Chinese
COLUMN ONE
China worries about losing its character(s)
More and more Chinese are realizing they can't remember exactly how to write a given character.
July 12, 2010|By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Beijing — Texting and typing are replacing the elaborate strokes that make up written Chinese. And when it comes time to jot down a few words, more Chinese are realizing they can't remember exactly how.
For Ma Silang, the long descent into forgetfulness began after he graduated from high school, went off to London for three years to study photography and bought his first computer.
Now the 30-year-old fashion photographer, a native Beijinger, has such difficulty writing in his mother tongue that the other day when he was scribbling a shopping list for himself he suddenly realized that he had forgotten one of two characters that make up the Chinese word for "shampoo."
"It is inevitable that we forget our Chinese characters unless we make a special effort to practice writing a few hours each week, and who has time for that?" said Ma, looking up from an iPhone on which he was tapping a message while waiting for his MacBook to be repaired at Beijing's Apple store.
China worries about losing its character(s) - Los Angeles Times