For it wasn’t just a problem of the “uneducated masses”. As the months went by, I began to discover that everyone, even the most highly educated and bookish, seemed to have trouble remembering the characters for common words. I began to keep a little notebook of examples of the ti bi wang zi(提笔忘字) phenomenon, and I was amazed at the kind of lapses I encountered—characters in very mundane words like “paint”, “tin can”, “spine”, “mouse” and so on—all temporarily forgotten by people who were clearly very intelligent, well-read, and even exceptionally talented at language use. Though I suddenly felt vindicated with regards to my own difficulty remembering how to write Chinese characters, I began to wonder if this problem was more pervasive and pernicious than the Chinese themselves were aware of.
The most astounding example I encountered back in my early days studying Chinese was during a lunch with four graduate students in the Peking University Chinese department. I had a bad cold that day, and wanted to write a note to a friend to cancel a meeting. I found that I couldn’t write the character ti 嚔 in the word for “sneeze”, da penti 打喷嚔, and so I asked my four friends for help. To my amazement, none of the four could successfully retrieve the character ti 嚔. Four Chinese graduate students at China’s most prestigious university could not write the word for “sneeze” in their own native script! One simply cannot imagine a similar situation in a phonetic script environmente.g., four Harvard graduate students unable to write a common word like “sneeze” in the orthography of their native language.
I have occasionally taught English to Beijing schoolchildren, and one day I was helping a class of third graders review English words for body parts. One little boy wrote “knee” on the blackboard, and then, as he attempted to write the Chinese translation xigai 膝盖, found he could not write the characters. I found this rather intriguing, and I begin to quiz the class on common words for body parts and everyday objects, and within a few minutes we came up with a list of words like yaoshi 钥匙 “key”, niaochao 鸟巢 “bird’s nest”, lajiao 辣椒 “hot pepper”, huazhuang 化妆 “makeup”, gebo 胳膊 “arm”, jugong 鞠躬 “bow”, and so on, all of which they could write (or correctly guess) in English, but could not successfully render in Chinese script! Abilities varied greatly, of course, and a couple of the brighter kids could seemingly write almost any character, but for most of them, their written English lexicon had already made a few semantic inroads that were still inaccessible via the Chinese characters. After the class I mentioned this interesting (and to me, distressing) state of affairs to some of the parents who stayed on to chat with me. This gave rise to a lively discussion, during which we found that many of the parents, to their bemused chagrin, also stumbled over characters in common words like saozhou 扫帚 “broom”, gebozhou 胳膊肘 “elbow”, zhouwen 皱纹 “wrinkle”, aizheng 癌症 “cancer”, menkan 门槛 “threshold”, qi 鳍 “fin”, chiru 耻辱 “shame”, xidicao 洗涤槽 “kitchen sink”, Lundun 伦敦 “London”, and so on. Many of these adults held advanced degrees, and one was an editor at a Beijing newspaper. One of the parents sheepishly confided in me “I wince when I my child asks me how to write a character, because I often can’t remember, either. This has happened so often that I’ve totally lost face in this regard, and nowadays the joke in our house is ‘Look it up, you’ll remember it longer.’”
Comparisons of Chinese characters with other writing systems are admittedly fraught with difficulty, and such questions are outside my area of expertise. If there is indeed a disparity here, as I contend, the problem would be an “invisible” one. It is common knowledge that the characters are difficult to learn, but few imagine just how difficult in comparison to alphabetic scripts. One could not expect Chinese parents and teachers to notice a failing that would only be evident through direct and scientific comparisons of Chinese kids’ performance with that of their American counterparts.
Ian_Lee -
Dmoser:
When I drive to work in the morning, there is phone-in quiz in the radio which many Americans cannot spell right some very simple words like "accelerate", "Portuguese", "potential",.....etc.
So I am not surprised that those students and their parents in Beijing cannot write those common characters properly.
But my daughters who attended Sunday Chinese school here for 3 years can write properly words like 伦敦 in its traditional script which is five strokes more.
Anyhow, the top contenders in the Spelling Bee in this state are always Asian kids.
When I drive to work in the morning, there is phone-in quiz in the radio which many Americans cannot spell right some very simple words like "accelerate", "Portuguese", "potential",.....etc.
So I am not surprised that those students and their parents in Beijing cannot write those common characters properly.
But my daughters who attended Sunday Chinese school here for 3 years can write properly words like 伦敦 in its traditional script which is five strokes more.
Anyhow, the top contenders in the Spelling Bee in this state are always Asian kids.
Quest -
Yea, if you can just scribble down the general shape of the character, or substitute in another character with the same sound, you can still be understood. Then you can look it up in the dictionary using pinyin.
I agree it takes more time to search a chinese dictionary if you do not know the sound of the character. However, since you only need to know a few thousand characters instead of the tens of thousands of words for English, a Chinese would likely use the dictionary less frequently than an English speaker.
I agree it takes more time to search a chinese dictionary if you do not know the sound of the character. However, since you only need to know a few thousand characters instead of the tens of thousands of words for English, a Chinese would likely use the dictionary less frequently than an English speaker.
xuechengfeng -
Your "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard," article described my plight to a tee, and was hilarious!
I was dumbfounded today, I asked my Chinese instructor if she could draw the traditional character for 里 because I think I messed it up on my writing test, and she couldn't do it! She said she only knew how to write simplified characters.
I was dumbfounded today, I asked my Chinese instructor if she could draw the traditional character for 里 because I think I messed it up on my writing test, and she couldn't do it! She said she only knew how to write simplified characters.
xuechengfeng -
Ian:
The problem is if one were to be asked to spell the words you mentioned, and couldn't do it correctly, someone would at least be able to recognize their intentions because they can sound it out to where it's recognizable. Some of the same spelling characters are close (ex. ji) but what if you don't know either of them?
The problem is if one were to be asked to spell the words you mentioned, and couldn't do it correctly, someone would at least be able to recognize their intentions because they can sound it out to where it's recognizable. Some of the same spelling characters are close (ex. ji) but what if you don't know either of them?
skylee -
This is sad. But thanks to word processors you now can easily find the traditional form -> 裏
Quote:
| I asked my Chinese instructor if she could draw the traditional character for 里 because I think I messed it up on my writing test, and she couldn't do it! She said she only knew how to write simplified characters. |
Quest -
I am sure your teacher could recognize it if she saw it written out. You should not expect people from the mainland to be able to write traditional characters anyways. Nothing so sad about it
beirne -
I'm not sure about Quest's point that a Chinese only needs to know a few thousand characters whereas an English speaker needs to know 10's of thousands of words, therefore a Chinese would need to use the dictionary less. How does one know if they want to use 做 or 作? Or which of the 164 characters pronounced yi4? Knowing how to write Chinese involves not only writing the characters but knowing which ones to combine.
smithsgj -
Are Chinese students, in China or wherever, actually trained in using dictionaries as a matter of course, whether by radical or pinyin search? I find it slightly suspect that -- in my experience -- students use English to Chinese dictionaries frequently, but never seem to look anything up in a Chinese to English dictionary (or for that matter even own one, since the two components, unlike European bilingual dictionaries, are almost always sold separately; which is itself very strange, as if there were groups of users who would need one and not the other). In my own Chinese studies I found myself using both, frequently.
I think OP's is a very interesting post. It presents compelling evidence that the Chinese writing system is problematic.
Ian, your phone in words are difficult words: like "parallel", the kind of words most people have to think twice about. OP was talking about words like "sneeze" and "knee"!
I think OP's is a very interesting post. It presents compelling evidence that the Chinese writing system is problematic.
Ian, your phone in words are difficult words: like "parallel", the kind of words most people have to think twice about. OP was talking about words like "sneeze" and "knee"!
Quest -
so how does not knowing 做 or 作 or the 164? yi's relate to what I said?
