Will smartphones kill the art of chinese handwriting?

ccht

Member
Saw this short video on BBC and I think is interesting because I think a lot of people studying chinese will feel identified with that sensation of knowing the character, is right in the tip of your fingers, but failing to write it correctly because we got too used to only type it.

It seems that in order to not forgetting it, we can never get apart from our good old friends paper and pencil :D

A part in the video made me confused, because the researcher said that the 女 in 妇 is a simplified character, but 女 is the same in both systems, simplified and traditional. I think he meant 妇 as a whole is simplified from 婦. If he actually meant 女 is a simplified form compared to the original pictograph, that left me thinking that, strictly speaking, he is not that wrong because 女 is very different from the original kneeled woman with breast pictograph.


http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170602-will-smartphones-kill-the-art-of-chinese-handwriting
 

alex_hk90

状元
Saw this short video on BBC and I think is interesting because I think a lot of people studying chinese will feel identified with that sensation of knowing the character, is right in the tip of your fingers, but failing to write it correctly because we got too used to only type it.

It seems that in order to not forgetting it, we can never get apart from our good old friends paper and pencil :D

A part in the video made me confused, because the researcher said that the 女 in 妇 is a simplified character, but 女 is the same in both systems, simplified and traditional. I think he meant 妇 as a whole is simplified from 婦. If he actually meant 女 is a simplified form compared to the original pictograph, that left me thinking that, strictly speaking, he is not that wrong because 女 is very different from the original kneeled woman with breast pictograph.


http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170602-will-smartphones-kill-the-art-of-chinese-handwriting

It will probably be like English spelling where most people can recognise the words but not necessarily remember exactly how to spell them.

I took that part of the video to be referring to the whole character (妇), as he mentioned both the woman and the broom in the old pictograph.
 

朱真明

进士
Writing Chinese is not an art, calligraphy is an art. An art in which only few pursue.

Will people's ability to write characters (letters are also a type of character) decline because people are only typing rather than writing? Without a doubt!

Will calligraphy be killed because people prefer to write text without physically writing it? No! Calligraphy is an art form, the lifespan of calligraphy is determined by whether or not people appreciate it as an art.

The lifespan of methods used in writing text is determined by their practicality, and it is becoming more and more clear that paper and pencil is not at all practical in many places. Particularly, places that have access to modern technology.

Will people struggle to remember the structure of characters if they write them less? Temporarily! As people wean off the writing characters method, their brains will adapt to a different method with it's own set of requirements. Essentially like different types of input systems (eg. Cang Jie, Zhu Yin, Alphabetical etc.) When writing a character down, the most important aspect is stroke order, because stroke order allows one to methodically write a character in a visually perceptible manner. This method can also be digital and it is the method I use 90% percent of the time using Google's Zhuyin Input keyboard. The requirements for writing and digital input are different. Writing requires that you write the character so that it can be perceived. Digital input requires that you can recognize the character you wanted in a list of characters you didn't want, characters that may also look visually similar. In conclusion, regardless of the method you use to write text, they all have the same outcome, that is that you must know the structure of the character in use in order to consistently input it without error.
 

朱真明

进士

Here is a video to contrast with what you posted. In both videos the majority of interviewees (had to check if this was even a word) were just projecting their emotions. The researcher was the only one speaking rationally.
 

feng

榜眼
The art? No. General ability to write? Yes. I first went to Japan in 1996 and there was already a problem with people forgetting how to write certain characters because even then word processors were quite common.
 
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