character amnesia

I was reading an article about character amnesia where people forget how to write characters by hand and they found that 70 percent of people tested were unable to write 癩蛤蟆 meaning a toad.

The first character 癩 is used in Teochew as in tai2go1 癩哥 to mean leprosy and the last two characters are said in Teochew as gab4bo5 蛤蟆 to mean a toad. Do remember to close your lips after saying gab4!

Some people write bo5 incorrectly as 婆 and if you were to flip your Teochew dictionary, you will find the correct character to use.

To flip a book is said as hiaoⁿ1 掀 and I have heard it used by Iab Hui to mean to lift a lid of a cooking pot.

So what is the cure for character amnesia? Write out the characters over and over again by hand!

How does one say character amnesia? It is said as 提筆忘字 ti5big4 bhuang5ri7.  In normal conversation, we say ti5 as huaⁿ⁷ 扞 and bhuang5 as 唔記得 m6gi3dig4 and in normal conversation, we can say 扞筆唔記得字 huaⁿ7 big4 m6gi3dig4 ri7 to mean character amnesia .