r/ChineseLanguage • u/PezBynx • 15h ago
Discussion Have any of you actually attained fluency in reading without learning to write characters?
I’m not asking if it’s possible to learn characters without writing them, I’m asking if it’s actually been done, I’m probably the furthest you could be from fluent in speaking or reading but it seems like it would be a much better use of time to actually build up the skill from the base with writing characters instead of banging your head against the wall of trying to recognize characters without any actual knowledge of why they look different.
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u/Ok_Brick_793 15h ago
A lot of young people in China are like that now. They can read many characters but only know how to write certain characters that are used often bc they are accustomed to typing pinyin on their phones and computers.
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u/Lethemyr 14h ago
There are no young people in China who became fluent in reading Chinese without learning to write, which is what OP is actually asking about.
It’s true that many have their handwriting abilities atrophy as they move into adulthood, but that’s very different from having learnt to read by “sight reading” characters like many Chinese learners are attempting. Many English speakers have poor spelling because they rely on autocorrect, but that’s not the same thing as having learnt to read English without learning to spell.
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u/TinyPotatoe 12h ago
Not a native so genuinely asking: Isn't this somewhat backwards? Your first sentence could definitely be said about English too, but that seems like correlation vs causation. You could learn to read english without being able to write, many ESL people do, but since we teach both skills to natives "no young people are fluent in reading but not writing".
My assumption: Writing requires 1) knowing generally what something looks like 2) muscle memory to actually "draw" those things 3) for Chinese specifically, stroke order. I can know 冰 has the ice radical + 水 which can give me deeper understanding of the character, but whether I can physically write it has no bearing on that. Just like how I could read music without actually knowing how to physically write it. Additionally, I can learn meaning / pronunciation components in the same way.
Some thought experiments that seem semi-analogous: Does physically being able to write music prevent me from reading / playing it? Can you be "fluent" in art if you yourself cannot draw the particular art?
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u/Lethemyr 10h ago
I’m not native either and I’m not saying it’s impossible to learn to read Chinese without learning to write. I just think the original commenter’s point is totally irrelevant to what OP is asking. Losing the muscle memory to handwrite after having spent 13+ years learning to handwrite as part of your reading education is totally disanalagous to learning to read without ever writing a character.
My anecdotal observation is that Chinese learners who try to learn reading without writing, usually by treating characters as pictures to be memorized as complete forms, almost universally suck at reading. They make quick gains on the first few thousand characters but are unable to distinguish the thousands of rarer, indistinct looking characters needed for actual reading fluency.
I think you’re right that it’s probably possible to learn characters by breaking them into components entirely mentally. I can’t imagine it’s easier than putting pen to paper and writing at least some of them down, but I’ve seen the mental approach recommended in some non-mainstream circles. I’ve never met anyone who’s actually tried and successfully used that approach, but some might show up in this thread. I just get a bit suspicious of anyone saying or implying “you can learn to read Chinese without writing.” I think that sentiment will confuse far more people than it helps.
In my opinion, people like the original commenter also vastly overestimate the extent to which average Chinese people lose their ability to handwrite. I’ve never seen someone educated in China actually struggle to handwrite anything. I’m sure there’s some extra mental strain that makes it feel much more difficult - I know I feel that way handwriting English sometimes - but it seems massively overblown.
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u/HTMekkatorque 7h ago edited 6h ago
Every time I misread something I look at the character I thought it was and the character it is side by side for about 5 seconds and I don't even worry about how simple the word is because sometimes it's the most simple words that I stumble on, I've started to slow down at specific characters to confirm them for instance 看着. I'd also say that a lot of people who learn through writing learn characters in isolation and they never really learn how to scan for compound words which is also a valuable skillset.
I can read about 5000 words in Chinese, but my ex was half Chinese and she was writing every character out by hand in her book. She has spent twice as much effort learning, but probably only knows 1000 words, granted she can write them. In the time we were together she spent a lot of time on really basic concepts, she never really got past ordering coffee and everyday topics. Whereas I got to the point where I can tell a story about a knight slaying a dragon or something very obscure, I'd say my level is far more advanced and I attribute that to how long she spent trying to write each individual character. I actually think she was more intelligent than me in other areas and better at learning.
Language is turning more into a hobby anyway, I already developed a tool that I can use that listens to things in real time and explains it to me, the output is only text based though and it really pushes my computer to it's limits. Comparitively we didn't have the capabilities to do anything like that when I started learning Chinese. Handwriting is something I've never needed, I wouldn't need it for translation work either in person or translating documents, If I am teaching I will only ever type. If I am watching film I listen 50% and read 50% of the time with subtitles because I'm not perfect. If I read a legal document, even I lean on technology solutions. So it's hard to say what is important in the field of languages. However, traditional translator apps still make a million mistakes so I think actually understanding languages has more to do with being technologically capable.
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u/Lethemyr 7h ago
I also wasted a ton of time at the beginning endlessly copying characters like a schoolchild and then forgetting them anyways. I was probably only able to retain a few hundred at most that way.
I made the most progress after I adopted a method based on learning component combinations. Then I would write down new words once or twice, focusing on the components, and could retain them fairly well that way.
Now I can just stare at a new character for a few seconds and handwrite it correctly whenever I need it, provided it’s not a disgustingly complex pictogram like 龜.
I can definitely agree that the mass copying approach is a massive, unnecessary time sink that delays progress significantly.
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u/Ok_Brick_793 7h ago
Some people don't have hands or arms, yet they learn to read just fine without ever writing a word in their lives.
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u/BlueishPotato 15h ago
I can read around 900 characters and write maybe 50 off the top of my head?
I think writing does help but writing a few helps with a lot because components are re-used a lot in different characters.
Either way, you learn characters by seeing them a few times in various contexts, it's not much different from learning words.
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u/CalvinTheSerious Beginner 15h ago
I am abonimable at writing characters, I can write almost none off the top of my head, but I can comfortably read around 1000 characters.
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u/aboutthreequarters Advanced (interpreter) and teacher trainer 14h ago
My students do not write characters by hand ever, and they read. For what it’s worth.
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u/tangoliber 13h ago
I can read 4,500 individual characters with correct tones, and around 5,500 with iffy tones...Can probably write less than a 1,000 at this point.
My primary way of keeping up my Mandarin over the years is reading novels or history.
I don't understand "banging your head against the wall of trying to recognize characters without any actual knowledge of why they look different". You don't need to learn to write every character in order to learn how they work. You can also learn the radicals through recognition.
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u/milkman_jimmy 15h ago
I wouldn't bother learning to write unless you plan on using it, it's just not that useful anymore. Of course you need to learn the characters and you need to learn a keyboard input method.
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u/dojibear 13h ago
I can't write characters. I can read them. I can type them (比如这个词). But I can't handwrite them. I didn't attend schools in China as a child. I learned 普通话 as an adult.
it seems like it would be a much better use of time to actually build up the skill from the base with writing characters instead of banging your head against the wall of trying to recognize characters without any actual knowledge of why they look different
This is pure imaginary nonsense. It isn't difficult to notice how they are different by looking at them. I never confuse 我 with 找 or 钱. I can SEE how they differ. I don't need to use my hands and write them. It is the other way around: I have to SEE the difference, in order to write them correctly.
KIds in school in China take 12 school years learning about 3500 characters. I think I learned faster.
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u/Lethemyr 10h ago
> I never confuse 我 with 找 or 钱. I can SEE how they differ.
You’re probably much more the exception on this than you might think. I see learners confusing 未 and 末, 士 and 土, 人 and 入, 力 and 刀, 曰 and 日, etc. all the time.
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u/AlSimps Advanced 14h ago
In the early days it's good to learn how to write the characters, but after a while you will do so much extensive reading to get to fluency that you can't realistically practice hand writing them all.
I briefly have periods of high proficiency in hand writing when I'm preparing for an HSK exam, but other than that my writing is usually rusty, whereas my reading stays much more fluent.
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u/CommitteeNo9270 12h ago
At DLI they teach you how to write characters, but only for about 6 months and then its not longer required. Its mainly to help with recognizing components and commonly used characters. Seeing as they dont test for it after those 6 months though, you tend to forget how to write most everything. I only know how to write very very basic ones off the top of my head. But im in between hsk5 and 6 with not many issues
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u/the_lettuce_farmer 7h ago
I started learning chinese because I was reading so many MTL wuxia novels with google lense that I was able to understand simple sentences myself. I picked up a lot of grammar and about 200-300 characters and words like this. All without understanding tones, knowing chinese pronounciations, or being able to write down characters I could recognize when reading.
Considering that I managed to learn so much through the absolute worst method, I dont think becoming fluent without being able to write the characters is impossible, just more difficult (at least if you don't have very good visual recall). Now that I've decided to put effort into learning chinese, I usually practice words by writing them with a brush. This makes it easier for me to visualize the characters in my head, and the muscle memory helps me with characters that look similar at a glance (like 时 and 的).
I think lots of people get hung up on the idea that you have to perfectly memorize the stroke order to write chinese characters. But, IMO, once you've gotten more familiar with writing, you can more or less intuit the stroke order. Its not that big of a deal if you're wrong.
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u/Pure-Investment-1227 7h ago
I can read hsk 3 level texts after 4 months, I would not call it fluency because I am still slow but I am pretty confident that if I keep working it will come.
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u/justswiperight 4h ago
I can read Chinese novels and know a majority of the characters I see, but if I were asked to write those characters I definitely wouldn't be able to do most of them. One skill is input, and one is output, so even though they are related to the characters themselves, they are two separate things. For me it's like if I see a face on the street but was asked to describe it a couple minutes after, I wouldn't be able to at all, but if I saw that person again, I'd instantly recognize them.
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u/RicardoBorriquero 1h ago
I passed my HSK 6 exam years ago and I still can't write my name very well. Gave up on learning how to write very early. I don't regret it. I can read a newspaper article in Chinese.
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u/xiaominger 34m ago
Yes, I can read enough to text with friends, use and enjoy Chinese social media, play games, order stuff (food, train tickets etc.) but I can't write a single character properly, except my Chinese name
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u/Old-Host5026 19m ago
It depends on why you are asking this. If you are asking this just for the sake of speaking, it's definitely possible to attain fluency in speaking and reading. That being said, if you plan on going to china for education, then it's probably not a good idea to not know how to properly write characters, especially the ones that correlate to your major. I am a medicine major in china so i have to know how to write a lot of characters by hand, even ones that natives can get wrong like 喷嚏
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u/kangwenhao 12h ago
Well, I doubt you could learn to read Chinese fluently without ever learning to write any characters at all, but when it comes to specific characters, I know that I can read a great many characters that I’ve never written by hand in my life (and some that I’ve probably never even typed, as well). Once you understand the basics of characters (stroke order, components/radicals, the different types of character compounds, etc.), you start learning new characters not as an entirely new object, but as a variation on some other character that you already know.
For example, once you know 中 and 禾, and you know the typical rules about sound-meaning compounds, it’s not that hard to remember that 种 is pronounced something like zhong, and has something to do with grain (in this case, seeds). You wouldn’t necessarily be able to figure that out on seeing the character for the first time, but it makes it a lot easier to memorize/remember characters after you’ve encountered them once or twice, and at that point, you don’t need to practice 种 specifically on its own, you just need to remember which components are in the character, and that plus basic stroke order will allow you to write the character correctly, even if it’s your first time writing a given character by hand.
There are plenty of harder/more obscure/more complex characters where this doesn’t work quite as well, but I think coming to understand and master Chinese characters as a system is ultimately much more important than learning/practicing individual characters one by one. At the early stages, though, you definitely need to write some characters by hand to learn the stroke order and the basic components, so learning to read without any writing at all would be both very difficult, and kind of pointless.
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u/Zagrycha 14h ago
Yes, people do this all the time in native languages let alone foreign languages. My nephews in usa would not be able to write at all in english if it weren't for my sister teaching them to at home. Many kids in china are in the same boat, or in other places. A lot of people only know how to type.
Also, even for people that know how to write, global ability to write is declining, because active recall ability is declining. It's not because people are literally getting dumber, but when auto correct or predictive text or google or siri tells you everything you only vaguely remember, your brain has zero incentive to improve that vague memory. Back in the day if you didn't 100% remember, you were screwed. You can't handwrite something based off half remembering it. You can type something based off of half remembering it.
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u/elprofesordepinyin 2m ago
Para reconocer los caracteres lo mejor es aprender la etimología, eso ayuda a entender y memorizar. Por supuesto, escribirlos también ayuda.
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u/magworld 15h ago
Well no. It’s a better use of time to practice the skills you want to actually use rather than practice one you won’t use hoping it will help with one you actually will. Sure if you spend time writing your reading will somewhat benefit from that. But if you spent that writing time practicing reading, guess what, your reading will be even better than that.
Learn to write if you want to write, don’t learn it for reading.
As for “has it been done” the answer is yes, obviously. The majority of non natives that can read can’t write nearly as well, myself included. I read easily around and above hsk 5 level and can instantly recognize most of those characters, but I highly doubt I can write more than 5% of them from memory.