This is a fascinating subject, that would merit some input from other languages IMHO.
> Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet.
In alphabetic languages with separate pronounciation (French, English etc.) people forget spelling instead. And of course we recognize spellings we know, even if we couldn't recall it cold from memory.
Another point: the article defines kanji as images, but each character can be parsed as a composition of base blocks (radicals), and people primarily remember those. Put in computer terms, kanji are not bitmaps but overlayed vectorial blocks. That I think makes a world of difference for how we handle them, foreigner and native alike.
Learning about radicals was a massive Level Up in my Japaneseability.
THey're like protocols/interfaces on OOP classes ^^ or more accurately, like "tele" and "phone" in "telephone", "icon" in "iconography" and obviously many more words in English made up of bits and pieces of other words.
Once you recognize the parts, you'll be able to able to guess/infer what the word means even if it's your first time seeing it. Same with radicals in Kanji.
> Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet.
In alphabetic languages with separate pronounciation (French, English etc.) people forget spelling instead. And of course we recognize spellings we know, even if we couldn't recall it cold from memory.
Another point: the article defines kanji as images, but each character can be parsed as a composition of base blocks (radicals), and people primarily remember those. Put in computer terms, kanji are not bitmaps but overlayed vectorial blocks. That I think makes a world of difference for how we handle them, foreigner and native alike.