Is Chinese read with a different area of the brain?

[Battosai]

Dear People

I have heard somewhere that Chinese Hanzi are read with a different part of the brain than alphabet. Anyone has any info about this?

[Harpoon]

i dont know.. i dont really think it makes any sense.

I mean, look at how you're reading what I'm writing. It's because the images of the letters in the order of words are imprinted in your head, you're not actually sounding out the words (only if you encounter one you never saw before, in which case you won't know it anyway)

Rineadg is defrfnit tahn sekpiang, yuo can slitl untdrensad erhineytvg I'm syanig, atefr all (if I jsut levae teh fsirt adn lsat ltretes anloe)

[Glenn]

Well, without having studied the matter myself, all I can say is "perhaps." Here are some interesting pieces of information for you.

It's a common misunderstanding that logograms are obsolete and phonograms are modern. In fact, linguists have proven that a human being can read logograms faster than phonograms if trained to read. There are some Japanese who have been trying to write Japanese only in kana or only in alphabets with no success. If you write Japanese without kanji, you will forget the meanings of morphemes. The disadvantage of logograms is their difficulty to learn, but the fact that developed nations such as Japan and Taiwan have a very low illiteracy rate indicates it is not so hard to learn kanji as you might think, if good education is available.

From this post (note that it was written in 2001)

漢字は優れた表記体系だ。漢字は表意性が高いため、脳内で意味に変換されるのが速い。一方、アルファベット等の表音文字はまず音声に変換され、それから意味に変換される。従って漢字のほうが速く読め、また失読症（字が読めなくなる脳障害）に強いことが分かっている。コンピュータの登場で手書きの必要性が減り、また多くの情報を素早く取り込む必要がある現代はまさに漢字に有利である。

From 「女」なんか見たくない (same author)

My translation:

"Chinese characters are an excellent writing system. Since there correspondence to meaning is high, they are quickly converted to something meaningful in the brain. On the other hand, phonetic scripts like alphabets are first converted to sounds, and only then are they converted to meanings. Accordingly, Chinese characters can be read faster, and people with strong dyslexia (a mental disability that makes characters unreadable) can understand them. With the appearance of computers the necessity of hand writing has diminished, and there are advantages to Chinese characters even in the present era, when there is a need to quickly take in lots of information."

The part about people with dyslexia being able to understand them suggests to me that they are read with a different part of the brain than phonetic scripts. I'd be anxious to read any more evidence that anyone else has about this.

[wix]

I have heard somewhere that Chinese Hanzi are read with a different part of the brain than alphabet. Anyone has any info about this?

You might take a look at this article.

[GCZ]

I have read (can't lay hands on it right now, but may get back to you another day) that Chinese speakers actually use both sides of the brain when they read and speak.

This is apparently due to the picture style writing (character are mostly not pictures, but there are some that are - but that's another whole debate) and poosibly the fact that Chinese has tones, which makes it a little musical.

This is obviously a very genralised summary.

[Aquaflight]

Here is a very informative and nicely compiled article on the information discussed in this thread.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3809/is_200301/ai_n9226177

I hope this helps,

Aquaflight

Ps: It is several pages long so make sure that you read all of it.