The art of calligraphy will never die. I Revere the Chinese language for its irreplaceable writing system, it's indeed a pinnacle of culture. But in this video it comes to language acquisition by foreigners, who are still focussing on learning all other aspects of the language too and want fast results. First fast results, then mastery, and finally art.
No. Writing and speaking are different skills. Typing Chinese doesn't make writing Chinese useless. If there's no gadget, you can't type anything. For me, there is joy in writing the characters.
but I more often have a phone and a computer with me than a pen and paper. the times have changed. now the phone and the computer are essential tools, while the pen and paper have become gadgets.
Nah bro, it having SOME MARGINAL USE is way closer to useless than useful. Now, if you ENJOY writing it, write your heart out. It's an art form in a sense. But that doesn't make it useful. Drawing portraits is awesome and knowing how to do it comes in handy sometimes... That doesn't make it USEFUL. It's just a thing I like to do. But if you don't wanna do it yourself, you don't need to, and you shouldn't be forced to do it.
But that's the point of the video, "If there is no gadget". Where will you be without gadgets? As he said at the end, if you enjoy writing, you should write. But what is the actually practical use of being able to write from memory in 2023? "No gadgets" is just not reality.
As a native, I have to say writing chinese character and reading it are 2 separate actions in Chinese. I'll say most Chinese once they are out of school, we do forget how to write some characters ever now and then and people just use pinyin(zhuyin in taiwan) or voice typing to get things done. Chinese character is more of a visual manifestation of an idea, as long as you remember the rough shape of the character and know the meaning of it and its 2 character vocab, learning Chinese shouldn't be too hard
I always wonder how Chinese people take a note when they forgot how to write Kanji Japanese can escape to Hiragana and Katakana. Does Chinese people use ABC when they forget how to write in Kanji?
@@yuumetal2363 From the point of view as an English speaker learning Chinese language , I used to work with a Chinese lady and she would have post it notes with Hanzi on them to remind her of tasks to be done . I believe that the brain is phenomenal and that it is possible to remember thousands of characters if that is the method you have learnt . I found the learning of Radicals to be of great benefit when using the dictionary .
what you said at the beginning is so wild to me as someone who regularly takes notes (in German) by hand. I have pages upon pages of handwritten notes and it feels weird to hear that there are people who simply stopped using handwriting. It will interesting how this develops into the future
That's a good point. I stopped taking notes by hand after college. I do think writing things down does help with remembering it - so I would write it and then never consult them again after the class finished. I think if I was still in the habits of taking notes like that, perhaps writing characters would be more useful. I could write daily notes in Chinese, or something. But as it stands I don't have the habit, hence why I don't bother practicing writing - since I have no use for it currently. There is also the other part (for Chinese specifically) where getting to that level of being able to casually write notes is most of the issue.
typing is just must faster. I doubt anyone can write at more than 100 words per minute, but it is very likely that you can type at this speed with several months of practice, if you previously couldn't.
@@haomingli6175Certain writing related activities can be very tedious when typed instead. Try doing all your math homework on the pc. That's why I admire proficient users of LaTeX
Writing did help me learn to read better, because I started to put together each of the components that helped with meaning and pronunciation. It helped to teach me to break things down, and it helped to recognize what a character was when it was in the different calligraphy style scripts where those more discrete computerized versions of the components are more obscured. It was also a point of pride when writing things the right way made the characters I wrote start to resemble those written by experienced writers, and helped me keep notes without using romanization while studying. You make a great point about how sublimated handwriting is now, and it does have this cascade effect. Computing is also more ubiquitous now than when I studied, too, so it's less necessary to whip out a pen and paper when you're trying to reach an understanding when spoken isn't working
I live in Taiwan, and there were plenty situations where I needed to fill paper forms in Chinese, especially when dealing with banks. While I agree that hand writing is a dying skill all across the world, I don't think it's obsolete. Also, at least for me, writing really helps to memorize the characters in a long term.
I have aphantasia, meaning I struggle considerably when remembering images. When I started learning Chinese I could remember different characters, but it felt like guesswork. Being able to write them means I have other forms of memory to rely on, and it's helped a lot with distinguishing some closer characters.
If a learner decides not to learn how to write Chinese characters, he will become fluent in Chinese to some extent within 3-4 years, while Chinese people like me spent 6 years in elementary school learning the writing of 2000 simplified Chinese characters. This is why any learner should not learn how to write Chinese characters. In the past, learning Chinese characters was very important because people did not have computers. Now, learning how to write will greatly hinder the progress of learning Chinese. Similarly, most of the time Chinese students spend learning English is wasted on memorizing English word spellings, and after learning English for seven or eight years, they wonder why their listening, speaking, and writing abilities are so poor. I remember when I was in elementary school, my English teacher asking me , “Why can you read words when your spelling is so bad?” Whether it is English or Chinese, memorizing writing itself is more time-consuming and difficult than mastering the two languages themselves.
I grew up in Canada and my parents made me to go Chinese school. I learned writing Chinese characters, but didn't retain much of the vocabulary as most of my communications with anyone outside my immediate family was in English. Now that I'm much older, I appreciated learning how to write Chinese characters. I learned using a brush pen in the 70's before they changed to ballpoint pens in the 80's. I'm casually trying to learn more Chinese now. Mainly learning reading. Nothing structured, but mainly just learning Chinese songs and watching Chinese shows (older ones). Knowing how to write is handy because when watching a Chinese show that has only Chinese subtitles, I can write it in my translation app on my phone to find out the meaning of the word.
I think "writing" actually falls under two different but ultimately different skills. The simpler one is being able to write a character that is right in front of you correctly. I.e., proper stroke order. I hardly write at all nowadays, but I can get the stroke order correct 95% of the time, since it usually follows a predictable set of rules. I also use this skill in the same way you do - to look up characters on my phone. Given that internalizing those rules only takes maybe a dozen hours of practice or less, I think it is definitely worth the time! The more complex aspect of "writing", which I argue against putting too much time into, is being able to write a character from memory alone. This one takes hundreds of hours to practice - and also can easily decay - as it requires one to be able to recall the visual form of 3k+ characters from memory, and then using one's stroke-order knowledge to write them out. I brought this up briefly in the video, but I think should have covered it a bit more in depth.
@@HanziHero I still recall the order stroke knowledge I learned in Chinese school. I do find myself sometimes not going by the correct stroke order when using my translation app. Usually, it's when I make some mistake or it just feels more convenient to ignore it. For some more complex characters with many strokes, sometimes it's hard for me to see what the exact strokes are as well. Learning writing with a brush pen also required me to know some very subtle aspects of writing Chinese characters. I have to know how to control the thickness of each stroke. Some strokes have a round end. Some have a pointy end. That's a technique I no longer needed when my school changed to using ballpoint pens. Looking back, I appreciate the artistry of writing with a brush pen. I do calligraphy in English and I feel writing Chinese with a brush pen to be similar. With technology these days, I do agree that hand writing is going away. Even in English, I find hand writing to be used less and less. It's a lot easier to type than write anything by hand no matter what language. The challenge for me is that I don't know how to type in Chinese. A big reason is that I don't speak Mandarin. I speak Cantonese and 2 other dialects. My understanding is that any type of keyboard entry typing in Chinese is based on Mandarin.
Seems everyone are curious in "What will Chinese people do when they forget a character" It is quite simple. Write another character that have the same pronunciation. We called it as "通假字" Yes. The character would have a totally different meaning. But the writing will make sense if the reader speak out the sentence. We Definitely not going to do that in any official documentary. But it is very common in the market, note taking and everyday use. If you want the exact correct character, go for Google (or a real dictionary if you don't have any internet)
I can write Japanese (I live in Japan), and read Chinese. I actually found that being able to write Japanese helped me a lot when it came to reading handwritten Japanese characters. Which there is still a lot of in the workplace. It also helped me stop mixing up similar characters, which can be a huge problem. I definitely agree that in most scenarios you won't need it, but there have been many situations where I've been better off for knowing how to, over not knowing them. Rather know and not need than the opposite. Perhaps outside of working in a Japanese workplace the need would be near 0, but I'm still definitely happy with my investment of time. Plus, maybe it's just because of how I use my time, but this never took time away from the other aspects of study. (Amazing what dropping socials can do haha)
No, if you write characters by hand, especially in the beginning of learning them, understand the shape and order of strokes, you greatly enhance your ability to memorise them
I feel the same way for Japanese. I live in the US so in the years of studying I've never written a single character by hand. I had no issues learning all the kanji I needed just with Anki and daily reading practice.
Yeah I think "not needed" is a better way to phrase it! I think earlier versions of the video I used "unnecessary" which is more or less the same but changed it to "useless" to get the text to fit in the thumbnail. 😋
@@HanziHero there is a very vast difference between only able to read and use translation or voice or pinying vs. knowing how to write each character correctly in the correct order for each stroke. The best Chinese input method in terms of efficiency is Cangjie: but to use it on the keyboard, you have to know how to write the character and break it apart and type the first stroke, then the last stroke. But this is just elementary, you still cannot appreciate and create your own Chinese verses.
In the USA we stopped teaching cursive in favor of keyboarding and that has caused some problems, especially between generations. There are times when I've had to leave hand written notes for colleagues and they were unable to read them because I write in cursive. Many young people can't even write in lower case letters (others write only in upper case). It slows down writing significantly when you only print, as well. And, what do you do when the electricity goes out, or you don't have cell/data service? Writing is far more important than people think.
Interesting! I think writing in ones native language is important, but less so for foreign languages with a different script. Mainly because getting to a level of fluency where one can speak/compose coherently in a language like Chinese is the bigger task that takes thousands of hours of study and immersion, while brushing up on one's writing skill afterwords only takes a fraction of time. There are some who get burnt out on practicing the physical act of writing before they ever learn the language itself, leading to them being able to write, but not compose anything coherent.
@@HanziHero In Chinese you have to know characters to be able to read because of all the homonyms. The poem about the lion is an excellent example (shi shi shi shi shi...) Even with tones, there are just too many possibilities.
@@inBtweenHandles those are really extreme examples, and I think they are only doable in Classical Chinese; in modern Standard Chinese, where the vast majority of words are disyllabic (as opposed to monosyllabic in Classical Chinese), those poems are no longer possible to compose, because disyllabic homophones (yeah, the word is homophone, not homonym) are just so much rarer, and because most people can understand verbal communication despite all those homophonous characters, translating Chinese characters to toned pinyin would be totally viable as a way to read modern Chinese. Korean and Vietnamese contain a lot of Chinese loan words with homophonous characters; but they are perfectly fine in reading and writing even after they got rid of the Chinese characters and switched to a purely phonetic way of writing. I think words in Chinese became disyllabic hand in hand with homophones increasing dramatically, following the simplification of syllable structure; they became disyllabic to avoid ambiguities in speech; and disyllabicity made it possible to further simplify the syllable structure.
When was the last time your elecricity went out and you had no cell/data service and the only way out of the situation was being able to write Chinese?
As someone who just started learning japanese, the concept of having to learn 2000 kanji is already terrifying, so i'm glad i don't have to learn sroke order for each one as well
I would still recommend you to learn general stroke order, so you can use handwriting input if you're searching for a character. The stroke order is generally straightforward with a few exceptions. It's still separate from being able to write from memory, but this way you can just copy a character you see by hand or to look it up on your phone.
Stroke order is mainly some principles and patterns, with a few exceptions. So it is not worse than English tenses, even irregular verbs have patterns that repeat themselves, e.g.: drink, drank, drunk; sing, sang, sung. So stroke order is your friend in what would otherwise be more difficult. Even apps that recognize your handwriting do it by stroke order , so I highly recommend learning it. Understanding the basic principles is a common factor both for Hanzi (Chinese) and Kanji(Japanese)
That depends on your typing system. Unlike many languages, there are several typing systems for Chinese, Stroke (one of the most common typing methods on cellphones) definitely requires writing knowledge
True! However in Taiwan the overwhelming majority of people use Zhuyin phonetic input for their phone and laptop. I've heard that the situation is a bit different in Hong Kong, though.
I guess I’m strange, because I prefer to handwrite when brainstorming (for more organized writing, I type.) I’m learning Japanese, and handwriting has helped me a lot with memorization of characters. That said, I never learn characters as isolated units; instead, I learn the words that include those characters.
Yeah I think learning words alongside the characters is key. If for no other reason than that it forms one other connection in the brain to the character, making it less liable to be forgotten.
So true, but not all people have good visual memory. And sometime I struggle to recognize same characters or miss read similar one. So, next video should be how correct pronunciation doesn't always matter either. Lol (Chinese folks really miss read a lot).
It is very good to find a video that is logically organized and economically argued and thus comprehensive to understand precisely what is being communicated. Thank you very much. Is there a "HanziHero" equivalent for learning Kanji, as that has an origin in written Chinese?
True though, writing and reading might seem similar but are two whole different skills, you can still read even though you already forgot or don’t know how to write. But if you really insist in learning how to write you would need to write something on a daily basis to remember it, and ur writing skills would also get lost easily with the lack of practicing. I’m Chinese, I have moved to Australia for over 2years already, in this period of time I’m only typing Chinese, and now I already forgot most of the characters. And I can still read and speak Chinese without any problem (maybe it’s cause I would still read Chinese stuff at home, it’s hard to avoid Chinese in my life as a native Chinese speaker) so yea, writing and reading are totally different things, and reading won’t really help much on writing either (might be different in other languages such as English, since most of the time it’s pronounced as how it’s written, but Chinese leans toward to be using symbols which doesn’t help you remember how to pronounce the word)
As someone learning Japanese, although it is arguably easier to write since you need fewer characters for any given sentence compared to Chinese, I didn't really know how to handwrite words and it really frustrated me to be able to like read thousands of characters but failing to write even simple ones. Even while writing this I'm not particularly good with writing chinese characters, but I have started calligraphy and just making notes in Japanese every once in a while to get better at it. Still being in school and having to handwrite your notes, even if they are digitally still keeps me writing by hand every day.
I've given up on writing in Japanese. Sometimes I feel like writing would help to distinguish characters that almost look alike, but then I'd rather sacrifice seeing those specific characters multiple times than tripling my vocabulary study time.
Your calligraphy is way better than mine... I have not written anything for years and already forgotten how to write many words (but can still tell if something in print is incorrect).
I wish my calligraphy was that good! It comes from this video: th-cam.com/video/5abgk53T2PE/w-d-xo.html . I updated the video description to make that more clear.
As a Taiwanese university student. I write my in-class quick notes in 70% English with 30% Chinese words for essential stuff. Writing everything in Hanzi/Kanji is just ... impractical. To be honest. Especially if you need to record things fast.
That's pretty interesting. Do you mainly use English because it is faster to write? In US at least, many students bring a laptop to class to type because they think typing is faster/better than writing.
@@HanziHero Yep, it’s faster. Professor speaks fast, especially when mentioning some important details that won’t repeat again. Also, It’s always a little painful for me that my brain speak much faster than my hands. Hanzi is simply too inefficient in terms of fast recording which I frequently have to do in the college or writing my stuffs.
@@HanziHero laptop for me, still a little not intuitive. I tried but really not my preferred way to record stuff. Besides,some elder professors might feel not so respected when students use laptop (although they know that many already use cellphones in class ).
I only practice writing characters that I struggle to remember despite frequent repetition. That works pretty well. Looking for more words and contexts where a difficult character appears is usually more effective for me though.
As a Chinese, I'm always criticized by my teachers how bad my writing is(both Chinese and English). But doesn't prevent me from getting into a good university and earn money
I wish this video gave the other side of the story. I learned handwriting. I use it to make notes and write down example sentences virtually every day. If I were giving a speech in Chinese, I might have to handwrite on e.g. a whiteboard. It's also used to input unfamiliar characters into Pleco. The main reason to learn handwriting is to learn handwriting (not some auxiliary goal). The argument that "you seldom need it, and when you do need it you can use an app" applies to the entirety of the Chinese language too---just speak English or use Google Translate. Some people don't want to learn handwriting, and that's a fair decision; it won't interfere too much with their progress in other areas. Nevertheless, I wouldn't recommend having zero handwriting knowledge.
How good that i came up with this idea much earlier and i learn chinese characters with mnemonic techique and just reading and acquire them naturally. no i tried once, when i tried to learn radicals, but then i drop it and learning radicals too as well. And goodly that i did that. because i don't even live in chinese speaking country and i don't feel that i one time even need to write them by hand. And yeah in Russia learning by writting is like problem too. cursive russian is difficult to write and sometimes it's hard to understand. And i just prefer more to type, it's faster, easier, and it's just terryfying to write by hand expecially with my handwriting, which i don't want to make it better just to use ONLY in school, place that i hate with all my body and all neurons
writing chinese is good for your brain, and character forming. keyboards will destroy the culture. but time marches on, recognition is all you actually need now, and you can get sound and suggestions from a smartphone. really, an extended pinyin is probably the end result, viets have demonstrated that it works.
You need to learn how to write Chinese characters if you want to pass written school/university examinations. No shortcut here. Technology has advanced a lot. It will be probably useless to learn new languages, because automatic translations will be easily available.
I can see why you mentioned English being easier to utilize vocab. It really comes down to principle itself: Chinese requires memorization of 5000 different characters to make a standard word, like in English. Simple English only requires memorization of 26 characters including their uppercase forms and just 3000 words.
Some good points, but I just like writing. I actually write hundreds of words every day in English, and I'm starting to journal in Chinese, which is a lot more fun when I actually write on paper.
I already wrote this comment when replying to another person, but I'll past it here so that more people will likely see it and, even if it's improbable, appreciate the more cultural and 'spiritual' side of learning each skill of the Hanzi. I do my best to practice writing as well, not because I can't live without it, but because I want it. I feel like I've never witnessed anything as fascinating as this write system. I feel like it is the most rewarding enlightenment I could ever experience. I'm so glad such unique cultures exist, and even if the world doesn't care about them, I wanna do my best to preserve them as long as I'm here. Of course, those are all good reasons why you can easily live without learning how to write them... just wanna say that there is way more to appreciate and that sometimes it's better to go out of the pragmatic-only vision
As stated in the video, I think writing is similarly interesting and don't see any reason for anyone NOT to practice it if they enjoy and appreciate it! This video is mainly a reaction against the prescriptivists who state it is somehow a requirement that is necessary for understanding the language. It isn't.
Maybe technically true, but I don't like this idea because it seems too obscurantist. Like, Chinese characters are a part of the Chinese culture and identity. Knowing them intimately is a form of enlightenment. I think the part where you dissect the faculties of language is good, but you could also apply the same method to the functions of writing, of which communication is only one. There's also (as you mentioned) reinforcement of the character shape, contact with the Chinese culture, and study of the formation, etymology, composition, and taxonomy (六書) of the characters of the language. Now, I will agree with you. I learnt Japanese for some 2 years without having virtually any written literacy at all. But I always felt this a shame, not something to be proud of or content with. I'm currently learning characters for this reason. It's not really helped me read who-knows-how-much better, but one thing I will absolutely tell you is that before I started learning to write, I never fully internalized the actual form of the characters. It never struck me that there was a 言 in 警, for example. Or 敬, for that matter, lol. Moreover, studying the character etymologies on Wiktionary has been a very enlightening thing to learn how the characters are actually composed, and therefore tell how they're supposed to be pronounced (like 60% of characters are 形声). I think the attitude you can take with this is like with reading; many people will never read another book in their lives after leaving school, because, books are boring, right? But if you do read, no one can deny there are benefits to your vocabulary, language faculties, cultural awareness, etc. and I personally think the same about writing hanzi. Like anything intellectual, more knowledge can't be bad if you want it in the first place.
I agree that knowing Chinese characters in depth can really improve one's deep understanding of Chinese (or Japanese in this case). However, I think one can build that component awareness without needing to write out the character - after all, this is what HanziHero does! I don't disagree that writing out the character can help that process - spending more time with characters in any sense will help one progress in remembering and understanding. Unfortunately, the time one has to dedicate towards Chinese is limited, and the path towards fluency is so so so long, which is why I think putting off learning writing in depth till a later point may help many people, as it will allow them to focus on other parts of the language that have a better "return on investment".
@@HanziHero You're right, it does take an awfully long time to do these things. Learning the hanzi in the first place took me a year of dedicated study (25/day, often 400+ reviews of flashcards/day at that), and that was without *any* writing fluency at all. I honestly agree with your assessment, it's probably not worth writing until you get advanced anyway; because it's true that there's literally no need to write on paper at all in the modern day. But, as you also put it, if writing itself brings you joy, then there's no reason not to :)
Finally someone who is also willing to write this unique cultural feature. I do my best to practice writing as well not because I can't live without it, but because I want it. I fell like I've never witnessed anything as fascinating as this write system. I feel like it is the most rewarding enlightment I could ever experience. I'm so glad such unique cultures exist and even if the world doesn't care about them, I wanna do my best to preserve them as long as I'm here
Some of us are very good readers of English but we cannot spell. It's sort of the same thing I guess with Chinese in that you can recognize characters but maybe you don't know how to write them out.
Well said. I had the same experience with Japanese. I have lived in Japan for 24 years now. It has long become my primary language; most of my friends and colleagues here have never heard me speak English. A long time ago when I was still a student Japanese teachers repeatedly made me practice Chinese characters. I learned it for the tests, but then never had the chance to write so soon forgot. While I was an exchange student I had a long conversation with my Japanese teacher that it was a waste of time and it was sufficient to be able to read and type Japanese. She initially vehemently disagreed, but after a few months eventually caved when she realized that I could significantly read and understand more Chinese characters than she could. Fast forward 20+ years later and other than my name and address, I cannot remember the last time I have needed to write anything by hand.
Yeah the testing requirement is a big one. I think I mention it in the video, but most people I know in Taiwan that don't need any sort of accreditation usually just go with private schools/tutors to avoid the mandatory writing requirements in the public universities. Until that is gone, and I don't think it'll go away anytime soon, writing in some form will be needed for any who need to pass the TOCFL/HSK.
I had a similar experience with Japanese. I took Japanese classes and so of course I had to write Japanese for class. But for tests our teacher was very forgiving and even gave out kana sheets during the test. I had heard advice that it’s much better to learn to write the characters. I tried. I really did. But I found that I forgot how to write characters way to easily and maintains this skill would take a huge chunk of my time. But I was slowly getting better at reading them regardless. I’m now very good at reading printed Japanese. But I do struggle to read hand written Japanese. You might think if I learned to write Japanese I would be able to read other people’s handwriting too. But that’s not the case. They teach you to write the characters one way but then they break the rules when they write them or rather they follow unwritten rules that aren’t in the textbook. It is occasionally embarrassing to not be able to read hand written Japanese (unless they actually write it proper but even Japanese teachers don’t 😂). But also not such a big deal.
Yeah reading handwritten Chinese is a real struggle for me. I always thought maybe writing would help me there a bit, but I guess not! I'm sure there is a database of handwriting samples along with the actual typed text somewhere that would be great practice, but I haven't found one for Chinese.
We only teach the Mandarin pronunciation of characters. Maybe one day in the far future we can look into adding a Cantonese version of the app as well.
That's how I think too. Writing Chinese characters is interesting, I think for me I would want to start focusing on it more after I the point where reading is painless and requires zero dictionary use.
Most characters have a specific stroke order that it should be written in. However, after learning to write a hundred or so different characters, the stroke order of most characters becomes self-evident, as there are a set of rules for writing characters that are generally followed.
Good points. Chinese writing is also _further messed up_ by the Simplified character set used by the CCP mainland vs the Traditional character set used by Taiwan and Hong Kong. The population of China is about 45 times more than Taiwan and Hong Kong combined so that puts a lot of pressure to learn both creating more mental load and complication. Some say the Simplified character set loses a lot of the "radicals" that help group related Chinese characters. That was done in favor of requiring less pen strokes. In that vein, the CCP should have just *Romanized* their writing system like Vietnam did and be done with it! Almost all Chinese already know the Pinyin system that uses English characters. Therefore something based on Pinyin would an excellent start to Romanizing their writing system. They can't really claim "heritage" as much because the Simplified system was introduced in 1949 which is only 74 years old versus hundreds of years for the traditional characters.
Only 4% of Chinese characters were simplified, the rest is the same. Let's not forget that the Traditional characters are just another version of Chinese characters just like the Simplified ones, the Simplified characters are actually an evolution just like the Traditional characters are an evolution of Small and Great seal scripts. If you truly wants to claim heritage, then you should learn Small and Great Seal scripts, even Bone Script and not Traditional script which came along much later.
Why English is superior? Because it is sound-based. I can read a letter, or even a passage if it's in English. I may not understand it. Given chinese text, if i don't know the characters i don't even know where to start since it's drawing-based. Even Hàn yû pīn yīn is english based. Think about it.
I wouldn't use the word "superior", but the fact that Chinese is not phonetic is a huge issue for learners for sure. There is one famous essay "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard" that talks about this. I know zero French, but can have an idea of what a sign in French says phonetically just from knowing Latin. With Chinese, the only way is memorizing entirely. I actually talk about this briefly in my most recent video.
What benefit is there to knowing how to read a word if you don't know the meaning, if your goal is comprehension? Aren't you in the same situation either way? You still have to look something up.
Pinyin is only one of the methods of typing Chinese. Stroke solves all the problems you mentioned. It’s becoz your learning is limited. Chinese words/Kanji/Hanzi could use much less words to present the same meaning of an article, which outdoes all phonetic-based languages. Think about it
i would rather prefer to write because you can most likely guessed the person's first impression and characteristics through writing. learning to write and following the strokes is good so you can better at understanding to complete a task with proper steps. because i write caligraphy and give to my uncles and the knew my characteristic and told me what should i change. writing is not even near useless but it's part of the language and the language's culture. based on your caligraphy, you are more dominant kind of person.
Traditional Hanzi characters are the pinultimate of Han civilization. It is part of me as a person, and the society and history as a whole
The art of calligraphy will never die. I Revere the Chinese language for its irreplaceable writing system, it's indeed a pinnacle of culture.
But in this video it comes to language acquisition by foreigners, who are still focussing on learning all other aspects of the language too and want fast results. First fast results, then mastery, and finally art.
As a mainland Chinese I wrote less than 100 characters per year and almost forget how to write half of common characters
No. Writing and speaking are different skills. Typing Chinese doesn't make writing Chinese useless. If there's no gadget, you can't type anything. For me, there is joy in writing the characters.
but I more often have a phone and a computer with me than a pen and paper. the times have changed. now the phone and the computer are essential tools, while the pen and paper have become gadgets.
for me personally, writing characters is the best part of chinese... i look back at what i have written and it still feels like magic haha
Nah bro, it having SOME MARGINAL USE is way closer to useless than useful.
Now, if you ENJOY writing it, write your heart out. It's an art form in a sense. But that doesn't make it useful.
Drawing portraits is awesome and knowing how to do it comes in handy sometimes... That doesn't make it USEFUL. It's just a thing I like to do. But if you don't wanna do it yourself, you don't need to, and you shouldn't be forced to do it.
But that's the point of the video, "If there is no gadget". Where will you be without gadgets?
As he said at the end, if you enjoy writing, you should write. But what is the actually practical use of being able to write from memory in 2023? "No gadgets" is just not reality.
I rarely write even in my native language, imagine a second language
As a native, I have to say writing chinese character and reading it are 2 separate actions in Chinese. I'll say most Chinese once they are out of school, we do forget how to write some characters ever now and then and people just use pinyin(zhuyin in taiwan) or voice typing to get things done. Chinese character is more of a visual manifestation of an idea, as long as you remember the rough shape of the character and know the meaning of it and its 2 character vocab, learning Chinese shouldn't be too hard
I always wonder how Chinese people take a note when they forgot how to write Kanji
Japanese can escape to Hiragana and Katakana.
Does Chinese people use ABC when they forget how to write in Kanji?
@@yuumetal2363 From the point of view as an English speaker learning Chinese language , I used to work with a Chinese lady and she would have post it notes with Hanzi on them to remind her of tasks to be done . I believe that the brain is phenomenal and that it is possible to remember thousands of characters if that is the method you have learnt . I found the learning of Radicals to be of great benefit when using the dictionary .
@@yuumetal2363 In Taiwan we use Zhuyin, something similar to Hiragana or Katakana. If we forgot how to write "你好", we can write "ㄋㄧˇ ㄏㄠˇ " instead
@@yuumetal2363, no one would do it at least in Mainland. Them would write wrong character. Cause it's simply "lose face".
they probably write what they think the closest is to their idea@@yuumetal2363
what you said at the beginning is so wild to me as someone who regularly takes notes (in German) by hand. I have pages upon pages of handwritten notes and it feels weird to hear that there are people who simply stopped using handwriting. It will interesting how this develops into the future
That's a good point.
I stopped taking notes by hand after college. I do think writing things down does help with remembering it - so I would write it and then never consult them again after the class finished.
I think if I was still in the habits of taking notes like that, perhaps writing characters would be more useful. I could write daily notes in Chinese, or something. But as it stands I don't have the habit, hence why I don't bother practicing writing - since I have no use for it currently. There is also the other part (for Chinese specifically) where getting to that level of being able to casually write notes is most of the issue.
typing is just must faster. I doubt anyone can write at more than 100 words per minute, but it is very likely that you can type at this speed with several months of practice, if you previously couldn't.
@@haomingli6175Certain writing related activities can be very tedious when typed instead. Try doing all your math homework on the pc. That's why I admire proficient users of LaTeX
Writing did help me learn to read better, because I started to put together each of the components that helped with meaning and pronunciation. It helped to teach me to break things down, and it helped to recognize what a character was when it was in the different calligraphy style scripts where those more discrete computerized versions of the components are more obscured. It was also a point of pride when writing things the right way made the characters I wrote start to resemble those written by experienced writers, and helped me keep notes without using romanization while studying. You make a great point about how sublimated handwriting is now, and it does have this cascade effect. Computing is also more ubiquitous now than when I studied, too, so it's less necessary to whip out a pen and paper when you're trying to reach an understanding when spoken isn't working
I live in Taiwan, and there were plenty situations where I needed to fill paper forms in Chinese, especially when dealing with banks. While I agree that hand writing is a dying skill all across the world, I don't think it's obsolete.
Also, at least for me, writing really helps to memorize the characters in a long term.
汉字写作越来越变成一门艺术
I have aphantasia, meaning I struggle considerably when remembering images. When I started learning Chinese I could remember different characters, but it felt like guesswork. Being able to write them means I have other forms of memory to rely on, and it's helped a lot with distinguishing some closer characters.
If a learner decides not to learn how to write Chinese characters, he will become fluent in Chinese to some extent within 3-4 years, while Chinese people like me spent 6 years in elementary school learning the writing of 2000 simplified Chinese characters.
This is why any learner should not learn how to write Chinese characters. In the past, learning Chinese characters was very important because people did not have computers. Now, learning how to write will greatly hinder the progress of learning Chinese.
Similarly, most of the time Chinese students spend learning English is wasted on memorizing English word spellings, and after learning English for seven or eight years, they wonder why their listening, speaking, and writing abilities are so poor. I remember when I was in elementary school, my English teacher asking me , “Why can you read words when your spelling is so bad?”
Whether it is English or Chinese, memorizing writing itself is more time-consuming and difficult than mastering the two languages themselves.
I grew up in Canada and my parents made me to go Chinese school. I learned writing Chinese characters, but didn't retain much of the vocabulary as most of my communications with anyone outside my immediate family was in English. Now that I'm much older, I appreciated learning how to write Chinese characters. I learned using a brush pen in the 70's before they changed to ballpoint pens in the 80's. I'm casually trying to learn more Chinese now. Mainly learning reading. Nothing structured, but mainly just learning Chinese songs and watching Chinese shows (older ones). Knowing how to write is handy because when watching a Chinese show that has only Chinese subtitles, I can write it in my translation app on my phone to find out the meaning of the word.
I think "writing" actually falls under two different but ultimately different skills.
The simpler one is being able to write a character that is right in front of you correctly. I.e., proper stroke order. I hardly write at all nowadays, but I can get the stroke order correct 95% of the time, since it usually follows a predictable set of rules. I also use this skill in the same way you do - to look up characters on my phone. Given that internalizing those rules only takes maybe a dozen hours of practice or less, I think it is definitely worth the time!
The more complex aspect of "writing", which I argue against putting too much time into, is being able to write a character from memory alone. This one takes hundreds of hours to practice - and also can easily decay - as it requires one to be able to recall the visual form of 3k+ characters from memory, and then using one's stroke-order knowledge to write them out.
I brought this up briefly in the video, but I think should have covered it a bit more in depth.
@@HanziHero I still recall the order stroke knowledge I learned in Chinese school. I do find myself sometimes not going by the correct stroke order when using my translation app. Usually, it's when I make some mistake or it just feels more convenient to ignore it. For some more complex characters with many strokes, sometimes it's hard for me to see what the exact strokes are as well.
Learning writing with a brush pen also required me to know some very subtle aspects of writing Chinese characters. I have to know how to control the thickness of each stroke. Some strokes have a round end. Some have a pointy end. That's a technique I no longer needed when my school changed to using ballpoint pens. Looking back, I appreciate the artistry of writing with a brush pen. I do calligraphy in English and I feel writing Chinese with a brush pen to be similar.
With technology these days, I do agree that hand writing is going away. Even in English, I find hand writing to be used less and less. It's a lot easier to type than write anything by hand no matter what language.
The challenge for me is that I don't know how to type in Chinese. A big reason is that I don't speak Mandarin. I speak Cantonese and 2 other dialects. My understanding is that any type of keyboard entry typing in Chinese is based on Mandarin.
Seems everyone are curious in "What will Chinese people do when they forget a character"
It is quite simple. Write another character that have the same pronunciation. We called it as "通假字"
Yes. The character would have a totally different meaning. But the writing will make sense if the reader speak out the sentence.
We Definitely not going to do that in any official documentary. But it is very common in the market, note taking and everyday use.
If you want the exact correct character, go for Google (or a real dictionary if you don't have any internet)
I can write Japanese (I live in Japan), and read Chinese.
I actually found that being able to write Japanese helped me a lot when it came to reading handwritten Japanese characters. Which there is still a lot of in the workplace. It also helped me stop mixing up similar characters, which can be a huge problem.
I definitely agree that in most scenarios you won't need it, but there have been many situations where I've been better off for knowing how to, over not knowing them. Rather know and not need than the opposite.
Perhaps outside of working in a Japanese workplace the need would be near 0, but I'm still definitely happy with my investment of time.
Plus, maybe it's just because of how I use my time, but this never took time away from the other aspects of study. (Amazing what dropping socials can do haha)
No, if you write characters by hand, especially in the beginning of learning them, understand the shape and order of strokes, you greatly enhance your ability to memorise them
Exact same thing I did with Japanese. I learnt about 3500 Kanji, but never bothered to write any of them. I'm fine.
I feel the same way for Japanese. I live in the US so in the years of studying I've never written a single character by hand. I had no issues learning all the kanji I needed just with Anki and daily reading practice.
It’s not useless, but it not needed. However, it you want to write a book, you need to know how to write in Chinese to understand deeper.
Yeah I think "not needed" is a better way to phrase it! I think earlier versions of the video I used "unnecessary" which is more or less the same but changed it to "useless" to get the text to fit in the thumbnail. 😋
@@HanziHero there is a very vast difference between only able to read and use translation or voice or pinying vs. knowing how to write each character correctly in the correct order for each stroke. The best Chinese input method in terms of efficiency is Cangjie: but to use it on the keyboard, you have to know how to write the character and break it apart and type the first stroke, then the last stroke. But this is just elementary, you still cannot appreciate and create your own Chinese verses.
In the USA we stopped teaching cursive in favor of keyboarding and that has caused some problems, especially between generations. There are times when I've had to leave hand written notes for colleagues and they were unable to read them because I write in cursive. Many young people can't even write in lower case letters (others write only in upper case). It slows down writing significantly when you only print, as well. And, what do you do when the electricity goes out, or you don't have cell/data service? Writing is far more important than people think.
Interesting! I think writing in ones native language is important, but less so for foreign languages with a different script. Mainly because getting to a level of fluency where one can speak/compose coherently in a language like Chinese is the bigger task that takes thousands of hours of study and immersion, while brushing up on one's writing skill afterwords only takes a fraction of time.
There are some who get burnt out on practicing the physical act of writing before they ever learn the language itself, leading to them being able to write, but not compose anything coherent.
@@HanziHero In Chinese you have to know characters to be able to read because of all the homonyms. The poem about the lion is an excellent example (shi shi shi shi shi...) Even with tones, there are just too many possibilities.
@@inBtweenHandles those are really extreme examples, and I think they are only doable in Classical Chinese; in modern Standard Chinese, where the vast majority of words are disyllabic (as opposed to monosyllabic in Classical Chinese), those poems are no longer possible to compose, because disyllabic homophones (yeah, the word is homophone, not homonym) are just so much rarer, and because most people can understand verbal communication despite all those homophonous characters, translating Chinese characters to toned pinyin would be totally viable as a way to read modern Chinese. Korean and Vietnamese contain a lot of Chinese loan words with homophonous characters; but they are perfectly fine in reading and writing even after they got rid of the Chinese characters and switched to a purely phonetic way of writing.
I think words in Chinese became disyllabic hand in hand with homophones increasing dramatically, following the simplification of syllable structure; they became disyllabic to avoid ambiguities in speech; and disyllabicity made it possible to further simplify the syllable structure.
When was the last time your elecricity went out and you had no cell/data service and the only way out of the situation was being able to write Chinese?
As someone who just started learning japanese, the concept of having to learn 2000 kanji is already terrifying, so i'm glad i don't have to learn sroke order for each one as well
I would still recommend you to learn general stroke order, so you can use handwriting input if you're searching for a character. The stroke order is generally straightforward with a few exceptions. It's still separate from being able to write from memory, but this way you can just copy a character you see by hand or to look it up on your phone.
Stroke order is mainly some principles and patterns, with a few exceptions. So it is not worse than English tenses, even irregular verbs have patterns that repeat themselves, e.g.: drink, drank, drunk;
sing, sang, sung.
So stroke order is your friend in what would otherwise be more difficult.
Even apps that recognize your handwriting do it by stroke order , so I highly recommend learning it.
Understanding the basic principles is a common factor both for Hanzi (Chinese) and Kanji(Japanese)
That depends on your typing system. Unlike many languages, there are several typing systems for Chinese, Stroke (one of the most common typing methods on cellphones) definitely requires writing knowledge
True! However in Taiwan the overwhelming majority of people use Zhuyin phonetic input for their phone and laptop. I've heard that the situation is a bit different in Hong Kong, though.
I guess I’m strange, because I prefer to handwrite when brainstorming (for more organized writing, I type.) I’m learning Japanese, and handwriting has helped me a lot with memorization of characters.
That said, I never learn characters as isolated units; instead, I learn the words that include those characters.
Yeah I think learning words alongside the characters is key. If for no other reason than that it forms one other connection in the brain to the character, making it less liable to be forgotten.
@@HanziHero Yeah, it’s all about making the character useful to you.
and i sometines use hanzi as a shorthand when i write something, so i wouldnt write ogien/fire, but would write 火 as it takes less time to write
So true, but not all people have good visual memory.
And sometime I struggle to recognize same characters or miss read similar one. So, next video should be how correct pronunciation doesn't always matter either. Lol
(Chinese folks really miss read a lot).
It is very good to find a video that is logically organized and economically argued and thus comprehensive to understand precisely what is being communicated. Thank you very much.
Is there a "HanziHero" equivalent for learning Kanji, as that has an origin in written Chinese?
One that many people have used is Wanikani. I haven't used it as I've never studied Japanese or Kanji, but it may be worth checking out.
True though, writing and reading might seem similar but are two whole different skills, you can still read even though you already forgot or don’t know how to write. But if you really insist in learning how to write you would need to write something on a daily basis to remember it, and ur writing skills would also get lost easily with the lack of practicing. I’m Chinese, I have moved to Australia for over 2years already, in this period of time I’m only typing Chinese, and now I already forgot most of the characters. And I can still read and speak Chinese without any problem (maybe it’s cause I would still read Chinese stuff at home, it’s hard to avoid Chinese in my life as a native Chinese speaker) so yea, writing and reading are totally different things, and reading won’t really help much on writing either (might be different in other languages such as English, since most of the time it’s pronounced as how it’s written, but Chinese leans toward to be using symbols which doesn’t help you remember how to pronounce the word)
that's exactly why many native speakers start to forget how to write, and some of the characters we forget are even now that infrequently used.
As someone learning Japanese, although it is arguably easier to write since you need fewer characters for any given sentence compared to Chinese, I didn't really know how to handwrite words and it really frustrated me to be able to like read thousands of characters but failing to write even simple ones. Even while writing this I'm not particularly good with writing chinese characters, but I have started calligraphy and just making notes in Japanese every once in a while to get better at it. Still being in school and having to handwrite your notes, even if they are digitally still keeps me writing by hand every day.
I've given up on writing in Japanese. Sometimes I feel like writing would help to distinguish characters that almost look alike, but then I'd rather sacrifice seeing those specific characters multiple times than tripling my vocabulary study time.
It doesn’t but studying radicals might.
鳥 tori
烏 karasu
Lol
Your calligraphy is way better than mine... I have not written anything for years and already forgotten how to write many words (but can still tell if something in print is incorrect).
I wish my calligraphy was that good! It comes from this video: th-cam.com/video/5abgk53T2PE/w-d-xo.html . I updated the video description to make that more clear.
As a Taiwanese university student. I write my in-class quick notes in 70% English with 30% Chinese words for essential stuff. Writing everything in Hanzi/Kanji is just ... impractical. To be honest. Especially if you need to record things fast.
That's pretty interesting. Do you mainly use English because it is faster to write?
In US at least, many students bring a laptop to class to type because they think typing is faster/better than writing.
@@HanziHero Yep, it’s faster. Professor speaks fast, especially when mentioning some important details that won’t repeat again. Also, It’s always a little painful for me that my brain speak much faster than my hands. Hanzi is simply too inefficient in terms of fast recording which I frequently have to do in the college or writing my stuffs.
@@HanziHero laptop for me, still a little not intuitive. I tried but really not my preferred way to record stuff. Besides,some elder professors might feel not so respected when students use laptop (although they know that many already use cellphones in class ).
I only practice writing characters that I struggle to remember despite frequent repetition. That works pretty well. Looking for more words and contexts where a difficult character appears is usually more effective for me though.
As a Chinese, I'm always criticized by my teachers how bad my writing is(both Chinese and English). But doesn't prevent me from getting into a good university and earn money
This is true in general. Writing is not as important a skill as it used to be. Reading is important but writing by hand is not.
I wish this video gave the other side of the story. I learned handwriting. I use it to make notes and write down example sentences virtually every day. If I were giving a speech in Chinese, I might have to handwrite on e.g. a whiteboard. It's also used to input unfamiliar characters into Pleco. The main reason to learn handwriting is to learn handwriting (not some auxiliary goal). The argument that "you seldom need it, and when you do need it you can use an app" applies to the entirety of the Chinese language too---just speak English or use Google Translate. Some people don't want to learn handwriting, and that's a fair decision; it won't interfere too much with their progress in other areas. Nevertheless, I wouldn't recommend having zero handwriting knowledge.
It's still helpful to be able to write some characters. You're not always gonna be able to type the characters. Sometimes you have to write still.
How good that i came up with this idea much earlier and i learn chinese characters with mnemonic techique and just reading and acquire them naturally. no i tried once, when i tried to learn radicals, but then i drop it and learning radicals too as well. And goodly that i did that. because i don't even live in chinese speaking country and i don't feel that i one time even need to write them by hand. And yeah in Russia learning by writting is like problem too. cursive russian is difficult to write and sometimes it's hard to understand. And i just prefer more to type, it's faster, easier, and it's just terryfying to write by hand expecially with my handwriting, which i don't want to make it better just to use ONLY in school, place that i hate with all my body and all neurons
writing chinese is good for your brain, and character forming. keyboards will destroy the culture.
but time marches on, recognition is all you actually need now, and you can get sound and suggestions from a smartphone.
really, an extended pinyin is probably the end result, viets have demonstrated that it works.
You need to learn how to write Chinese characters if you want to pass written school/university examinations. No shortcut here.
Technology has advanced a lot. It will be probably useless to learn new languages, because automatic translations will be easily available.
In the case of Hebrew, learning to write with pen on paper actually helps, a lot!
Japanese writing passing with the same dilema
I can see why you mentioned English being easier to utilize vocab. It really comes down to principle itself: Chinese requires memorization of 5000 different characters to make a standard word, like in English. Simple English only requires memorization of 26 characters including their uppercase forms and just 3000 words.
Some good points, but I just like writing. I actually write hundreds of words every day in English, and I'm starting to journal in Chinese, which is a lot more fun when I actually write on paper.
What a world we’re living in
I already wrote this comment when replying to another person, but I'll past it here so that more people will likely see it and, even if it's improbable, appreciate the more cultural and 'spiritual' side of learning each skill of the Hanzi. I do my best to practice writing as well, not because I can't live without it, but because I want it. I feel like I've never witnessed anything as fascinating as this write system. I feel like it is the most rewarding enlightenment I could ever experience. I'm so glad such unique cultures exist, and even if the world doesn't care about them, I wanna do my best to preserve them as long as I'm here. Of course, those are all good reasons why you can easily live without learning how to write them... just wanna say that there is way more to appreciate and that sometimes it's better to go out of the pragmatic-only vision
As stated in the video, I think writing is similarly interesting and don't see any reason for anyone NOT to practice it if they enjoy and appreciate it! This video is mainly a reaction against the prescriptivists who state it is somehow a requirement that is necessary for understanding the language. It isn't.
@HanziHero yep, it's true. Maybe it's also an issue of mine where I can't say I really know a language if I'm not able to write it
Hell of a language.
《施氏食狮史》
石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。
氏时时适市视狮。
十时，适十狮适市。
是时，适施氏适市。
氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。
氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。
石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始试食是十狮。
食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。
试释是事。
« Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »
Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.
Jesus.. Im less motivated to learn now
施氏食狮史？ that one constructed poem?
The Chinese will benefit so much once they wise up and switch their writing system to something phonetic the way Koreans did over a century ago
你这个理解对学中文的外国人来说是正常的，但是对中国人来说很片面。汉字是中国历史的记录者，汉字的书写和发音是两套系统，书写不会随着发音的改变而改变，所以几千年前的文章，现代人都能读懂，这就是汉字。虽然现在大家都打字，很少需要手写，但是中国的孩子上学的时候学写汉字是必须的，中国大陆使用简体字，但有很多孩子还是会学习书法，写繁体字，这是历史文化的传承。举个极端的例子，如果从现在开始只需要会读，会打字，不要求学写汉字，汉字就会逐渐成为代表发音的符号，几百年或者千年以后汉字也许会变的跟现在完全不一样，那历史也就断了。
Oh. I definitely prefer to write notes out by hand than to type them. However since I’m not a student I don’t take notes much anymore.
Maybe technically true, but I don't like this idea because it seems too obscurantist. Like, Chinese characters are a part of the Chinese culture and identity. Knowing them intimately is a form of enlightenment. I think the part where you dissect the faculties of language is good, but you could also apply the same method to the functions of writing, of which communication is only one. There's also (as you mentioned) reinforcement of the character shape, contact with the Chinese culture, and study of the formation, etymology, composition, and taxonomy (六書) of the characters of the language.
Now, I will agree with you. I learnt Japanese for some 2 years without having virtually any written literacy at all. But I always felt this a shame, not something to be proud of or content with. I'm currently learning characters for this reason. It's not really helped me read who-knows-how-much better, but one thing I will absolutely tell you is that before I started learning to write, I never fully internalized the actual form of the characters. It never struck me that there was a 言 in 警, for example. Or 敬, for that matter, lol. Moreover, studying the character etymologies on Wiktionary has been a very enlightening thing to learn how the characters are actually composed, and therefore tell how they're supposed to be pronounced (like 60% of characters are 形声).
I think the attitude you can take with this is like with reading; many people will never read another book in their lives after leaving school, because, books are boring, right? But if you do read, no one can deny there are benefits to your vocabulary, language faculties, cultural awareness, etc. and I personally think the same about writing hanzi. Like anything intellectual, more knowledge can't be bad if you want it in the first place.
I agree that knowing Chinese characters in depth can really improve one's deep understanding of Chinese (or Japanese in this case). However, I think one can build that component awareness without needing to write out the character - after all, this is what HanziHero does! I don't disagree that writing out the character can help that process - spending more time with characters in any sense will help one progress in remembering and understanding.
Unfortunately, the time one has to dedicate towards Chinese is limited, and the path towards fluency is so so so long, which is why I think putting off learning writing in depth till a later point may help many people, as it will allow them to focus on other parts of the language that have a better "return on investment".
@@HanziHero You're right, it does take an awfully long time to do these things. Learning the hanzi in the first place took me a year of dedicated study (25/day, often 400+ reviews of flashcards/day at that), and that was without *any* writing fluency at all. I honestly agree with your assessment, it's probably not worth writing until you get advanced anyway; because it's true that there's literally no need to write on paper at all in the modern day.
But, as you also put it, if writing itself brings you joy, then there's no reason not to :)
Finally someone who is also willing to write this unique cultural feature. I do my best to practice writing as well not because I can't live without it, but because I want it. I fell like I've never witnessed anything as fascinating as this write system. I feel like it is the most rewarding enlightment I could ever experience. I'm so glad such unique cultures exist and even if the world doesn't care about them, I wanna do my best to preserve them as long as I'm here
Some of us are very good readers of English but we cannot spell. It's sort of the same thing I guess with Chinese in that you can recognize characters but maybe you don't know how to write them out.
And then the was another Carrington event....... 😢
Well said. I had the same experience with Japanese. I have lived in Japan for 24 years now. It has long become my primary language; most of my friends and colleagues here have never heard me speak English. A long time ago when I was still a student Japanese teachers repeatedly made me practice Chinese characters. I learned it for the tests, but then never had the chance to write so soon forgot. While I was an exchange student I had a long conversation with my Japanese teacher that it was a waste of time and it was sufficient to be able to read and type Japanese. She initially vehemently disagreed, but after a few months eventually caved when she realized that I could significantly read and understand more Chinese characters than she could. Fast forward 20+ years later and other than my name and address, I cannot remember the last time I have needed to write anything by hand.
Yeah the testing requirement is a big one. I think I mention it in the video, but most people I know in Taiwan that don't need any sort of accreditation usually just go with private schools/tutors to avoid the mandatory writing requirements in the public universities. Until that is gone, and I don't think it'll go away anytime soon, writing in some form will be needed for any who need to pass the TOCFL/HSK.
u r right, even for English, people r rarely writing now all things r in digital form nowadays
bro you can do that...
I had a similar experience with Japanese. I took Japanese classes and so of course I had to write Japanese for class. But for tests our teacher was very forgiving and even gave out kana sheets during the test. I had heard advice that it’s much better to learn to write the characters. I tried. I really did. But I found that I forgot how to write characters way to easily and maintains this skill would take a huge chunk of my time. But I was slowly getting better at reading them regardless. I’m now very good at reading printed Japanese. But I do struggle to read hand written Japanese. You might think if I learned to write Japanese I would be able to read other people’s handwriting too. But that’s not the case. They teach you to write the characters one way but then they break the rules when they write them or rather they follow unwritten rules that aren’t in the textbook. It is occasionally embarrassing to not be able to read hand written Japanese (unless they actually write it proper but even Japanese teachers don’t 😂). But also not such a big deal.
Yeah reading handwritten Chinese is a real struggle for me. I always thought maybe writing would help me there a bit, but I guess not! I'm sure there is a database of handwriting samples along with the actual typed text somewhere that would be great practice, but I haven't found one for Chinese.
Is it cheating to use Chinese hand writing whilst I'm typing?
我完全同意你在這個影片中提出的斷言。做得好！
The word 第 I remember it is double K like kk over some zigzag lower.
the word 第 i have remembered as the conjoining of 竹 and 弟.
are you talking about Mandarin or Cantonese? Do you have character learning for both?
We only teach the Mandarin pronunciation of characters. Maybe one day in the far future we can look into adding a Cantonese version of the app as well.
this is consistent with what I found out about HSK learning..
I like learning to write. But I am more interested in reading.
That's how I think too. Writing Chinese characters is interesting, I think for me I would want to start focusing on it more after I the point where reading is painless and requires zero dictionary use.
cangjie keyboard be like:
👁 👁
👄
As long as you know what the ideoglyph looks like, does it matter how you write it?
Most characters have a specific stroke order that it should be written in. However, after learning to write a hundred or so different characters, the stroke order of most characters becomes self-evident, as there are a set of rules for writing characters that are generally followed.
已经不用写了，口中念念有词字己出来了。写→冖ㄅ一。ㄅ(L亅)。马，与你，弓(コㄅ)
Good points. Chinese writing is also _further messed up_ by the Simplified character set used by the CCP mainland vs the Traditional character set used by Taiwan and Hong Kong. The population of China is about 45 times more than Taiwan and Hong Kong combined so that puts a lot of pressure to learn both creating more mental load and complication.
Some say the Simplified character set loses a lot of the "radicals" that help group related Chinese characters. That was done in favor of requiring less pen strokes. In that vein, the CCP should have just *Romanized* their writing system like Vietnam did and be done with it!
Almost all Chinese already know the Pinyin system that uses English characters. Therefore something based on Pinyin would an excellent start to Romanizing their writing system. They can't really claim "heritage" as much because the Simplified system was introduced in 1949 which is only 74 years old versus hundreds of years for the traditional characters.
Only 4% of Chinese characters were simplified, the rest is the same. Let's not forget that the Traditional characters are just another version of Chinese characters just like the Simplified ones, the Simplified characters are actually an evolution just like the Traditional characters are an evolution of Small and Great seal scripts.
If you truly wants to claim heritage, then you should learn Small and Great Seal scripts, even Bone Script and not Traditional script which came along much later.
if truly one wants learn great heritage, one should learn Jiaguwen.
Why English is superior?
Because it is sound-based.
I can read a letter, or even a passage if it's in English. I may not understand it.
Given chinese text, if i don't know the characters i don't even know where to start since it's drawing-based.
Even Hàn yû pīn yīn is english based.
Think about it.
I wouldn't use the word "superior", but the fact that Chinese is not phonetic is a huge issue for learners for sure. There is one famous essay "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard" that talks about this. I know zero French, but can have an idea of what a sign in French says phonetically just from knowing Latin. With Chinese, the only way is memorizing entirely. I actually talk about this briefly in my most recent video.
What benefit is there to knowing how to read a word if you don't know the meaning, if your goal is comprehension? Aren't you in the same situation either way? You still have to look something up.
Pinyin is only one of the methods of typing Chinese. Stroke solves all the problems you mentioned. It’s becoz your learning is limited. Chinese words/Kanji/Hanzi could use much less words to present the same meaning of an article, which outdoes all phonetic-based languages.
Think about it
i would rather prefer to write because you can most likely guessed the person's first impression and characteristics through writing.
learning to write and following the strokes is good so you can better at understanding to complete a task with proper steps.
because i write caligraphy and give to my uncles and the knew my characteristic and told me what should i change.
writing is not even near useless but it's part of the language and the language's culture.
based on your caligraphy, you are more dominant kind of person.