

Character Amnesia: Negative Impact of Computers Upon Writing Chinese by Hand - libpcap
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/01/technology/01LOST.html?pagewanted=all

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patio11
In Japan, the phenomenon is called "ワープロ馬鹿" (roughly, "word-processor-induced
idiocy". I have it _bad_ , which is unfortunate because particularly for
foreigners it is easy to confuse with illiteracy. Luckily, I'm very rarely
required to handwrite anything more complicated than my name and address.
(Work once gave me a surprise skills evaluation which included a (handwritten,
timed) essay test, which very nearly reduced me to tears.)

~~~
w1ntermute
This is probably even worse with Japanese, because if you can't remember the
kanji, you just write the kana. Since pinyin isn't used the same way for
Chinese and zhuyin is mainly used in Taiwan, mainlanders are still forced to
somehow figure out the character (probably ask someone else) if they really
want to write something.

~~~
harisenbon
While I notice a lot of people falling back into kana (especially for harder
kanji) when writing by hand, it's usually rather embarrassing to have to write
common words in kana when in front of other people. If you're making a
presentation or doing sales, you definitely don't want to be writing in kana.

I'm in the same boat as patio, as I write notes by hand MAYBE once a week (now
that patio quit the dayjob, I'm sure he writes a lot less often).

While my reading is still at a high level (Lv 2 of the Kanji-kentei) my
writing is worse than an elementary school student (currently lv 8 in
writing).

As an aside, in this post I misspelled about 3-4 words and would never have
been able to correct them if I didn't have spellcheck... so this definitely
isn't a problem limited to character-based languages.

------
GiraffeNecktie
It's an interesting article for me because right now I'm trying to learn
Chinese. I'm mostly interested in learning to speak the language, but I've
discovered that it really helps to be able to read as well. Chinese has a very
small palette of sounds, which means that there's a lot of ambiguity. The same
sound and tone could be represented by many different characters and have many
different meanings.

But there's no way I can do the traditional approach of writing out each
character hundreds and hundreds of times. I don't have the time or
temperament. So I'm hoping a combination of flashcards and watching TV (most
Chinese programs seem to have Chinese script subtitles, I assume to serve the
various dialects that share the writing system) will do the trick.

That's one issue the article didn't fully address: the importance of that
muscle memory in learning and retaining the characters.

~~~
Jd
Muscle memory was entirely neglected and is, in many aspects, the most
important "memory" for writing Chinese characters, esp. under time pressure.
The way that characters can be reconstructed that are "forgotten" by your
Chinese speaker is simply that they go back to their visually retained memory
of what the character looks like and then render it piece by piece. I've seen
this happen to a Chinese lawyer friend of mine who was Peking University grad
-> Harvard JD (not a dumb cookie), but after time in an English speaking law
firm tripped up when asked to write even simple phrases that I, a foreigner,
could still write fairly easily.

As for your problems learning the language, there is no other way other than
rot memorization, and if you don't have the time, you shouldn't even bother.
Seriously. If you can make the time but don't have the temperament, go
somewhere where they will beat it into you Chinese-style, because there really
is no other way to memorize the thousands of characters necessary to be
proficient in Chinese. If you become serious and are looking for
recommendations ping me and I will give you some.

~~~
pradocchia
_If you can make the time but don't have the temperament, go somewhere where
they will beat it into you Chinese-style, because there really is no other way
to memorize the thousands of characters necessary to be proficient in
Chinese._

Please, some practical advice:

Learn your stokes and always follow stroke order. Each stroke has a rhythm,
and each character has a composite rhythm. Rhythm is an excellent mnemonic
device.

An hour a day, _everyday_ , is enough to make good progress. Half an hour
twice a day is better. Your nervous system forms pathways _between_ sessions,
not during, so you want to optimize for that, not the session itself.

Throw out the flash cards, and throw out the books of pseudo-etymology. Find a
book of pen calligraphy, and focus on strokes, positioning, balance.

Here's one place to start:

[http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Write-Chinese-Characters-
Languag...](http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Write-Chinese-Characters-
Language/dp/0300057717)

And once you're further along:

[http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-
Pu...](http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Cursive-Script-Introduction-
Publications/dp/0887100333/)

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
I'm sure practising the writing is a very effective way to learn, but I'm more
than a little skeptical when people tell me there's 'only one way to learn'.
I've been at it for two years now. I'm not moving very fast but I've learned
about 1,700 words so far and reasonably pleased with my ability to
communicate. This is all from self study with flashcards and audio
(ChinesePod, Assimil etc) plus a weekly hour and a half with a tutor. Whether
I can retain the characters over the long term is another question, especially
since my interest is really in speaking and not reading and writing, but so
far the flashcards and tv are working well for me.

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kogir
Two easy solutions come to mind:

1) Use pens and pads for computer character entry so the same characters can
be used by both. 2) Switch to a new written form that can also be typed.

I'd personally love to see global adoption of a new language designed from the
beginning to be simple, unambiguous, and easily written and typed. It'll never
happen of course.

------
zavulon
I don't necessarily think it's bad. It's evolution. It's much more efficient
to have each character represent a sound (western way) than a word
(Chinese/Japanese/etc way), anyway. The cultural loss is sad, sure, but in the
end, it's survival of the fittest.

~~~
harisenbon
I find it interesting that you say that each character represents a sound in
western language, while not in Japanese or Chinese.

In Japanese こ can only be pronounced one way.

In Chinese (I believe) 子 can only be pronounced one way. It also has an
associated meaning which is handy for learning new words.

In english, what sound does C make? ex) Chair Care cycle

Why can I pronounce Ghoti as 'Fish'?

Read <\-- How do you pronounce this? Is it Red or Reed?

I actually find the looseness of English spelling to be much more of a
hardship than learning a number of different pronunciations.

~~~
zavulon
I don't speak Chinese or Japanese, but people that do told me that there are
more than five ways to pronounce "yi", they all mean different things, but
they're all transliterated to English in the same way.

However, that's not what I meant. I meant to say as far as ease of
transcribing spoken word onto paper, alphabet system is fundamentally easier,
because you only have to remember 25-45 (approximately) number of characters.
While in hieroglyphics, the number is much much larger.

~~~
w1ntermute
_I don't speak Chinese or Japanese, but people that do told me that there are
more than five ways to pronounce "yi", they all mean different things, but
they're all transliterated to English in the same way._

That's because Chinese is tonal. There are 5 different tones in Standard
Mandarin. When transliterating Chinese to the English alphabet, there is no
way to write the tone, so you introduce ambiguity that wasn't officially
present.

------
HappySushiCo
Let's put it this way: most symbol based systems (Chinese and Japanese kanji)
aren't very scalable because each symbol represents multiple objects/ideas.
The only way these languages can grow to incorporate more and more modern
ideas is to get deconstructed into characters that represent sounds (Japanese
hiragana).

I for one think that it's a positive thing to move away from the symbolic
characters - it'll make languages easier to learn and let more people
communicate with each other.

~~~
echaozh
It's like saying the assembly language is much more scalable than a higher
level languages.

Separating the meaning from the sound is like naming variables with
meaningless short combination of letters.

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quadhome
Since 2001, has pinyin begun to appear in day-to-day writing? Cursory image
searches puts it on street signs and a mention of National Common Language Law
promulgating its use.

If someone forgets a hanzi, is a pinyin substitute acceptable?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language#Other_phonetic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language#Other_phonetic_transcriptions)

------
DLWormwood
Even though the problem is probably much worse in ideographic scripts, we
alphabet users haven’t been immune. (We had a head start, after all.) About
the only thing I can write reliably any more is my signature; every once in a
blue moon when I need to write a check, it literally takes me over five
minutes to write it out legibly.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, I'm really really bad at writing by hand now. It physically makes my
hand hurt if I have to write more than a few sentences, because I've gotten
totally unused to it (the callouses I used to have on my ring finger, where
the pen/pencil sit, have long since gone away as well). But I suppose it's a
bit less of a problem because I do at least know how to write all 26 letters
when I need to.

I did recently though want to write something in cursive (jokily flowery
greeting in a card) and I couldn't remember how to write a bunch of stuff,
especially capital letters. Had to go online to remind myself how you write a
cursive capital Q.

------
sparky
(2001)

Still interesting, but it would be good to put in the title.

------
xiaoma
I dunno. My friends with iPhones in Taiwan preferred the handwriting
recognition to phonetic IMEs. I think the article is a bit sensationalist.

~~~
tokenadult
Have your friends actually put themselves to speed and accuracy tests in
writing through each method? Of course most people do best what they practice
most, but one of the reasons phonetic input (Hanyu pinyin on the mainland,
still BO PO MO FO mostly in Taiwan) is the predominant way of entering Hanzi
computer data all over the Chinese-speaking world is that other methods were
tried (since the 1980s, repeatedly) and found wanting. It would be interesting
to see if handwriting input on the latest generation of pads could ever catch
up to moderately proficient typists.

P.S. This reminds me of the days in the 1980s when I had to translate
handwritten manuscripts by magazine reporters in Chinese into English. There
is a lot of nonstandard handwriting in the Chinese-speaking world, as I
discovered when I would ask colleagues to read one another's handwriting to
get a reality check on how I read it.

~~~
xiaoma
I doubt anybody has subjected themselves to a rigorous study on the subject.
What the people I know have done is this: try the handwriting recognition for
a few days, go back to zhuyin or maybe wubi for a day or two and then go back
to handwriting because they believe it's faster based on their own experience.

Non-standard writing and simplifications are recognized in many cases. It's
far from perfect; it's just a bit faster and more convenient than their old
phones.

~~~
Jd
Apples and oranges. I believe the discussion was of standard input systems
(i.e. keyboards) not iPhone keyboards for which I can easily believe that
handwriting outperforms pinyin and/or wubi.

