We All Read in Characters

When I started learning Chinese, it was with a resignation that learning to read in this language would be much more difficult than learning to read in, say, Spanish, as the Chinese write in characters. Reading in Western languages seems relatively much easier, as they tend to be written phonetically.

I don’t think this is how we read in English though. Consider the following email-forward sensation:

Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

In short, when reading English we don’t read words in the sense that we are sounding letters out as we process them. We just recognize the general shape of a word we had previously memorized; in other words, we read in characters. 


So really, the chasm between reading a phonetic language and reading in characters is not as wide as I initially thought. There still is the problem of coming across unfamiliar characters-- context will often provide the meaning, but characters often give no hints to their pronunciation (with modern technology this isn't as much of an issue, as you can just copy and paste it into an electronic dictionary, or draw it in on the trackpad) Aside from this though, when reading a passage that was written using characters that I have mostly already memorized, I reckon my brain is working in much the same way as when I am reading an English newspaper.