"The Importance of Handwriting"--in China

[Dick Schutz]

Learning "English" is hard, but "Learning Mandarin is really, really hard — even for many Chinese people":

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg ... story.html

The article highlights some interesting parallels and divergences. With respect to "handwriting":

there’s been a digital revolution, which has totally changed the way we write Chinese. There are a lot of aspects to talk about, but the long and short of it is, the new technology in our smartphones and computers means the writing of Chinese by hand is no longer an important, or I’d argue even a basic, skill anymore. That used to be one of the big stumbling blocks, learning to write these characters so you could communicate. Now we have these smartphones — you can talk into them, you can use [phonetic] entry. You really don’t have to bother yourself with the complexity of memorizing three or four thousand characters. That has been a huge revolution.

There’s one more aspect that I should mention: The side effect of all this, is that Chinese — native Chinese — are losing the ability to write their own language. My wife is Chinese, and she writes with her cellphone and computer. If I ask her to write me out something by hand, she throws up her hands and says, “Get me a computer; I can’t write anything by hand anymore.”

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Dick - that's really very interesting and gives much food for thought.