Re:When Chinese children forget how to write
by vorg on Thursday August 28, 2014 @05:00AM
(#8236460)
If Chinese was written like English, the characters you wrote in your comment "那个不好意思,谢谢" would be written "用阝人丨 丆卜 女子 立日心 田心, 讠身寸 讠身寸".
Not many Westerner seems to appreciate that Chinese Hanzi (and Japanese Kanji) are really words made up of simpler components arranged into squares, instead of written sequentially and separated by spaces. And the shape of the components in the square provides additional encoding information not available in sequentially written languages.
Not many Westerner seems to appreciate that Chinese Hanzi (and Japanese Kanji) are really words made up of simpler components arranged into squares, instead of written sequentially and separated by spaces. And the shape of the components in the square provides additional encoding information not available in sequentially written languages.