The counter-argument would be that the person could just use the pinyin or use a digital device to get them the characters. But as the article pointed out, those are both modern conveniences. Less than 100 years old both. The script absolutely gives no clues otherwise.
Let's put it this way: We know what ancient might egyptian (most likely) sounds like because they gave their writting system the uniliterals, which are pronunciation guides for complex words. We know that they said waw, and we know what a waw sounds like. They did this probably so they would not to explode their character count from hundreds to thousands.
All three PhD's were perfectly capable of communicating the word for sneeze and also recognize it in writting. They just couldn't write it exactly.
I don't think it has a slowing effect. Except maybe by adding annoying/useless classes for mid/primary students - which is just par for course everywhere else. I can name 3 objectively completely useless classes from my european youth (plus one in college) that were only there because 'culture'.
How does your assessment of the relative usefulness of ‘classes’ from youth relate to the possible existence of a retarding effect arising from language differences?
The shrimp example is kind of strange. Like you said, it's an extremely common character, and not a difficult one either. But beyond that, if you look at it he got the radical, 虫, correct. The phonetic element, 下, is a fundamental character that I doubt anyone forgets to write.
It just seems like such an odd outlier example. Like talking about a friend that spells "been" as "bin." I'm sure it could happen, but it's not indicative of a broader trend.
The story was reported by Victor Mair, though, who is extremely opposed to using characters and often exaggerates the issues with them.
Personally, I've seen a lot of Chinese people's written notes, and I don't think I've ever seen them resort to pinyin, even among people that didn't go to college. I just asked a few Chinese friends about this, and they told me they never resort to pinyin either.
Let's put it this way: We know what ancient might egyptian (most likely) sounds like because they gave their writting system the uniliterals, which are pronunciation guides for complex words. We know that they said waw, and we know what a waw sounds like. They did this probably so they would not to explode their character count from hundreds to thousands.
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