Character Amnesia: The Sociolinguistic Implications of Writing Fluency With Mandarin Chinese Speakers

Since the 21st century, numerous Chinese speakers have been struggling with writing fluency in their language, primarily due to forgetting how to write Chinese characters. This phenomenon, otherwise known as "character amnesia" (提笔忘字), has resulted from multiple logographic factors such as technology, the orthographic system, and pinyin (拼音). Historically, Chinese culture views Chinese characters not just as their writing system but as ancient art and history. This paper will look into the contemporary views of how character amnesia has impacted Chinese culture through this research question: Do Mandarin speakers believe that character amnesia impacts Chinese cultural identity or people’s overall understanding of Chinese culture? The research conducted through interviews in this article reveals that (not available yet). This article will also suggest a few future outcomes of character amnesia for the Chinese language and Chinese speakers.