BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- An on-line survey shows that an overwhelming majority of participants agreed that the Chinese language needed more protection, because many would forget how to write without a computer, the Beijing-based China Youth Daily reported Monday.

    In the survey, conducted by the newspaper and Chinese news portal Sina.com, 80 percent of the 432 people surveyed checked "We urgently need to strengthen the protection of the Chinese language." Survey takers who think "it's unnecessary" and those who don't care each constitute 10 percent of the total.

    Chinese have to rely on western alphabet-based keyboards to put in pictograhic Chinese characters, which makes them forget the exact strokes and strikes of each word when writing on paper.

    According to the survey, 67 percent occasionally forget how to write certain Chinese characters, 12 percent frequently encounter the problem, and only 21 percent have no such difficulties.

    With the rapid popularization of computers, the survey says that only 47 percent of people use pens to write everyday, about 20 percent write with pen often but not daily, while about 30 percent said they "generally type on the computer and rarely write with a pen."

    The paper said that young people today rely more on typing on computers than writing on paper, and the popularity of foreign languages among young people is another cause for their detachment from their mother language.

    As a result, many even speak Chinese mixed with foreign words, which causes the outcry of language pundits for the safeguard of the Chinese language.

    "The advance of foreign languages in China is indeed the best proof that our country is walking toward the world, but we should not therefore ignore our mother tongue," the newspaper quoted a university graduate Xiao Xiao as saying. "After all, the Chinese language bears thousands of years of our traditional culture."

    Interestingly, although nearly 80 percent of the people surveyed could forget how to write certain characters, when asked "Compared with your parents' generation, what do you think of your Chinese?," 52 percent answered "better," 25 percent said "more or less the same," and only 23 percent said "worse." Enditem