To Abolish the Chinese Language: On a Century of Reformist Rhetoric

Re:To Abolish the Chinese Language: On a Century of Reformis... by jaggederest on Saturday September 16, 2017 @03:19PM (#15266195)

Yes, but "thier" problem is not that they aren't "mispelling", it's that they can't remember the character at all. It would be the equivalent of missing a stroke in a chinese character - if my minimal experience from Japanese is any guide, people would still be able to roughly figure out which character it was, but it would be considered a bit crude. That's where incorrect spelling is in english.

They're not talking about that, they're saying "We can't remember how the word looks at all". It's pretty neat as a problem to have, to be able to say it but not even have an idea about how it might be spelled.

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Re:To Abolish the Chinese Language: On a Century of Reformis... by yorwba on Saturday September 16, 2017 @03:44PM (#15266338)

"Not one of them could correctly produce the character." is slightly different from "We can't remember how the word looks at all". I would assume they know it's spelled with the 口 radical, but they might get the details of 疐 wrong.

FWIW, I could write it correctly, but I also spend 40 minutes per day practicing vocabulary, the bulk of which is spent on writing the characters.

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Re:To Abolish the Chinese Language: On a Century of Reformis... by vacri on Saturday September 16, 2017 @09:43PM (#15267795)

> it's that they can't remember the character at all

I can guarantee you that each of those students would recognise the character if they saw it, they just can't generate it correctly from scratch.

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