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 Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 10:48 am
I just found this article called Wired youth forget how to write in China and Japan and wondered what people here would think of it. I know how to write in Japanese, but I rarely use it except for writing in my journal (which I use mainly because I don't want to forget how to write) and class notes (same). So I'd like to ask learners of all languages, but particularly Japanese and Chinese, do you know how/are learning how to write/spell in the language, and do you think it's useful in today's wired world?
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Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 11:40 am
I've been hearing a lot about this lately! I think it's a big problem, especially for the Chinese that don't have kana to write in.
I think that it's important for language learners to learn kanji/hanzi still. I personally try to memorize how to write each one so I won't look like a stupid foreigner that has to rely on technology to write. Although considering how I never write in Japanese, it's really not useful for me to know, nor would it be useful for me to know if I were to become a translator. It doesn't seem entirely practical to memorize all the characters anymore, but I still do it anyways. Besides that, by writing them you get a better feel of the radicals so you can read them better.
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Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 12:52 pm
My boyfriend sometimes forgets how to write characters. It's because Chinese use keyboards with English letters and enter the pinyin which is then converted to character on the screen.
I think that Chinese characters won't be lost if they developed specific technology geared towards their language system rather than adapting to Western systems appropriate for alphabets. I know that Japanese electronic dictionaries have a pad on which people write the character instead of a keyboard. I think this would be more efficient and compact than even Western languages with the Western system. The Firefly universe may not be far off. Come on, I can hope. Those scrolling displays with characters were really cool. . .
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Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 1:02 pm
Hm...a few years ago I was talking with a visitor from China, and I remember him casually commenting on how he forgot how to write characters sometimes, and needed to look them up. I didn't really think anything of it at the time, but apparently his problem isn't that uncommon....
This actually just makes me want to learn to write them all even more. ninja
Anyways, I agree with what Ukryu says above.
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Everyone should learn how to write some form of their language, because there may be times in which technology is not available or fails you.
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Henneth Annun Vice Captain
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Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 5:55 pm
I'm having the same problem. I can read the characters just fine but when it comes to writing them out, I forget. But then again, I'm still learning the language, which isn't as serious as a native forgetting how to do it, but it happens. My teacher admitted that for some words that have a large number of strokes (she knows traditional and simplified), she forgets how to write it.
I believe it is very useful to be able to write out characters no matter how advanced technology gets. Technology shouldn't be a substitute for writing, just an aid.
I do want to be able to remember how to write by hand. It would make me feel super accomplished.
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Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 8:00 pm
I know how to write a little bit of hanzi/kanji. That is, the hanzi/kanji I have learned so far. They're pretty easy to write, IMO. However, when I learn some of the more harder kanji/hanzi, aka the kanji/hanzi with over 20 strokes, I suspect that I'll easily forget the stroke order for them. And damn it, I am not going to even try to write that "84-stroke" kanji! gonk The most amount of strokes I can remember before my brain gets fried is probably 20 strokes and less.
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Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 3:29 pm
Yeah it's like that in Chinese for me, I can read some letters, but can't write them. But since I do know how they're pronounced I can type some out. Only a little though, because I don't know how to read all the words in Chinese yet too gonk
so yeah, computers are making things easier for me lol
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Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 7:29 pm
Tofugu just wrote an article on the same topic. He thinks it's a good thing to forget how to write kanji because it'll make it easier for Japanese learners. Like some people here, I don't like being too reliant on technology (plus I'm a total kanji geek XD) and I don't really care how many strokes there are because most kanji are just made of radicals (kanji parts) which appear in other kanji. It's kind of odd of see people in general's handwriting becoming harder to read, no matter what the language (Sometimes I think I'm the only one in my college who uses cursive.^-^; ). Britomartis, that's interesting! Japanese has the same type of input system for computers. It would be interesting to see a handwriting based input system. I've heard of kana (the Japanese syllabaries) based keyboards, which are supposedly faster (though it comes with a learning curve) but I've never heard of a completely handwriting based input system (unless you count the kanji lookup handwriting pad on the language bar, which one was to write a kanji with the right stroke order, otherwise it has a hard time finding it).
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Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 8:15 pm
No problem for me about Hiragana and Katakana characters in Japanese.
It would be better to introduce intricate thousands of characters in kanji (although I have a book of kanji's mixed with other character types).
Also, I like to know thousands of Chinese characters in Mandarin/Cantonese or other dialects. Seriously, it's so hard. I will forget what I written and it slips to my memory easily.
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Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 9:55 am
I've got most of the hiragana and katakana memorized (and I practice frequently as well), but my knowledge of kanji is currently limited. I have a great kanji dictionary, and I've learned some characters from it as well as becoming more familiar with some of the radicals, but it is still something I need to improve with. And I do think it's useful to know them, especially in Japanese, where there are plenty of words with the same pronunciation (I read an article once that talked about the importance of kanji in Japanese based on that fact). I used to think that kana could be sufficient for writing Japanese, but my opinion has changed since then.
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Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 8:48 pm
For me, I'm dependent upon writing in order to learn. It's just how my brain is wired. So if I don't know how to write a kanji, I also don't know how to read it or what it means. So if I forget a character, I REALLY forget it.
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Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2010 10:48 am
Britomartis-the-Valiant My boyfriend sometimes forgets how to write characters. It's because Chinese use keyboards with English letters and enter the pinyin which is then converted to character on the screen. I think that Chinese characters won't be lost if they developed specific technology geared towards their language system rather than adapting to Western systems appropriate for alphabets. I know that Japanese electronic dictionaries have a pad on which people write the character instead of a keyboard. I think this would be more efficient and compact than even Western languages with the Western system. The Firefly universe may not be far off. Come on, I can hope. Those scrolling displays with characters were really cool. . . My Chinese professor told my class that in her days, Chinese keyboards utilized something called bopomofo, or zhuyin. Zhuyin is different from pinyin in that if you want to write 学, you wouldn't just type xue as you would in pinyin--you'd have to remember which key has which bopomofo. And then she also told us about the Wubi method where again, pinyin is not used, but this is a difficult input method to learn. Mac OS X has this input system, so if you have a Mac and want to try out the Wubi method, do it. I've tried out the Wubi method before and found it to be so different than what I was used to. XD
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Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2010 8:42 pm
For the Japanese language, typing in the kana has made it easier for me to recognize certain kanji. But, I also realize that I need to write them out if I want to learn them better. If security wasn't such an issue, I would gladly write letters by hand in kana and kanji and mail them to people by "snail mail." But, I don't "personally" know anyone who I can write to. Sure, I can practice on my own, but I think it would be more beneficial and enjoyable to write to someone else who is learning Japanese as well. It would be even cooler if I could write to a native Japanese person who is learning English and we could correct each other. I guess I could always write a letter and scan into the computer and send it by e-mail, but who else is really going to make the effort to do that? I'm certainly not going to write letters to myself. That would be crazy....
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Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 1:11 am
I get this a lot. I can read a number of kanji, but when it comes to writing them on paper... I just can't do it.
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Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 10:04 pm
Soprano Mochi Kitty Britomartis-the-Valiant My boyfriend sometimes forgets how to write characters. It's because Chinese use keyboards with English letters and enter the pinyin which is then converted to character on the screen. I think that Chinese characters won't be lost if they developed specific technology geared towards their language system rather than adapting to Western systems appropriate for alphabets. I know that Japanese electronic dictionaries have a pad on which people write the character instead of a keyboard. I think this would be more efficient and compact than even Western languages with the Western system. The Firefly universe may not be far off. Come on, I can hope. Those scrolling displays with characters were really cool. . . My Chinese professor told my class that in her days, Chinese keyboards utilized something called bopomofo, or zhuyin. Zhuyin is different from pinyin in that if you want to write 学, you wouldn't just type xue as you would in pinyin--you'd have to remember which key has which bopomofo. And then she also told us about the Wubi method where again, pinyin is not used, but this is a difficult input method to learn. Mac OS X has this input system, so if you have a Mac and want to try out the Wubi method, do it. I've tried out the Wubi method before and found it to be so different than what I was used to. XD Wow, I wish Japanese had that many input systems...
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