a bit agnostic when it comes to characters. You'll often find me on the other side when the argument that Chinese could never go full romanization. I just hate it when people say that using characters is stupid or wrong.
Show me the article that says there's currently an epidemic of otherwise literate adults forgetting how to write basic words in English.
Mere anecdote but it reminds me of the ongoing blurring between there, they're, and their.
I mean, there's "effective" and there's "optimal", right?
You mean letting better be the enemy of good? Using optimal in opposition to effective is a bit disingenuous as well, especially when we're using the clearly suboptimal orthography of English to discuss the matter.
At the same time, China had been exposed to an alphabet (or at least an abugida) when they imported Buddhist texts, and they still felt that Chinese characters were a more effective way of recording their thoughts. That might have been cultural inertia, but the choice was made. At the same time, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese all made use of the characters in the past. Part of that may have been because of cultural and prestige factors, but it was seen as an effective as a way of recording information for a number of languages over centuries. Sure, it's not perfect, but few writing systems are (unless you listen to the Korea-philes who claim Hangul is).
I'm not sure what you mean here.
You're getting caught up on the specific meanings rather than seeing it as an example of a larger trend in English. Many of the specialty words that are in common use come from three main sources : Germanic, Latin and Greek. While related, the links are not always clear in their expression. The example of doctor, medic and physician shows words from different roots that are used in a way to distinguish different roles in a single field where the links are not clear from the words used. A doctor studies medicine. In Chinese, an 医生 studies 医学。 In English the related nature of the two words is not as clear as it is in Chinese. Even the idea of study (学/学习） is more closely linked to medicine.
Ehhhhh, again, technically true, but so what? It's not even that big of a difference. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in English is 309 pages while in Chinese it's 242. This is not that much value-added.
That's because you're looking at the language through the perspective of the modern language. If you go back and look at the Analects or the Art of War, they are tiny slivers of books. You can easily fit the text of the Art of War on 4 or 5 letter-sized pages. When the language was establishing itself, and was being written on bamboo slips, brevity made a lot of sense.
And it would be better to see how the length looks from Mandarin to English. The Three Bodies Problem is 302 pages in Mandarin, and 400 in English. Ask any publisher or environmentalist if 98 pages (per book) makes a big difference. Even the 67 pages that you're dismissing as "not that much value-added" is a reduction of over 20% of the length of the English novel, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Arguing that Hanzi has some benefits over romanization
I am not trying to argue that Hanzi is better than romanization; I'm arguing that Hanzi shouldn't be dismissed by learners who are coming at it from a romanized background. They overlook some of the qualities that helped it endure for centuries. I do not consider it perfect. I can't imagine, for instance, trying to write computer code in it. But I am sure going to push back against the people who say that it's dumb.
It just strikes me as a pride thing.
looks in mirror
laughs
I guess you think I have some sort of cultural connection with China and Chinese characters. That would be wrong.
So just to follow up, I just purchased The Three Body Problem from Amazon (again, Kindle sale only, otherwise I would've grabbed from Kobo. Grr...) and imported it into Calibre using the same method. When I imported it, it initially just shows author and ID on the right-hand side, but when I went to edit the metadata individually, I saw that it had populated the isbn and publisher, as well.
(Was going to attach screenshots but imgur seems to be down ATM)
Also, Gideon the Ninth is $2.99, as is The Three-Body Problem, and Binti is just 99 cents. All three discounts will last through July 28.
Edit: And if you like Gideon the Ninth, you can download act one of the sequel for free. AFAIK, that's a permanent freebie, though this preview may become unavailable for "purchase" once the sequel hits store shelves on August 4.