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Wired Chinese and Japanese kids forget how to write Can you blame them?
Techeye ^ | 08/27/10 | Nick Farrell

Posted on 08/28/2010 8:37:35 AM PDT by 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.

(Excerpt) Read more at techeye.net ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; chinesecharacters; computer; japan
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1 posted on 08/28/2010 8:37:39 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: TigerLikesRooster; Jeff Head; Tainan; hedgetrimmer; Unam Sanctam; taxesareforever; Avenger; ...

P!


2 posted on 08/28/2010 8:39:21 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (The way to crush the bourgeois is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation)
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To: TigerLikesRooster; maikeru; Dr. Marten; Eric in the Ozarks; Al Gator; snowsislander; sushiman; ...
Yes, without regular practice it's very easy to forget.

日本*ピング* (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)

3 posted on 08/28/2010 8:45:22 AM PDT by DTogo (High time to bring back the Sons of Liberty !!)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

I had enough trouble with Thai which is a phonetic / Sanskrit based alphabet. I would be completely lost with Chinese, etc. No relation to spoken language = two systems to memorize.


4 posted on 08/28/2010 8:45:23 AM PDT by JimSEA
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Simply replacing an inefficient communications system with a more efficient one.


5 posted on 08/28/2010 8:49:50 AM PDT by AndrewB (FUBO)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Bodes ill for those who love books.


6 posted on 08/28/2010 9:02:29 AM PDT by BenLurkin (This post is not a statement of fact. It is merely a personal opinion -- or humor -- or both.)
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To: BenLurkin

Might be interesting to see the long term changes on a population that switches from a pictographic to a phonetic language.


7 posted on 08/28/2010 9:04:56 AM PDT by artaxerces
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To: TigerLikesRooster

I always said this is why asian kids were better students than average. In order to become literate in an asian language, there is a whole lot of rote memorization to do, and this naturally leads to a mind that is ‘wired’ to memorize.

I took electrical engineering classes in college, and there were asian students in my class that could and did ace every single exam, because they could memorize and regurgitate the material. But if you asked them what the electrical concepts behind the equations they were spitting out meant, they didn’t have a clue.


8 posted on 08/28/2010 9:05:04 AM PDT by Yo-Yo (Is the /sarc tag really necessary?)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

OMG


9 posted on 08/28/2010 9:23:17 AM PDT by Vaduz
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To: TigerLikesRooster

see it, say it, write it....It’s how memory works


10 posted on 08/28/2010 9:24:14 AM PDT by Sacajaweau (What)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
I once implemented a kanji word processor. A full keyboard is the size of a tabletop. Though the kanji system makes just as much sense as our phonetic system, once you get used to a totally different way of thinking about words, it is simply not a good fit for mobile devices. As soon as keitai mobile culture took off in Asia, kanji use began to decline. They can NOT get away with just Romanizing words, because the spoken language does not have enough sounds to represent all the concepts that modern society needs, which is why the kanji characters were imported from China in the first place. I think that over time we will see a new "mobile Japanese" language evolve which can be represented with the Roman character set.
11 posted on 08/28/2010 9:33:45 AM PDT by BlazingArizona
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To: TigerLikesRooster
I have even experienced "tibiwangzi" myself. I took a semester of Chinese, and really studied it hard before going to China a few years ago. It has been a while since I have studied though, and the first thing I lost is the ability to write characters, then to read them, then to speak the words.

"There is no way we can learn the writing systematically because the writing itself is not systematic -- we have to memorise, we have to rote learn," she says.

I agree with this, and it may even be worse for foreigners. 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. Brute force memorization is the only technique possible.

This is a historical/cultural earthquake. In western history, the culture has always been to increase literacy and push education down to the lower classes. Every technology that helped, such as the printing press, cheaper paper, etc, was quickly adopted.

In China this trend was resisted. For the educated class who was literate, there was no incentive to create an easier system of writing to lift the peasants up. The diffficulty of writing and the time it took to learn it was a feature to help create a barrier between the educated class and the peasants.

This may finally be the reform that has been still born for more than a century.

12 posted on 08/28/2010 9:34:42 AM PDT by Vince Ferrer
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To: DTogo
I like the far older characters from 2000 years ago. You get a feel for the character, search around inside it, look at the context with other characters, and they will talk to you ~ not with subtle nuances of course, but enough so you can figure out where to go, what to do, what to eat.

Modern revisions lost that characteristic. I'm not surprised Chinese kid would forget how to do the modern stuff.

We had a Korean-American restaurant here and his logo was "It takes a tough man to make a tender duck". Took me about 5 minutes to work through that one, which was pretty good for me ~ but he did it in old fashioned kitchen Chinese. A tender duck is, of course, a duck, in water, over heat with a duck press on its head/body. That's what slowed me down ~ figuring out what "tender" meant ~

13 posted on 08/28/2010 9:47:35 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: TigerLikesRooster

If people are smart and informed, money should not matter.


14 posted on 08/28/2010 9:50:44 AM PDT by libh8er
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To: AndrewB
Simply replacing an inefficient communications system with a more efficient one.

It really depends on what you are measuring the efficiency of.

For instance, if you are writing in Japanese and measuring "efficiency" as the minimum number of characters displayed on a mobile device, kanji is the clear winner, with hiragana and katakana tied for second, and using the Latin alphabet is the worst choice.

For example, say you are text messaging to a buddy to order lunch for you. Using kanji, you could just send four kanji characters, 焼肉定食.

If you use hiragana, it would be nine characters, やきにくていしょく.

But in Latin characters, it would take at least 16: "yakinikuteishoku" (and I at least would use a space, which would make for 17 characters.)

15 posted on 08/28/2010 9:51:38 AM PDT by snowsislander (In this election year, please ask your candidates if they support repeal of the 1968 GCA.)
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To: libh8er

Oops.. wrong thread. Meant to post on this one :)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2579186/posts

{to self: this is what happens when you have too many FRindows open ! }


16 posted on 08/28/2010 9:54:29 AM PDT by libh8er
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To: TigerLikesRooster

This is not as strange as it sounds, since there is a particular order and way to draw each character, which is like remembering how to “Draw Tippy” for 5,000 or more characters. If you don’t practice, you can forget. And while I haven’t forgotten how to write, I do write horribly and slowly now because I do it so infrequently.


17 posted on 08/28/2010 10:39:39 AM PDT by Question_Assumptions
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To: TigerLikesRooster

It’s interesting that, at the same time, American English speakers and writers are losing use of the English verb form.
Heard a minister with a doctorate the other day say, “I seen this [particular thing happen.]” And there is one radio preacher who speaks English as if it were a second language.


18 posted on 08/28/2010 11:19:16 AM PDT by righttackle44 (I may not be much, but I raised a United States Marine.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Doesn’t suprise me at all - lack of continual use is demonstrated in my own family. My wife in the states for 15 years admits she no longer can write most japanese kanji beyond the basics (hiragana/katakana no issues); my kids can read ok, but continually struggle to write; but for me the most telling is my sister in law who lives in japan, but because she isn’t required to write often on a routine basis, is quickly approaching my wife’s writing limitations - she’s about 8 years her junior. On the Japanese side I see them adopting hirigana/katakana more (despite arguments on efficiencies) and dropping more of the basic 2000 kanji.

Having studied Chinese, this one is more of a suprise for me - due to the tonal nature of the languages. Pinyin isn’t a really good sub for the 5000 basic characters required; but I could easily see how an alphabetic keyboard could quickly sub in based on usage and drop down menus- from there it is a simple matter of replacing typing with writing utilizing the same style - just don’t forget your tone marks. For those in the know remember Mom doesn’t like be called a horse.


19 posted on 08/28/2010 12:56:54 PM PDT by reed13 (The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.")
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To: 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. Why not skip that step and simply use the hiragana? (Rhetorical question-I know why they couldn’t.)

Having hiragana and katakana make Japanese at least a tiny bit easier for the foreigner. I could read your hiragana but the only character I recognized in the kanji was “niku” (and I didn’t read it as niku I saw “meat”.


20 posted on 08/28/2010 1:16:56 PM PDT by GATOR NAVY ("The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen." -Dennis Prager)
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