Term for forgetting how to write traditional Chinese characters – literally, “take pen, forget character.”



Reporting that many young Chinese struggle to remember how to write traditional Chinese characters, Agence France-Presse revealed that some “fear for the future of their ancient writing system”:

There is even a Chinese word for it: “Tibiwangzi,” or “take pen, forget character.”

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 also report the problem, which is caused by the constant use of computers and mobile phones with alphabet-based input systems.

As Nick Farrell explained on TechEye:

Chinese boffins say that Character amnesia happens because most Chinese people use electronic input systems based on Pinyin, which translates Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet.

The user enters each word using Pinyin, and the device offers a menu of characters. So users must recognise the character, however they don’t need to write it any more.

In Japan mobiles and computers use the simpler Hiragana and Katakana scripts for inputting and so most users forget the Kanji.