Talk:Character amnesia

Dysgraphia
I'm not sure that describing character amnesia as a "form of dysgraphia" is appropriate here? I haven't read the sources in the article, but based on my understanding terms like dysgraphia, dyslexia, etc., imply some sort of cognitive impairment on an individual level. The phenomenon being described here, though, is more of a society-level thing (declining use of handwriting) and is not necessary associated with any cognitive impairment. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 04:46, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I can understand that someone might think its a bit of a stretch, the LA Times article linked in the citation uses the word in context, but of course we don't have to describe it in the same language that article uses. The other articles don't use the term, that I noticed. Dysgraphia is often the result of a neurological trauma or a condition like Asbergers syndrome and ADHD. I would say that this is definitely a little different than those but its not technically incorrect as dysgraphia, regardless of the origins, just refers to a deficiency in writing ability. Take a quick look at the source, and scan the dysgraphia article. If you think of a more appropriate wording than just go for it. Metal.lunchbox (talk) 05:00, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Mainly I feel that, even though "character amnesia" does refer to a deficieny in writing ability, it's not a disability or disorder, which I think dysgraphia is (see, e.g., ). I'll try to think of a possible rewording. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 05:17, 9 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I was reading the news and stumbled upon another source which uses the term "dysgraphia" - . Apparently some students are going to make a documentary on the topic of character amnesia. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 01:31, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * If we're counting up cites, here's another from The Atlantic.


 * Dysgraphia or agraphia certainly should be the correct name, and "character amnesia" makes it sound as though the children have been beaned by an anvil (more to the point, it's an ugly, inaccurate, cross-lingual kludge), but it's possible that the latter has acquired WP:COMMONNAME status. — LlywelynII  17:00, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * "character amnesia" is not my favorite term, but it is used in several reliable sources and appears to be the only common name for the phenomenon. Alternatively we could use a descriptive name but I fear that would not be an improvement. In the future people may find a better name for the phenomenon but it's not really up to us. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 00:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the current name describes the topic quite well, and I don't think it's necessary to rename it to something else currently. Unless we find that an alternate name is used more commonly in academic sources, I'd say we stick with the current name. --  李博杰  &#124; —Talk contribs email 02:53, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Metal.lunchbox, you asked over on the dysgraphia page if people thought the term "dysgraphia" was applicable to "character amnesia", so, I thought perhaps that I would try to answer that. My answer is in two parts. The first part of the answer is that it does not actually matter what you or I think, because that would be "original research" which wikipedia is very much against. instead you would need to find a credible source. I would also add, that a newspaper account is not a credible source when talking about medical conditions (or much of anything else for that matter). But, it's also easier to find a credible source if you already have an idea of what it is that you are looking for. So on that basis, I will actually give you my opinion based on the small amount that I know about chinese characters and the considerable first hand experience I have had with dysgraphia. Basically I would say that the two things do not sound related -- it is certainly probable that there are chinese who also have dysgraphia, but that is a separate issue from whether or not "character amnesia" is a form of "dysgraphia". What I know about the chinese/japanese character set is that it is insanely complex, the true marvel is that anyone can manage to learn it at all. The other thing which I have recently learned is that the written characters is a separate language unto itself, there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the symbols and the spoken words. With English for example, each word that you write is exactly the same as the word that you speak; but with kanji's etc. that is not the case, this is why it is possible for the Japanese language and the Chinese language to share the same written language, it's because the written language is neither Japanese or Chinese, but is actually a distinctly separate language -- at least that's what I was told while studying unicode. With regard to the "amnesia"... the very commonly experienced fact is that human memory is quite fragile and impermanent. The more complex something is, the more likely we are to forget it. Thus we can only retain things through constant practice. This phenomena is experienced in many different aspects of life. For instance there is a phrase "use it or lose it", which is specifically referring to this problem of the lack of retention. There is also another phrase which when you are young and someone says this to you you think that it is the height of arrogance when someone tells you "young man I have forgotten more things than you have even learned". But when the day arrives that you are that old man, you come to realize that it was not arrogance at all but a simple (sad) statement of fact. For example I have been a computer programmer for many many years, more than I care to say, and during that time I have learned and used more than a dozen different computer languages. But because I have not used most of them in a long time I have largely forgotten and at this point would only consider myself to be proficient in about three of those languages. In conclusion, Human memory is leaky... we do forget things that we have not used. This is not specific to chinese characters, but the more complex something is, the harder it is to retain, and chinese characters are very complex. I suspect that if you look for them, that you can find some studies of "human memory loss" that will be relevant to this topic of "character amnesia". The reason that "character amnesia" is not at all like dysgraphia -- despite what any newspaper reporter (who knows little to nothing of the subject themselves) happens to write. The difference is actually quite huge. With "character amnesia" you started out being proficient with something, and then you didn't use it for awhile, so you forgot how to do it, but you are capable of relearning it. With dysgraphia, it is an inability to do something in the first place, it is not something that they have forgotten how to do, and it is not something that they can easily learn how to do, it is a neurological inability to do something. The simplest description I can give you is that it is like being born with two left hands. Yes, there is speculation that this is some kind of memory problem in the brain, but it is very different from forgetting how to do something that you are capable of doing. With dysgraphia, even holding a fork or tying a shoelace can be difficult, it is a lack of the ability of coordination and it is typically (always?) that way from birth, although the problem may be subtle enough to not be noticed until large amounts of complex writing are attempted, such as a hand-written essay in middle-school. 67.40.123.45 (talk) 21:04, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sold, calling it dysgraphia was just echoing the exagerated language that American newspapers sometimes employ when talking about Asia and China in particular. I will be more careful with this in the future. The change was made a while ago I support it. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 05:12, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

article by BBC on character amnesia and "cure"
article by BBC on character amnesia and "cure"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14693677

DÜNGÁNÈ (talk) 02:51, 30 August 2011 (UTC)


 * great find. I'll try to expand it a little bit. - Metal lunchbox (talk) 05:34, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Unsure if inclusion as an external link is necessary, but here are anecdotal examples of dysgraphia collected by Kyle David Anderson, Prof. of Chinese and East Asian Studies: Images: Dysgraphia (and another post) --  李博杰  &#124; —Talk contribs email 11:49, 17 September 2011 (UTC)


 * another good find, but I'm not sure what to do with them. When I look at the links I think of WP:SPS. In general we avoid Self-published sources, this is clearly one, but our verifiability policy says this, "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Take care when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else will probably have done so." I think it'd be wise to wait for better sources from this guy. I assume these are forthcoming as he's working on a documentary. The article is good though, sums up the topic really. What do you think, does is pass WP:verifiability? can this stuff be included in the article? - Metal lunchbox (talk) 03:59, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I tried both of the links (above) for Kyle David Anderson's Dysgraphia pages, and they are both broken. His website appears to have a lot of frequently changing content. Reference links should only be made to content which is reasonably stable. Also per the discussion above, applying the term "dysgraphia" to "character amnesia" seems inappropriate. Although a Linguist is certainly in a position to document the effects of this problem on people, he would not be qualified as an authoritative reference to define "character amnesia" as a form of "dysgraphia". Dysgraphia is actually a Medical Diagnosis, you need to find a neurologist or equivalent medical practitioner to use as a reference. It's a common mistake to assume that because a person is an expert in one field that this qualifies them as an expert in another field. It would be like assuming that someone who designs rocket engines for a profession and occasionally goes horseback riding for recreation is also an expert on horse breeding. That's not to say that he could not become an expert in both fields, it's only to say that they need specific qualifications and study in each field in order to do so. I saw nothing on Professor Anderson's website to indicate that he has any qualifications beyond being an expert in linguistics. 71.35.117.89 (talk) 16:27, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Worldwide viewpoint tag
A tag has been added to this article stating that it focuses primarily on China, Japan, and Korea but is that really necessary? The topic is specifically related to those who use Chinese characters, does the topic extend beyond that scope? Staying within scope isn't something that should be "fixed". I guess the question I have is in what way could the article possibly be expanded to better accommodate a worldwide view? - Metal lunchbox (talk) 20:21, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I've removed the tag because it was rather WP:POINT-y and the user who applied it has very few edits, and I doubt they understand what they are actually doing. Adding the tag makes no sense at all, as the issue of forgetting Chinese characters (sinographs, etc) only applies to countries that use sinographs. Does the USA use sinographs? Does Britain? Germany? --  李博杰  &#124; —Talk contribs email 04:39, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

well, there are a lot of people in the usa who write in chinese characters, so to claim this only applies to china et al, without any substantiation, seems a bit short-sighted. 67.40.212.97 (talk) 20:14, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Global Times article
Global Times Penmanship in China wanes, Business Insider Whither Handwriting in China? 低凹鱼 (talk) 00:11, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Character amnesia dates back to Confucius
This is not a recent occurence. confucius mentioned that scribes used to leave blank spaces when they didn't know a character, but they changed during his time and started writing nonsense characters instead if they didn't know the right one.

https://books.google.com/books?id=UJrw5e_FMrYC&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=odrkZvbqJQoC&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=9C2Rlbksl-MC&pg=PR4#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=y0Pxz1L9I4EC&pg=PA350#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=MqeAvvCGlCEC&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=CRArQFHGfn8C&pg=PA202#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=6DseYHSfaagC&pg=PA184#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=wN99fsHpbTsC&pg=PA17#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=jOinRhBKvjwC&pg=PT172#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=RjRDJv-kE68C&pg=PA12&dq=Thus,+Kongzi+laments+the+fact+that+insufficient+documentary+evidence+(zh+̄eng+)+has+been+preserved+of+the+Xia+and+the+Shang+dynasties+(3.9)+and+praises+scribes+who+leave+a+blank+in+a+text+when+they+are+unsure+of+the+character+they+are+...&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7abPUIC4HMXE0QHQmYHIAQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Thus%2C%20Kongzi%20laments%20the%20fact%20that%20insufficient%20documentary%20evidence%20(zh%20̄eng%20)%20has%20been%20preserved%20of%20the%20Xia%20and%20the%20Shang%20dynasties%20(3.9)%20and%20praises%20scribes%20who%20leave%20a%20blank%20in%20a%20text%20when%20they%20are%20unsure%20of%20the%20character%20they%20are%20...&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=wqym0cOd33MC&pg=PA156#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=5ArwPtRPjmQC&pg=PA177#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=nv9bDN8W9OIC&pg=PA79#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=geh261xgI8sC&pg=PA228#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=ttVOEQu3AkEC&pg=PA180#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=LT3cbdplNx4C&pg=PA499#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=UW0IfG9sMjMC&pg=PA108#v=onepage&q&f=false

Rajmaan (talk) 23:13, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Suspicions of non-Chinese bias
I highly suspect the main writer of the article to have filled paragraphs with projections of his country (America, probably.)


 * "With the advent of the World Wide Web in 1991 and the subsequent widespread use of email, internet chat, and discussion forums, people began using computers to communicate with each other in Chinese and Japanese. "

In China, Internet wasn't seriously accessible before the 2000s (see Internet in China. Even Japan and SK did not come to the fore before 98-99. WWW in 1991? Just for CERN and a few universities...


 * Emphasis on the complexity of the characters. They are logical.

Kahlores (talk) 05:29, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

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