Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 December 15

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December 15

Character amnesia

I've read the Character amnesia article twice and don't quite understand the idea. It's saying that some people argue that the use of non-logographic input methods has weakened CJK character users' familiarity with writing characters. On one level, I can understand the argument (if you use something less, you may lose your capabilities with it), but on the other hand I don't understand the argument: how is it hard for such people to write CJK characters? Such people are presumably reading at least as many characters as they would have before electronics (and if you're writing with these input methods, you have to know what the right character looks like in order to choose it), so they should remain familiar with the characters that remain in use. Meanwhile, the stroke order system appears to be rather rigid (I get the impression that there's only one way to write 順, only one way to write 忘, etc. in any country, and the same system applies to all characters), so forgetting merely the writing, but not the reading, is incomprehensible to me. Could someone explain the idea, and if I've overlooked something in the article, point it out to me? Nyttend (talk) 00:46, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

I've only previously encountered the concept in relation to reading (I believe it's been discussed several times on Language Log). People who don't read an alphabetically-written language very often can grow rusty in their reading skills, but provided they still have some minimal degree of reading ability, they don't forget letters of the alphabet. By contrast, Chinese-speakers who don't keep up their reading skills can and often do forget characters... AnonMoos (talk) 04:12, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

I just want to add that the Japanese brushstroke order may be a little different from the Chinese brushstroke order. I watched this on YouTube and saw this on Wikipedia that 田 can be written in two different ways, depending on the Chinese or Japanese style of writing. Chinese writers prefer the horizontal first, then vertical. Japanese writers prefer the vertical first, then horizontal. The brushstroke order is rigid in the sense that it follows a specific way that aids the writer to move gracefully across the page - up to down, left to right, etc. Reading may be easier than writing, because many characters are partially phonetic and contextual. So, even if the reader forgets how to write a specific brushstroke, he can still recognize that character by the phonetic components, semantics, and location next to other characters. SSS (talk) 05:01, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

It makes some sense to me. I studied Mandarin many years ago and have forgotten most of it. I can still remember recognize a few common characters such as 我. But if you asked me to write it, I probably wouldn't remember every stroke. An analogy might be, you can probably easily recognize the obverse of a US quarter (assuming you're American) but if asked to reproduce it you might not remember all the details -- which way Washington is facing, what the text says and where it is placed, etc. CodeTalker (talk) 05:04, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Further to AnonMoos's mention of Language Log (which I also lurk on), this is not a theoretical phenomenon; it's one that language professionals in China frequently observe in literate Chinese acquaintences, students etc.

As an analogy, consider how often many people recognise someone visually but can't for the moment recall that person's name, although they'd recognize it immediately if they heard it. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.220.212.173 (talk) 10:27, 15 December 2017 (UTC){The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.220.212.173 (talk) 10:27, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

A closer analogy might be an English speaker who can read words that they can't spell. CodeTalker (talk) 15:38, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

• I don't see the mystery here. I didn't have access to word processors until my mid twenties. Before then I wrote copious amounts by hand, both in cursive, and printing, as well as a hybrid style I developed for ease and speed in note taking. Once I got regular access to computers I began typing to the point that only signatures and grocery lists were hand written. I find it actively difficult at this point to produce cursive, and have forgotten all the capital forms except those in my name, which I have modified anyway. My printing was once quite elegant, and is now atrocious, and I find filling out forms at doctor's offices painful and the results often illegible. This is all due to disuse. I have no problem at all reading handwriting. See decline of penmanship due to computers. μηδείς (talk) 17:24, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

I will check the article, but this concept is not new. It has been an issue in China for over 20 years. It isn't that people forget how to write a character. They completely forget the character. Text editors don't simply accept character input. They predict what the next characters might be. So, typing involves picking a starting character and then tabbing to the next character, then tabbing to the next one, and so on. Often, the options aren't a single character. Whole phrases pop up. So, the person's brain is processing "jiu<tab><enter><tab><tab><enter>" instead of "jiuyang daming". In the end, students sit in class and they can't come up with what comes after jiu. They can say it verbally. If they see it, they can read it. Writing it becomes difficult. In a study that I read a very long time ago, students who had been using computers for over three years were able to accurately write down the keyboard strokes to write long phrases, but were often unable to write the characters. I personally don't think it will ever apply to English writing because auto-filling words while one is typing tends to be annoying. Auto-correct has never been very accurate and I don't think it ever will be. I often just give up and txt my wife messages like "I will prick up drug tree on the way him." 71.85.51.150 (talk) 01:12, 16 December 2017 (UTC)