Cina: da un posto qualsiasi..
Chinese children spend hours, days, weeks, months, years studying Chinese characters:
Students spend so many hours re-writing the same character trying to memorize it.
But lately, the rate of people knowing how to write Chinese characters has gone down:
Although it is natural that some characters are more difficult than others, it's also true that the general public
has been noticing that they can read characters, but can't always write them by hand anymore.
What can this be blamed on?
With the rise of apps such as WeChat, it is much easier for everybody to message each other.
Even for me, a non-native Chinese, WeChat saves me because I must only type the Pinyin, which is the sound of the word,
and the characters I need come up in front of me so I can choose the one I need:
Additionally, you can even send short voice messages, which means you can talk on-the-go without having to sit down and write.
Although this is all convenient, what does it mean for the Chinese character culture?
Being able to handwrite beautiful Chinese characters is considered an art in China, and being able to write fast,
efficiently and clearly is valued even more.
With all these shortcuts using technology, people are out of practice when it comes to writing.
With over 50,000 characters in China, going out of practice means losing an important aspect of Chinese language and culture.
"Now my daughter starts to learn Chinese characters …
For quite a lot of characters I already can't remember how to write (them) …
I think it's really important to practice writing, not spending a lot of time on the computer typing. " N. W.
The problem doesn't lie in speaking, listening or reading.
In contrast, Chinese characters must be constantly practiced, and the Chinese school system encourages
this practice so that people don't forget how to write.
But if kids learn how to write perfectly in school but grow up to type on a computer or on a phone there's a risk
that they will lose some Chinese writing ability.
"The Chinese language has survived the technological challenges of the digital era,
but the benefits of communicating digitally may come with a cost in proficient learning of
written Chinese."
Commented the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, January 2014.
Although this is a big problem in China, there are other places which use ideograms that have been noticing the
same thing, such as Hong Kong, Vietnam, Taiwan or Korea.
There's even a parallel problem in Europe:
Only here it isn't about the loss of 'beautiful writing', but writing itself.
Cortesia di L.B.
the stroke order, the sounds with multiple characters and the characters with multiple sounds.
in a Chinese Characters Dictation Competition (a remix of 'spelling bees') only 30% of the 14-year-old contestants could
write the word for 'toad' (???) and only 70% of adults watching the show could write it.
Technology.
no need to write anything at all.
The problem is at the core of writing:
knowing how to write characters isn't like learning how to ride a bike:
People say that when you learn how to cycle, you'll never forget it.
the loss of cursive, and people debating whether this is an exaggerated problem or if it's a real issue.
