[prokopton]

I have no trouble reading but writing kanji has become a problem. I never need to do it and I can’t remember how to write kanji I have no trouble reading.

It’s Japanese people too, to a lesser degree. My own Japanese wife has to pause to remember how to write something every now and then.

[dmoy]

This happens in Chinese too

Grocery lists will be a mish mash of characters and pinyin

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/jiaozi.gif

鸡, get halfway through writing 蛋, forget how to do it without a computerized pinyin input, give up, scribble it out and write dan

[bloak]

Thanks for that example. Would a Chinese person ever write the tone in pinyin when writing something for themselves?

[dmoy]

Not when doing fragments in obvious context like that. For one, tone doesn't disambiguate anyways. There's 10+ common characters with pinyin 'dan', and only 4 (5) tones in Mandarin.

But also when the context is super obvious there, there's no need.

[gramie]

This was happening to people I knew when I lived in Japan 30 years ago. Many people were using wa-puro (word processors that let you type in the phonetic form and choose from the appropriate kanji). I imagine the effect is far more common now.

I remember one time when a university engineering professor couldn't remember how to write the kanji for "police". He didn't seem embarrassed asking someone else. I don't know if they still do, but they would often demonstrate by writing out the character with their index finger like a pen in the other hand's palm.