[howlingfantods]

“Sneeze” or “喷嚏” is a pretty difficult word to write in Chinese in terms of number of strokes and its internal components. I’m not surprised people wouldn’t know it off the top of their heads. It’s like if someone asked you to spell “unnecessary.”

[teractiveodular]

The other dimension is that the second character 嚏 in particular is obscure: it's virtually never used in any other word than 喷嚏. In Japanese, it's a hyogai kanji not taught in school, meaning most people would spell it phonetically. Alas, this is not a practical/socially acceptable option in Chinese.

The first, 喷 "erupt", is not exactly common either but is at least used in a few other compounds like 喷水 "fountain".

[NoInkling]

喷 is included in HSK 5 and Heisig's version of the most common ~3000 characters, it can't be that infrequent.

[pessimizer]

I don't think anybody is proposing that Chinese people are not normal humans making normal mistakes. The difference is that if somebody asked people to spell "unnecessary", there would only be three common mistakes they would make (based on whether letters are arbitrarily duplicated or not), and all would be easily understood by readers if written.

English orthography is terrible (i.e. a single vowel can be a half-dozen letters), but there's a limit to how complicated it can be to write a word that one knows how to say.

[wizzwizz4]

Wiyul I took migh yot to Luffbruh (acting az a cooryer surviss), I inshored my dissertacion woz cerrect bye revuwing the seilerfoan musick. Suddenly, their was a laud noys. I rush't too the sighed of the bote, but I sore the wartre fludding inn. "Quick! Sumbody hasta seel the hoal!" I cryde. Fourtuneatley, the glew oonder the bought's scin maid the holl cloaze up, sow we kepped floting, butt we terned arowned buy mesteak. Immajin mie shock wen wee woshed up in Lossymuth! Eye wonet fourget thatt deigh enny thyme sune, that's fore shur.

(I'm pretty sure this isn't eye dialect: I consulted the rhyming dictionary a lot, to make sure I was swapping spellings between two words with the same phonemes. I also tried to avoid reanalysis, though some of these words might not quite achieve that.)

[int_19h]

I'm not a native speaker even, but this is mostly readable.

[bigstrat2003]

> It’s like if someone asked you to spell “unnecessary.”

I would be quite surprised if someone couldn't spell that word, unless it was a child.