Is Computer Use Killing of the Art of Chinese Writing?

Billgloveruk, did you make it to Beijing from Spring Festival?

Biang2 is officially my favorite character Calkins. I have no idea what it means, but the fact that it has 57 strokes makes it the coolest character ever. More power to the older Chinese people!

I've talked to several teachers who mentioned a marked decline in handwriting skills over the past 20 years. All my relatives said that they had to turn in their homework using a writing brush (毛笔), and they generally bemoan the younger generation. That said, language always changes and concern over these things often seems overblown. Personally, I'm not sure that moving calligraphy from the mainstream into an artistic corner is necessarily bad.

I have heard a similar complaints raised by teachers regarding English. It's not so much the lack or artistry or penmanship in the writing they bemoan, but the ability to construct a sentence and spell without the aid of a spell checker or the cut/paste utility. I have noticed my students often display poor writing skills on written assignments, and I must admit that I also rely heavily on technology when writing. I have grown quite lazy with spelling, grammar, and overall compositional structure (never a strong point to begin with)! Sadly, as Tvan suggests, I wonder if we are witnessing the evolution of communication and those of us that complain may just be railing against the storm (I hope I didn't just illustrate my point by butchering an idiom).

Ha, ha, ha. Look how I screwed up the first sentence of a comment about poor writing skills. Classic me! What a moron.

" Video Killed The Radio Star. Video Killed The Radio Star...." Yeah, lots of lost forms of art are being lost in China due to machine. Hand-made silk tapestry making or whatever is going out, so I learned at the silk factory in Shanghai, since girls now have no interest in sitting in front of a loom and the sorts...not being passed down. World has always been losing things... even automobiles killed culture in many places.

I have been studying Chinese for two years now. I am a non traditional University student and have always had a fascination with the Asian culture. I don't believe that the computer is damaging the language. I have found the different areas on the internet a huge help in my learning. The only thing I will say is that my learning has been mostly handwritten and the computer generated characters at first were hard to relate to but now I can go back and forth. I find the caligraphy or otherwise cursive characters challenging still.

At least they're still using characters on the computer. I'd be greatly distressed if they ever abolished characters in favor of pinyin or some other system. My guess is that handwriting will continue to deteriorate for a while, until the culture at large begins to realize what they're losing and experiences a resurgence of interest.

The thing I'm more worried about is what the computer is doing to our eyes and hands (carpal tunnel)...constantly reading tiny characters, like biáng with 57 strokes, on the computer can't be good for the eyes!

Yes, Bill, are you in China? How's it going? Did your thread on money issues come in handy?

It's killing handwriting and I'm glad. I'm just waiting for the day when I can type the HSK.

This seems really cool. Does anyone have experience using one of these? Basically, it's a tablet (connected to your computer) that you can hand-write hanzi on, then the computer recognizes the characters. Seems like it'd be a lot faster than typing, not to mention an incredible way to learn/practice writing characters. Here's a website for this tablet: Penpower Chinese Handwriter I'd love to hear feedback from anyone who's used this type of tablet.

Hi calkins, The problem of hard to read on-line characters has been partially solved with the FireFox browser. Specifically, by entering sequences of CTRL+ （control-plus) results in incrementally expanding any small text/characters to successively larger fonts. Similarl, CTRL- (control-minus) will shrink text/characters. 再見， 何睿林

Herulin, this works with Internet Explorer as well. As well as + and - keys, you can hold don CTRL and move the scroll wheel on your mouse. One advantage of Internet Explorer over Firefox is that there is a little button in the bottom right corner that magnifies/reduces the page (at least on the newest version, IE7). Also, that tablet thing looks really cool Calkins - I want one! :)

Thanks for the tips herulin and rsmith91. There's a similar feature built into Macs where you can zoom in and pan anywhere on the screen. It's really helpful for reading those hard to read characters. Just hold down "option", "command", and "8" keys to zoom in (same keys to zoom out). You can pan with your mouse.

calkins, I think it's much slower than typing.

stdev, have you tried one? Aside from it being slower than typing, did you think it was a good way to learn and practice writing hanzi?

Definately killing handwriting. I've known many Chinesepeople who have tried to help me out by writing a character down and in the middle are scratching their heads trying to remember how to write it. They say, 很奇怪， 我平时用电脑打字所以我都忘记了怎么写！