Http Nihongoup

8/8/2019 Http Nihongoup

1/11

NihongoUp Game Japanese Language & Culture Blog Learning Resources Japan News Aggregator

divita

Japanese language & culture blog

Presented by NihongoUp

Home About Archive Goodies @ RSS Facebook Twitter

How to write kanji

Posted on October 31st, 2009 by Philip Seyfi in Design, Language |

When a student is taught kanji, one of the first thing that is explained to him is the concept ofstroke orderthe one and only correct way of writing kanji characters. Unfortunately, thereason behind it as well as the main rules are often left undiscussed. Most students are leftwondering about why they are supposed to learn one more characteristic for each of the alreadycomplicated character, and some of them decide not to follow any of the well established rulesat all. In this article Ill try to explain why it generally is important to use correct stroke order and whatare the basic rules that should cover the majority of the kanji characters.

Why is kanji stroke order important?

First of all, unlike the Latin alphabet (or Cyrillic, for that matter) the Chinese characters and their Japanese deviations are alwaysmonospacedeach character occupies the same amount of space. When you combine this typographic rule with the oftenincredible amount of strokes involved, it becomes clear, why writing nicely looking characters may be so difficult. Shod (,

Japanese calligraphy) is an art that was practiced for centuries in Japan and thus, the proper way of writing kanji is a very well

researched topic. You may not believe it at first, but try writing the same kanji with different stroke orders and youll see thedifference. Moreover, in Japan, an opinion about you may be formed based on your calligraphy. In the same way as by speakingimproperly, your bad handwriting may make a bad impression on the others.

Like Be the first of your friends to like this.

16

Vote!

Page 1 of 11How to write kanji | NihongoUp

4/30/2010http://nihongoup.com/blog/how-to-write-kanji/


2/11

Secondly, stroke order is a great learning aid. Especially for some of the more complicated characters,one may forget how precisely a it character look, yet remember how to write it by following the correctorder. This phenomenon is called motor memory and you probably already experience it in your everyday life. Actually, neuromuscular facilitation is involved even in basic task like speechone doesntthink about complex tongue, lips, and other movementsand is the primary cause of accents.

At last, traditional paper kanji dictionaries are often organized by stroke order, and even if one decides touse computer handwriting recognitionbe it a Tablet PC, a smartphone, or a dedicated denshi jisho (

, electronic dictionary)it will work best if you use the correct stroke order.

OK, so what are the guidelines?

1. Top to bottom

2. Left to right

3. Center strokes are written before wings

4. Center strokes connecting to other strokes are written first

5. Center strokes passing through other strokes are written last

6. Frames that enclose other strokes are written first, but closed last

7. Right-to-left diagonals are written before left-to-right diagonals




3/11

Although there are many exceptions, you generally wont go wrong if you follow these rules. As youlllearn more kanji, the stroke order will become more natural andwith the exception of tricky kanjilike (, concave) or (, convex) you wont have to think about it, or learn it kanji by kanji.

Learn Japanese with NihongoUp a Japanese educational game and reviewing tool that will help youlearn hiragana & katakana, improve your typing speed, review JLPT kanji, vocabulary & grammar incontext.

Related Posts:

Learn and write kanji faster than ever before!And the kanji of the year isNihongoUp for iPhone on the App Store

Use of the wa particle to express contrastInterview: Brett Fyfield

Tags: calligraphy, characters, chinese,japanese, kanji, Language, stroke order, write

Philip Seyfi

Philip Seyfi is a Russian new media developer & designer who also happens to be the author of theNihongoUp Game and all of the other NihongoUp branded projects.

Homepage | Twitter

Add New Comment

You are commenting as a Guest. Optional: Login below.

Japanese numerals poker chips Recipe: Mushroom miso soup

Type your comment here.




4/11

Showing 14 comments

Sort by Subscribe by email Subscribe by RSS

Even though I knew all of this, I really enjoyed reading it. Great post!

I often make the point that stroke order is essential to learning kanji. Often I hear that people just want to learn how to read, so it doesn't

matter, but learning how to read kanji without ever writing it is like learning how to understand spoken Japanese without ever having to

speak it.

Very interesting, I appreciate the fact that we need to learn te stroke order, it helps me remember how to write it (I make up a little dance

almost for the difficult ones :P ) , and it improves the look - as you said.

As a left-handed person, stroke order is constantly vexing. Even roman letters present a challenge, as pushing a pen left to right with your

left hand is much more difficult than it is to pull a pen left to right with your right hand. I often find myself reversing or making mirror

images of kanji according to strokes, especially if the character or part of the character is symmetrical, i.e. for , "day", I'll usually make the

right vertical first, then go from right to left on the top and then down the left vertical for stroke two, and then right to left two more times for

the middle and bottom horizontals. Nobody, American or Japanese, has been able to give me a good approach to solving 1. my

Oldest first

@ImaginaryJapan 6 months ago

Flag

Like Reply

@rainbowhill 6 months ago

Flag

Like Reply

Kadhine 6 months ago

1 person liked this.

Flag

Like Reply

Hidarikiki 5 months ago

Name Website (optional)

Email Subscribe to all comments by emailgfedc

Post as Guest




5/11

incomprehensible writing if I follow correct stroke order or 2. the legible but "off" look of my mirrored strokes. Most Japanese have

recommended simply saying "hidari kiki, gomen ne" as an explanation and leaving it at that.

Long story short - if there is such a thing as a resource for lefties trying to write kanji, I'd love to see it.

That's an interesting problem.

Well, first of all, being left-handed is actually advantage when you write vertically, so try to write vertically whenever possible.

Secondly, have you tried writing with your right hand? I have nothing against lefties, but it's always good to know how to use both

hands (being a right-handed person, I try to do as much as possible with my left hand as well).

In any case, after some consideration, I would avoid mirroring the stroke order. It may be easier for you to write that way, but as you'll

write faster and your characters will become cursive they won't look as they should as the connections between the lines won't be thesame.

I'm also a lefty, I never thought about whether it affects how I write kanji... so that's a very interesting issue. I also get very annoyed when

even Japanese teachers use the wrong stroke order, people in my class write on of the most fundamental kanji ever,, with one stroke!

There is sort of a thing as "cursive" Kanji. Not really cursive, but you know, short cuts people will take so that they can write more

quickly. This leads for very hard to read characters! Every Japanese person does it though and you'll notice that it makes reading tough

if you're used to nice neat crisp characters.

Maybe this is where the one stroke

is coming from... even though that's pretty extreme!

The stroke order generally doesn't change in the semi-cursive kanji script. On the contrary, it becomes even more important to

Flag

Like Reply

seifip 5 months ago in reply to @ImaginaryJapan

Flag

Like Reply

Will 5 months ago

Flag

Like Reply

Harvey 5 months ago in reply to Will

Flag

Like Reply

seifip 5 months ago in reply to Harvey




6/11

write the kanji with the correct stroke order (ex. the character with three strokes) as a semi-cursive kanji can very easily

become unreadable if you make even small changes to the stroke order (as the connections between the lines won't be the

same/at the same place).

In the cursive script (which you'll rarely see in real life, and which you'll probably never be able to read easily), the stroke order

may eventually change as the whole kanjieven a very complicated oneis generally written with a single stroke. This

however is an extreme alteration of the character which should only be used in calligraphy and definitely shouldn't be used in

everyday life as you'll most probably be the only one able to read it.

Order doesn't change - but the number of total strokes do - and that's what I really meant to point out.

I saw a lot of semi-cursive script when Japanese would write things on white boards at the office and things written on

memos.

Not to say that this is some official stylized cursive kanji script, but it's just people taking the shortcuts that come naturally

when writing characters quickly.

If we're talking about cursive, there are "cursive styles" that are fairly standardized, though not set in stone.However, not only is stroke order important, but also where you breathe in and breathe out, as well as where you do

or do not allow the pen to leave the paper.

If you mean just people scrawling kanji quickly, we call that :D

Unlike the Chinese stroke, the Japanese kanji stroke order is based on the semi-cursive script and thus it's

easier to remember the "standard" way of writing semi-cursive characters.

Also, the semi-cursive script is actually very helpful for those learning stroke orders as it is much better

visible than on the regular script where each stroke is written separately.

Flag

Like Reply

Harvey 5 months ago in reply to seifip

Flag

Like Reply

@BretMayer 5 months ago in reply to Harvey

Flag

Like Reply

seifip 5 months ago in reply to @ImaginaryJapan

Flag

Like Reply




7/11

One thing I often find myself doing is listening to the rhythm of my pencil on the paper when I practice a character. As the rhythm becomes

more and more familiar and I'm able to keep the tempo steady each time I write the character it becomes more and more defined and legible.

Knowing the proper stroke order helps this because of the flow that each stroke makes to the next.

This tactile and auditory sense of the character is something that is missed if you're not writing as part of your study, a very good

point. The more senses you use in committing something to memory the more more likely it is to stick.

Even when is written cursively there is a definite stroke order, count and rhythm, even if the brush never leaves the page. If you

don't have these fundamentals in place then it becomes illegible.

That's what I'm always telling everyone... use as many sources and as many senses as possible as diversity is what's most

important when learning a language. Otherwise it'll be a painful process and, most importantly, you'll risk to be come a very one

sided person who knows perfectly one aspect of the language yet fails completely in another which may be satisfying, but

definitely not enough for you to be considered as somebody who truly knows the language.

Reactions

RT @rainbowhill How to writ kanji http://bit.ly/VXtg5


8/11

How to write kanji http://bit.ly/VXtg5

This tactile and auditory sense of the character is something that is missed if you're not writing http://bit.ly/1GliLg (ht @theillien)

How to write kanji http://ow.ly/z2oO

RT @nihongoup A very interesting discussion about #kanji stroke order and cursive/semi-cursive scripts is going on at http://bit.ly/4qtRaH

A very interesting discussion about #kanji stroke order and cursive/semi-cursive scripts is going on at http://bit.ly/4qtRaH #japanese

RT @NihongoUp How to write kanji http://bit.ly/1GliLg #japanese #kanji #education

rainbowhill 5 months ago

From Twitter via BackType

Sloganmaker 5 months ago


Jamaipanese 5 months ago


nihongoup 5 months ago


seifip 5 months ago


greyrondo 6 months ago




9/11

RT @rainbowhill: RT @NihongoUp How to write kanji http://bit.ly/1GliLg


10/11

blog comments powered by DISQUS

Search

Categories

Design Flora & Fauna Food & Drink History Interviews Language Lifestyle Media

NihongoUp Other Technology

Facebook




11/11

Popular

10 Beautiful Japanese Fonts

Tomoe Gozen: The female samurai Interview: Brett Fyfield Godzilla: Its serious business Japanese Color Names (Cheat Sheet) Japanese Body Parts (Cheat Sheet) Transitivity in Japanese grammar 10 beautiful tilt-shift photos of Japan Recipe: Mushroom miso soup Loved one-and-loved one rocks

Nihongoup on Facebook

Like

327 people like Nihongoup

Karlos Todd Egor Stephen

Asta Harel Ollie Aminat


Documents

Http Nihongoup