Wired Chinese and Japanese kids forget how to write Can you blame them?

Techeye ^ | 08/27/10 | Nick Farrell

[TigerLikesRooster]

http://www.techeye.net/science/wired-chinese-and-japanese-kids-forget-how-to-write

Wired Chinese and Japanese kids forget how to write Can you blame them?

27 Aug 2010 11:35 | by Nick Farrell | posted in Science

Wired Chinese and Japanese kids forget how to write -

Writing Chinese and Japanese is a particularly difficult skill and since computers came along it is fast becoming something that kids are forgetting.

Sure they can read and write their language on a computer, but according to BreitBart when they pick up a pen they have forgotten how to do it.

Dubbed "character amnesia", the problem is becoming widespread across China, and some are starting to fear for the future of their ancient writing system. There is even a Chinese word for it: "tibiwangzi", or "take pen, forget character".

The problem has been noted in Japan which has a similar character based language system.

The China Youth Daily in April found that 83 percent of the 2,072 respondents admitted having problems writing characters.

Chinese boffins say that Character amnesia happens because most Chinese people use electronic input systems based on Pinyin, which translates Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet.

[snowsislander]

But you still can’t simply enter those kanji on your average electronic device, whether it’s a computer or a phone or whatever. You have to enter the phonetic first either in hiragana or romanji and then choose from the list of available kanji.

True, very true.

My point in #15 was relative to posting #5, where I was commenting on how efficiency can be measured in multiple ways. As an example, I was using the brevity of display for kanji characters as one possible metric for efficiency.

If we however choose ease of entry via keys as our metric for efficiency, then romaji, hiragana, and katakana are all about equally easy; using kanji does indeed add another step to entry.

[altair]

Yes, without regular practice it's very easy to forget.

This isn't a new phenomenom. I worked with some of the best and brightest in Japan 1999-2000. They all hated handwriting and admitted that they couldn't handwrite more than a handful of characters.

This was O.K. Our specific area of applied technology was "spreading the gospel" of Asian language support in computer software. A most difficult task given that we had to erase the assumption that 1 letter = 1 byte.

Writing Chinese and Japanese is a particularly difficult skill and since computers came along it is fast becoming something that kids are forgetting.

Music to my ears. Not only do I have no regrets that I was part of the computer side of that, I'm proud of my work.

NOTE: They are not talking about reading. Only hand writing. Writing Japanese and Chinese on a computer/handheld/cell phone is much faster.

[altair]

I would be completely lost with Chinese, etc.

That's where computers win. Kids are going to learn Latin 1 script - cell phones, duh. Latin 1 script has won the mind share of the world for decades to come.

The way that we deal with languages like Chinese and Japanese is to type them into the computing device phonetically and then select from a menu which character is proper to use. This can all be done quite fast even for a non-native speaker.

Even for something as (relatively) simple as English, do you prefer to

1. Hand write
2. Type on an old manual typewriter
3. Type on an IBM Selectric with limited backspace
4. Type in a computer program, like XEmacs
5. I'll not go here. I hate word processors.

Computers win.

[altair]

I think that over time we will see a new "mobile Japanese" language evolve which can be represented with the Roman character set.

How do you mean "represented"? As in typed, the problem has been solved. It takes fewer keystrokes to type Japanese into a cellphone than it takes to type equivalent English.

Maybe you're thinking of Romaji, but you're a couple centuries too late to be inventing that.

[Lazamataz]

Damn furriners better learn our language if’n they wanna live in OUR country!

[altair]

Why not skip that step and simply use the hiragana?

Speaking as the author of the Kana keyboard support for XEmacs (whose Japanese coworkers all laughed at him for - "no one uses those keyboards"), you just don't understand.

You use the phonetic spelling already to enter the kanji. Your point is?

[altair]

英語は下手です。

[Lazamataz]

英語は下手です

[AdmSmith]

A character, even when there is an explanation as to why it looks the way it does, has almost no obvious connection to what it represents. True, but there are some exceptions = PRISONER

[TigerLikesRooster]

Whatever connection a character has to what it represents was lost when Chicom butchered characters in an attempt to simplify them. All but a very small number of simple characters.

[AdmSmith]

This will eventually increase the use of Latin characters and English.

[BlazingArizona]

“How do you mean “represented”? As in typed, the problem has been solved. It takes fewer keystrokes to type Japanese into a cellphone than it takes to type equivalent English.”

The problem is input. How would you efficiently enter kanji on a handheld device?

[altair]

The problem is input. How would you efficiently enter kanji on a handheld device?

Phonetically, the same way you do from a full keyboard. Then, a dictionary look up with a menu for selecting the correct character(s).

It's easier to type kanji on a handheld than it is to type it in on a MacBook Pro.

The same kinds of people most prone to "writing" SMS English were writing grammatical Japanese to me (with the notable exception of writing わ when they meant は). Maybe that was because I was a foreigner, but I doubt it.

[altair]

That’s cheating, Laz.

[altair]

As an example, I was using the brevity of display for kanji characters as one possible metric for efficiency.

That's a good metric. It may take more than a single byte to represent a single Kanji character, but Japanese is denser than English and there is much, much less incentive to bastardize the language to fit it into the handful of characters allowed in an SMS text message.

This can only be a good thing.

[Doe Eyes]

Bodes ill for those who love books.

I guess for those written with traditional Chinese or Japanese characters.

[truth_seeker]

“But if you asked them what the electrical concepts behind the equations they were spitting out meant, they didn’t have a clue.”

Short on inventions, good at copying.

(auto mechanics claimed the first Lexus LS, on a hoist, looked exactly like a Mercedes S class)

(same for early Nikon cameras, vs. Leica)

But their discipline allows them to eventually perfect the copies, making them higher quality than the originals.

etc.

[BlazingArizona]

"A character, even when there is an explanation as to why it looks the way it does, has almost no obvious connection to what it represents. " When you study kanji in depth, this is not as great a problem as it seems to outsiders, because each kanji is a stylized picture composed from a set of 224 root forms, or 'radicals', which in turn occupy one of five positions within the character. These carry historic and often mnemonic clues as to the meaning. For example: characters with the radical mushi hen ("bug, on the left side") generally have something to do with insects. To develop words you assemble radicals together: a cloud over a field gives you kaminari, thunder. Adding a vertical hooked stroke through it gives you inazuma, lightning. Kanji are surprisingly easy to remember when you understand how they are composed. In my time there I was able to learn a basic set of about two thousand of them. Kanji give you a working set of 'ancestral' words. To coin new words, you combine whole kanji to form compounds. The lightning character, plus "energy" gives you electricity. All the words involving electricity include this compound.

[BlazingArizona]

“Whatever connection a character has to what it represents was lost when Chicom butchered characters in an attempt to simplify them. “

To the Japanese, simplified Chinese looks the way teen text-speak appears to us.

[BlazingArizona]

"Phonetically, the same way you do from a full keyboard. Then, a dictionary look up with a menu for selecting the correct character(s). It's easier to type kanji on a handheld than it is to type it in on a MacBook Pro." Do you mean using the iPhone style scheme in which letters pressed on the virtual keyboard create a pop-up of the letter, with less common alternatives appearing if you keep holding down the key? (Example: e, then é, è, ë...) In japanese such a scheme gets unwieldy when you face words like senko, two kanji with 22 distinct readings. Imagine those choices scrolling by on a three-inch LCD.