How important is stroke order?

[Toby38]

How much do emphasis do you place on it? I find that often the correct stroke oder is counter-intuitive and actually it seems to be slowing down my progress quite a lot because I have the meaning, the shape, and the pronunciation remembered but not the stroke order, so I can't move on to the next thing.

:

[Toby38]

mmm

[プチクレア]

Unfortuately, rather important... kanjis tend to look "strange" ( unbalanced, lopsided,...) if you don't follow the stroke order. And even though it seems counter-intuitive at first, there's a logic to it, and if you follow it you're much less likely to forget a stroke.

Besides, if you use an electronic dictionary with hand-written kanji recognition, it won't work if you don't use the right stroke order.

[Toby38]

for your reply. I agree that there is often a logic to it, but sometimes, rather often, it breaks its own rules. I have also seen textbooks disagree about which stroke order is correct.

[Psy]

Don't give up. Anyone who has studied kanji to proficiency knows what you're going through. It's a long and tedious road, but once you've hit around 1,000 kanji you'll be so familiar with the patterns that you won't really need to look up stroke order for the majority of what follows.

ganbatte!

[QuackingShoe]

Yeah, the stroke order is actually pretty systematic and I'd have to disagree with you that it breaks down often (or at all). And being intimately familiar with the stroke order helps you identify characters in unfamiliar fonts and handwriting, and in letting your own handwriting be recognizable.
That said, the order getting swapped around a LITTLE isn't necessarily a big deal for the less prominent structures. But getting the bigger things in the wrong order, or drawing any line in the wrong direction (that should really be the hardest mistake to make anyway) is going to make the character look ridiculous.

[kaoskastle]

I've actually noticed that if I'm writing a kanji, and it's consistently looking weird, I've probably got the stroke order incorrect. Once I learn the proper order, the kanji ends up looking more like it should. Not really sure why that is, but hey, whatever works.

[Tinkerbell]

For anyone having trouble with learning stokeorder I really recommend "Let's Learn Kanji" it has an excellent explanation of how strokeorder work and why it's important. One thing is that even thou you can read your own kanji, if the stroke order is wrong, often other people can't. Especially if you're writing in italics.

[Javizy]

Like a lot of kanji related difficulties, Heisig made stroke order easy to learn for me. It's unquestionably important, so do your best to learn it. You should still be able to move ahead with your learning, since you're going to need to review what you've done periodically if you stand any chance of remembering it, and those reviews will be a good chance to see how well you remembered the stroke order.

[hatch_jp]

Stroke orders of kanji in Japan were made by the the Education Ministry of Japan in 1933. The Misistry piblished "The guideline to teach stroke orders of Kanji".
This guide line says that different orders from the guideline are NOT INCORRECT.

On the other hand, however some kanji are the same as Chinese character, the stroke orders are sometimes different between in Japan and in China.

In my opinion, stroke orders is to make kanji easy-writing, speedy and beautiful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_order

[jazzbeans]

Sometimes, when I write in Japanese fairly quickly.. I do the incorrect stroke order but then have difficulty writing quickly in the correct stroke order. I don't know why, but half of the ways kanjis (that I've learnt) are written I find quite hard in their stroke order - and, I think it's my handwriting, but they often come out deformed-looking.

I'm sure eventually I'll get the hang of it and then it'll seem easy. But, did any else have this difficulty at first? Because it seems that everyone really gets along with it, but I don't.

[pensuked]

I find little irregulars in patterns for writing kanji, I got a japanese kanji game and randomly picked kanjis to write to get a gist of the usual stroke orders and tackled new kanji by guessing what the stroke order should be before checking the answer and I get it right most of the time.

What I don't get is why are the stroke order different to the stroke orders in chinese when dealing with the same word e.g: 王 , the chinese stroke order is 2 horizontal , 1 vertical and 1 horizontal again. the japanese stroke order is 1 horizontal , 1 vertical and 2 horizontal.

[Squallman]

Yeah, man. Just learn the correct stroke order. When you first learn the kanji, read the stroke order and then write it a few times to get a feel for it. For me, after learning about 100, the stroke order for all subsequent (except for a few anomalies) became intuitive and easy to predict. If you forsake this relatively small step at this stage in the game, it will take much more time to remedy later down the road.

[gerald_ford]

If you forsake this relatively small step at this stage in the game, it will take much more time to remedy later down the road.

Yeah, I'd have to second that comment. Kanji stroke order can be counter-intuitive at first, but you really should take the time to get the hang of it, otherwise, you develop bad habits that persist later. If there are inconsistencies in how some sources report stroke order, you should find an authoritative source on Japanese Kanji (like the White Rabbit Press cards) and just stick with that until you get the hang of it. If there a inconsistencies with other sources, they're usually minor and can be overlooked once you're comfortable with Kanji.

Point is: establish good habits early.

Best of luck!