Writing Characters by Hand
October 27th, 2006 by MarkRecently, I’ve seen the topic of writing Chinese come up on a few forum threads, and in every single one there’s been a response saying something along the lines of this:
“Knowing how to write Chinese characters doesn’t matter. In this day and age, you can type them in on a computer instead.”
Does knowing how to write characters matter?
- Yes, it’s an integral part of learning a language. (85%)
- Yes, but only after becoming a fully literate reader. (7%)
- No, we can do all of our writing on computers. (7%)
- No, we just should use pinyin for characters we don’t know. (0%)
Total Votes: 41
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October 27th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
Oh, I like this topic. This one comes up a lot for me, especially because I can’t write characters all that well :/
I think the anti-change feelings are a phase just like the ‘everything should be written in roman characters’ phase. The next phase in learning after wanted to get rid of characters all together, is the belief that reading is ‘good-enough’ as long as you can type on a computer.
I think actually being able to write the characters is important because it’s a window to the culture as culture is controlled by language, and language is controlled by culture. Sure you could argue that you can get the same effect by writing it on a computer, but I don’t think you do. I think you can only get the full effect by consciously writing the characters part by part.
Plus it’s a great pickup tool, being able to write the characters just as good or better then the locals.
October 28th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Living in Japan, that’s actually a fairly realistic possibility. In Taiwan, on the other hand, the locals can write zillions the #$@%ing things.
October 28th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
I voted with the overwhelming majority, and I agree, but that’s not the only, or even main reason for me to learn to write characters. See, my reading is alright, really, and I don’t have any major hassles with SMS or email, but sometimes the only technology available is a pen and paper, or even just your hands (do they ’sketch’ characters on their hands in Taiwan?) Also, being able to write, instead of just type Pinyin and recognise, characters goes a long, long way towards helping you learn to use the radical index in a dictionary when you come across a new/forgotten character for which you don’t have the Pinyin. So I’ve devised my own little programme to get me to remember how to write more characters. And for the moment it’s bloody frustrating: I’m trying to write a short article, and I’m constantly checking the dictionary for characters I know! I can recognise the bloody things, I just can’t remember how to write them. Making some progress, though.
October 29th, 2006 at 11:08 am
I agree it’s important to know how to write characters, but I’ve given up. 95% of the time anymore when I write Chinese it’s by computer, and though I could carve out some time for writing practice, I’ve just got other things I’d rather be doing. If I’m w/o a computer and I get in a jam, I suppose I could whip out my cell phone and look up the character by SMS.
October 29th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
I also reflexively voted for the majority, but Prince Roy is right, the absolute need to write them is diminishing fast. I only handwrite post-it notes these days, in Chinese or English. No doubt we will be thinking characters direct to disposable electronic paper one day not so far in the future. Intensively learning the characters by hand was a big help with the radicals and learning to read, and I still find that my hand can remember a character better than my brain sometimes, but having learnt them, do we need to keep doing it?
October 29th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Laoban, did the vote tally display before you had a chance to vote yourself? If so, could you tell me which browser you’re using? Part of why I didn’t post any of my own opinions on the matter is because I didn’t want to bias the vote towards my opinion.
October 29th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
I more or less agree with Prince Roy. I think it is important to have some idea how to write, but whether it is worthwhile investing massive amounts of time in learning how to write several thousand characters is questionable.
I think it also depends on your learning goals. Currently my main goal is learning to read Chinese but I am not spending any time practicing writing. I am glad for the fact that I know how to write Chinese characters and can easily copy down new characters and words into my notebook, but that’s enough for me at the moment. I could probably only write a few hundred characters from memory.
I also think learning some calligraphy is useful to better appreciate Chinese characters.
October 30th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Firefox did not display the vote tally before voting.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:44 am
I’ve written my ideas on this subject in, The Pen Matters.