The Wubi input system

Victor Mair, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, said character amnesia Rosetta Stone Language is 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. The Wubi input system -- available on some Chinese computers and backed by the government -- uses character strokes as handwriting does. But the system itself is so difficult to learn that it has failed to gain mass appeal. However, iPhones and other smartphones now offer an option in which users can input characters by drawing them onto the touch screen. And in Japan, kanji kentei -- a character quiz with levels -- has become a widespread craze among schoolchildren, housewives and retirees, according to Yoshiko Nakano, associate professor of Japanese at the University of Hong Kong. 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 Language Learning Software Net, found that 80 percent of respondents had forgotten how to write some characters -- but 43 percent said they used handwritten characters only for signatures and forms. "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 the blogger and translator C. Custer on his Chinageeks blog. "Given the social and financial pressures that exist for most people in China... (and) given that nearly everyone has a cellphone, it really isn?t a problem at all." The explosion of internet and phone technology has itself led to the creation of new words and forms of writing. In Chinese people were sending 175 billion text messages each quarter, according to the Xinhua state news agency. Still, both Li Hanwei and Zeng Ming have become so concerned about character amnesia that they keep handwritten diaries partly to ensure they don?t forget how to write. If it weren?t for this, would they actually need to remember Greek Learning Software how to write characters with a pen? Li is almost stumped, but says she uses one "when I have to sign the back of my new credit card". "That?s almost all," she says.