[Beltalowda]

> I once saw an old YouTube video that claimed that some hanzi are super obscure and even native Chinese have to look them up sometimes when wanting to use them, and gave the example of "sneeze".

Isn't that also the case in other languages? Most people don't know all the words in a dictionary for example, and a word is roughly analogous to a character in Chinese.

[pezezin]

In most languages with alphabetic writing, if you know a spoken word, you can write it. But in Chinese and Japanese, people might know a word, use it daily, being able to read it, and still forget how to write it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia

[dontlaugh]

It varies in alphabet languages too. Plenty of native English speakers can’t spell words they can speak. Chinese is not much worse than English in this respect.

[thrown_22]

Yes, English is a terrible written language. In a sane world we would have moved to IPA a long time ago.

jˈɛs, ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ ɪz ɐ tˈɛɹɪbəl ɹˈɪtən lˈaŋɡwɪdʒ. ɪn ɐ sˈeɪn wˈɜːld wiː wʊdhɐv mˈuːvd tʊ ˌaɪpˌiːˈeɪ ɐ lˈɒŋ tˈaɪm ɐɡˈəʊ.

[tokinonagare]

And then we would need to use two very different spellings for American and British English. Be careful with what you wish.

[thrown_22]

There isn't such a thing as a spelling when you write down what you hear. We can still understand each other despite the spelling of center and centre being different.

[pezezin]

Yes, that's why I wrote "in most languages" :D

We all agree that English spelling is a royal pain in the ass.

[Beltalowda]

Ah right, that makes sense.