extended character set (11. 953)

Finding the diglossia between written and spoken Japanese and Chinese languages to be a highly engrossing topic, we really appreciated being directed to this essay on what’s been termed “character amnesia”—coined and studied by our friend Victor Mair from Language Log for the past decade—from the universal and age-old lapse called ‘lift the pen and forget the character’ (提笔忘字, tíbǐwàngzì). Given over thirteen-thousand glyphs (four-thousand required for basic proficiency) and the relatively high learning-curve, various attempts (with varied success and reception) have been instituted for reform—<from the introduction of an alphabetic script to character simplification, reducing the complexity and number of brushstrokes, though literacy rates for mainland China and Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao (that maintain the classical characters) are about the same. Hanyu Pinyin (漢語, spell the sounds) was formalised and introduced post war to facilitate trade and teach standard Chinese to non-Sintic speakers (see also) and unlike previous systems of phonetics accorded for tonal qualities and aided the nation’s transition into the digital age—but with the drawbacks that come with outsourcing one’s knowledge and the code-switching of such short-cut keys. The article compares it to the recognition of the treble clef (🎼) plus an array of symbols used alongside out activity of composition and committing ideas to the page, which typing reinforces, whereas the others must be learnt and it would be a challenge to draw such a symbol from memory—plus the lost art of penmanship. The pictured shopping list from Mair illustrates the tip-of-the-tongue frustration with the person who jotted down these items eventually giving up, and I can attest to doing the same forgetting the English or German—Kuchenrolle paper towels. Perhaps rallying against the inevitable (though a worth fight to choose), the government of China is trying to combat amnesia through a variety of programmes, including a rather tense, televised game show competition to render characters correctly, as nerve-wracking as a spelling-bee with the contradictory, inscrutable conventions of English.