Dave Lancashire sent me a set of questions today. Essentially, he wanted to know if I felt:
1. confusion with similar-looking Chinese characters;
2. difficulty in understanding that the same Chinese characters can have different pronunciation and meaning;
3. difficulty in understanding that the meaning of a Chinese character may depend on its context;
4. inability to comprehend that different Chinese characters may have the same pronunciation but different tones or the same pronunciation and tone but different meanings;
5. reversal problems with writing Chinese characters, i.e. difficulty in reading Chinese radicals vertically or horizontally; and
6. problems with the proper sequences of strokes in writing Chinese characters.
When I replied that kind of did have these problems (with the exception of number 3) he explained it to me. Huh? I think this is one for the Big Brain.
Ken Carroll
Ken ‘dyslexia’ is a fearsome can of worms to open ;). My wife deals with children who have this and related problems and it is a broad brush that covers a whole host of causes and specific symptoms. Also many manifestations are not a biological problem as such. It was only very recently that most people were expected to be able to read and write. Many ‘dyslexics’ can operate as well as the next person with normal visual processing (find prey/food, avoid predators etc.) In fact some even have better pattern recognition skills or spacial awareness in other contexts.
Here is my life experience take on it, I am left handed, can write mirror writing almost without effort (effortlessly if I practice a little and that includes Chinese characters that I have learned), as I child I was fairly dyslexic for writing. Reading was a different story, I was well ahead of the curve for reading speed and comprehension. So based on my experience I am happily learning to mostly read Chinese and not write it by hand (save that until later).
I think you will get many different views and theories in this thread though ;). I find the problems described above don’t really apply, I am actually quite excited, it is already apparent that I will be able to read must faster in Chinese characters than English writing.
I agree with Chris. The context for the thinking behind that list was a discussion about dyslexia. Dislexia is a far ranging problem. I’m quoting here:
“It has its roots in the very basic brain systems that allow man to understand and express language….the tentacles of the disorder reach out from deep within the brain and affect not only how a person reads but surprisingly a number of other functions as well (spelling, articulating and remembering).’
I don’t know how much mileage we can get from this kind of discussion. But I’m wondering, does anyone out there know what is done to remedy dislexia in Chinese native speakers?
For your reference, here’s a research article recently published in Nature, regarding the difference between Chinese dyslexia and English dyslexia:
Siok WT et al, “Biological abnormality of impaired reading is constrained by culture.” Nature 431, 71-76, 2004.
Abstract: http://www.nature.com/nature/j.....02865.html
Full text: http://www.hku.hk/fmri/index/j.....re2004.pdf
You can search more articles about Chinese dyslexia @ Entrez Pubmed.
Since dyslexia is apparently a brain disorder, I don’t think you can “cure” dyslexia, at least for now. If someone is a dyslexia patient, he or she might learn to read more comfortably than before by training; but basically he or she has to live with dyslexia.
Difficulties that people feel when they learn Chinese as a second language are an entirely different problem in my view. Many English-speaking people have mastered it successfully, and you are very likely to be able to do so successfully too, although the amount of training required might vary from one person to another.
ME TOO - I don’t really know how a specific diagnosis is made with dyslexia, and a quick net search just now didn’t seem to make it so clear, there’s no simple blood test that says yay or nay.
When reading the list, I could say I’ve experienced them all, and some continue to affect me. I don’t believe I have any kind of dyslexia though. Much of my earlier confusion and mistakes came from the way hanzi is generally taught. It took a lot of reading and research on my part to work things out.
These days it just seems a matter of time, it’s not ‘hard’ anymore really (learning%
It seems that if, after significant study of characters, you still felt that way (and by significant I mean the exposure that a native Chinese gets by the time they’re six or seven – that is, a helluva lot) then there could be some problems. If, as a relative beginner and as an adult whose mind is pretty well configured to read you own native language, you experience those problems, it’s just part of the transition between seeing characters as a bunch of random shapes and seeing meaning in those random little lines.
I think pretty much every learner has #1 to some degree or another (and not just learners: my wife mistook 宫 for 官 recently). #3 and #4 seem to be the big problems – the inability to comprehend the concepts behind the language, rather than simply problems using the language.