漢字包含了中國的傳統美學、文化淵源等，是中國文化的載體和根。中國人連漢字都寫不好，如何談文化傳承？
The Straits Times: Prime News Aug 27, 2010
http://www.straitstimes.com/PrimeNews/Story/STIStory_571488.html
HONG KONG: Like every Chinese child, Li Hanwei spent her schooldays memorising thousands of the intricate characters that make up the Chinese writing system.
Now 21 and a university student in Hong Kong, she admits she is finding it difficult to write some characters.
'I can remember the shape, but I can't remember the strokes that you need to write it,' she said.
Surveys show that the phenomenon, dubbed 'character amnesia', is widespread across China, causing Chinese to fear for the future of their ancient writing system.
A poll commissioned by the China Youth Daily in April found that 83 per cent of the 2,072 respondents admitted having problems writing characters.
Young Japanese people also report the problem, which is caused by the constant use of computers and mobile phones with alphabet-based input systems. There is even a Chinese phrase for it: tibi-wangzi, which means literally 'pick up pen, forget character'.
As a result, Ms Li said, she has become almost dependent on her phone. 'When I can't remember, I will take out my cellphone, find (the character) and then copy it down,' she said.
Agreeing, Mr Zeng Ming, 22, from the southern Guangdong province, added: 'I think it's a young people's problem, or at least a computer users' problem.'
The problem is common among young Japanese as well.
'We rely too much on the conversion function on our phones and PCs,' said Ms Ayumi Kawamoto, 23. 'I've mostly forgotten characters I learnt in middle and high school and I tend to forget the characters I use only occasionally.'
Tokyo student Maya Kato, 22, said: 'I hardly write any more, which is the main reason why I have forgotten so many characters. It is frustrating because I always almost remember the character, and lose it at the last minute.'
Chinese characters are so complex that communist leader Mao Zedong told United States journalist Edgar Snow in 1936: 'Sooner or later, we believe, we will have to abandon characters altogether if we are to create a new social culture in which the masses fully participate.'
Mao eventually chose to simplify many characters into forms that are now the standard in mainland China.
Some argue that the perceived decline in character knowledge is, in fact, nothing to worry about.
A survey by the southern Chinese news portal Dayang Net, found that 80 per cent of respondents had forgotten how to write some characters - but 43 per cent said they needed to write only for signatures and form-filling.
'The idea that China is a country full of people who write beautiful, fluid literature in characters without a second thought is a romantic fantasy,' wrote blogger and translator C. Custer on his Chinageeks blog.
The explosion of Internet and phone technology has itself led to the creation of new words and forms of writing. In 2008, Chinese people were sending 175 billion text messages each quarter, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Still, Ms Li and Mr Zeng were concerned enough about their character amnesia that they started to keep a handwritten diary.
Asked when else they would pick up a pen, Ms Li said after a pause: 'When I have to sign the back of my new credit card.'
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Pinyin and the spread of character amnesia:
Character amnesia happens because most Chinese people nowadays use electronic input systems based on pinyin, which renders Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet. After a user enters a word in pinyin, the device throws up a menu of characters matching the word. The user needs only to recognise the character he is looking for and click it. In Japan, where three writing systems are combined into one, mobile phones and computers use only the simpler hiragana and katakana scripts for inputting and leave out kanji, which uses Chinese characters. Character amnesia matters because memorisation is so crucial to character-based written languages, according to assistant professor of linguistics Siok Wai Ting at Hong Kong University. Forgetting how to write could eventually affect reading ability. ''There is no way we can learn the writing systematically because the writing itself is not systematic - we have to memorise, we have to learn by rote,'' she said. ''Through writing, we memorise the characters. Reading and writing are more closely connected in Chinese,'' she added. Chinese language and literature professor Victor Mair at the University of Pennsylvania says character amnesia is a part of a 'natural process of evolution''. ''The reasons why characters are innately difficult to enter into computers and mobile phones are innate to the character-based writing systems themselves,'' he said. ''There are no magic bullets that will make it easy to input characters,'' he added.
如果技術發展所帶來的只是進一步吞噬我們的傳統文化，那我們應該反思 - 課堂教學對於技術的依賴性，以及老師和家長對孩子認讀和書寫漢字的督促有待加強。再也沒有更便利的捷徑，還是老老實實地多讀多寫吧!
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