Comments on: Chinese Writing: Is it really worth all the hassle to learn?

By: Daisy

Daisy — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 05:37:19 +0000

oh, i spend about half an hour reading your article. i learn much from you. you are a chinese language learner, and it takes you less than 2 years to master the speaking and writing. i admire you. i am an english language learner, and i beagan to learn english since my middle school. it means i have learned english for ten years. but my english level is much worse than your chinese level. it seems ten years ago i had known “-my name is.how are you?…fine, thank you, and you?” while after ten years, i still dare not chat with foreigner and i can’t talk with them fluently.
like you said ” you learned to write purely out of interest and curiosity.” and you did very well at last.
maybe i lack this interest and curiosity. maybe i lack the language immersion you have. i have no chance to go abroad to experience the real english immersion.
whatever, thanks for your article, i learned a lot both on the english and on how to learn a language.

By: justrecently

justrecently — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:03:21 +0000

It dawns on me that you possibly touched the key – people can learn Chinese when they have a lot of time. Like until recently, while spending two hours or so melting their steel pots in their backyards to speed up the revolution, the Chinese read Mao’s works and thus made themselves literate.
Now there are more Chinese people who have a lot of work to do and a lot of money to earn. But then, maybe they are also less literate than their parents and grandparents.

By: F

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:21:41 +0000

i don’t think you could considerate yourself literate. there is still a long way to go from where you have imagined.
The hardest and the most beautiful part of chinese is chinese idiom, which often being used on and off when literate chinese strick up a conversation.
you think you are literate, that’s because you are a foreigner in china, we merely use some very simply words to explain things to you.
if you only know how to read chinese word by word, when it comes to idiom, you become chingulish. that’s the mistake the english teacher always bring it up to the students.
seriously, you could ask more chinese students, if they often seep in some idoms into their conversation which is more exact to put things into words at some point.

By: chriswaugh_bj

chriswaugh_bj — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:07:55 +0000

I read the comments above as a subconscious affirmation of the need to write properly, and a subconscious admission of the shame of not being able to write this language they are learning. Sure, a lot of stuff happens electronically these days, but as every commenter has admitted, a lot happens on good old fashioned pen and paper.

By: Nikolai Xander

Nikolai Xander — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:52:44 +0000

I haven’t really read the comments above, but I have been wondering for some time now the exact same question…as I am still in college and looking to a major in Chinese, how much should I focus on writing? I’ve had the feeling for some time that it’s more important to TYPE chinese than hand-write…I’ve even been taking my laptop to class these days. But how do I get the teacher to go for it? Could you email me in private? I think it would be nice to start a dialogue with you

By: Jiang

Jiang — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:03:35 +0000

I am learning English. I think I have a good reading skill. But my writing skill is bad. Just like you, there are few occasions I need to write English by hand. I often misspell words so that I found out a good way that I use Microsoft’s Word when I write in English because it has a spell check function. Computers play a vital role in my language learning. I think someday we don’t need to learn any foreign languages at all because we will use the same language — computer.

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:07:06 +0000

Very interesting…as that’s pretty much the exact opposite approach from the one I took when learning kanji for Japanese

I started by studying formally at my university, and after a couple semesters, began to realize how unimportant it felt to be able to write characters when 99% of what I do in life can be performed by typing. So I consciously shifted my focus completely to reading and comprehension. Now I can read virtually anything I see in daily life, but can’t even write my own address (er, very well at least). And so far, it’s worked great. On the rare occasion when I do need to put something on paper I usually just type it on my cellphone and ask someone else – the clerk at the post office, for example – to perform the actual penmanship. I’m fairly certain that I’d know only a small portion of the kanji I know today had I tried to retain both reading and writing abilities for them all

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:52:39 +0000

@ Tex
I’d say yeah. The reason I said about a 100 is because all characters are built out of the same ‘pieces’. Actually, there’s probably more like a few hundred pieces, but it’s still not so bad. If you know the most commonly used few hundred, your pretty close to knowing all the ‘pieces’ and a quick look at a character should be enough to write and remember it temporarily. (at least for me)

By: Tex

Tex — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:45:00 +0000

I am at a point in my learning where I can type and read quite a bit…not to mention my speaking has increased quite a bit over the last 4 months. I haven’t learned how to write very much actually only writing a few characters in my life. I can write about 10 not including numbers. Should I learn to write 100 or so of the most used? I agree with the investment thing, I need to stay here and study for a long while so my investment can get to a place where it pays off.

By: 尼克

尼克 — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:36:33 +0000

For those interested,l you can get an English version of QQ for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X and even sign up for QQ in English via the instructions here: http://nstanosheck.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-to-get-qq-number-for-english.html.