just the idea of being illiterate grosses me out I moved from Hong Kong when I w... | Hacker News

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meric on April 22, 2014 | parent | context | favorite | on: Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard (1992)

    just the idea of being illiterate grosses me out

I moved from Hong Kong when I was 9. I studied traditional chinese characters in primary school and cantonese at home. I've forgotten a lot of chinese since moving here.

Nowadays, there are times when I'm reading a chinese passage and I have no idea how to pronounce half the words, yet I understand perfectly what they all mean.

I don't know what you'd call that.

celebril on April 22, 2014 [–]

There's a certain beauty in the ideograph system: you may not know how to pronounce the characters, but you could figure out a meaning out of it.

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