Association of handwriting between Chinese Hanzi and Roman systems in the Chinese community of Klang Valley

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study aims to investigate the cross-language relationship between Chinese Hanzi and Roman handwriting systems in the Chinese community of Klang Valley. The samples were examined under characteristics such as slant, alignment, ending strokes, words dimensions, spacing, letter stalks, the height of t-bars and margins for both languages. Spearman’s Rank Correlation and McNemar Bowker tests were applied for the continuous and descriptive data analysis respectively due to their significance association using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software, version 23. The results showed a significant strong positive correlation between the left margins (R 2 = 0.936, p < 0.001) and widths (R 2 = 0.734, p < 0.001). Moderate positive correlation was obtained between heights (R 2 = 0.690, p < 0.001), right margins (R 2 = 0.626, p < 0.001), stalks (R 2 = 0.586, p < 0.001), height of t-bars (R 2 = 0.499, p < 0.001) and intrawords (R 2 = 0.410, p < 0.001). The McNemar Bowker test revealed a significant association between slants (X(6) = 42.702, p < 0.001), ending strokes (X(3) = 38.400, p < 0.001) and baseline (X(10) = 21.904, p = 0.016). The findings were statistically significant (p˂0.05) for all the means measured. Based on the result, an association of handwriting between the two languages exists, despite the structural variation in the writings. This indicates that there is a correspondence in the handwriting of an individual when using two different language systems.