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A new study commissioned by the China Daily Youth newspaper has found many young Chinese people are forgetting how to write traditional Chinese. Chinese schoolchildren grow up memorizing well over 3,000 different characters. However, the study shows they rarely need to write them by hand and are forgetting their shape. Instead, young people are using their phones and computers to write. On these, they type in a system called ‘pinyin,’ which is the sounds of the Chinese characters written on an English keyboard. A list then appears showing the corresponding character in Mandarin. The report said 83% of the 2,072 respondents have problems writing characters, while 43% said they only write when they need to sign something.
The problem is so big that there is a name for it: ‘tibiwangzi,’ which means “take pen, forget character”. Chinese characters are the oldest writing system in the world in current use. They date back over 3,000 years. University student Li Hanwei, 21, said: "I can remember the shape, but I can’t remember the strokes that you need to write it. It’s a bit of a problem." The phenomenon is known as “character amnesia” and is also common in Japan, where Chinese characters are one of four different alphabets used in writing. Ayumi Kawamoto, 23, explained why she often forgot how to recall and write characters she learnt at school: "We rely too much on the conversion function on our phones and PCs."
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