japanese handwriting

[bachucapo]

im learning how to write in japanese. the problem is that i´ve never seen japanese handwriting so havent been able to compare it to mine.

i though that someone can write something (for example a japanese101 lesson)
so we all here can write , scan and then post the image to see the diference of our handwriting skills.

ok, thats all. pardon my english (it sucks)

hope to see some answers

ニコラス

[RobertF]

Hello bachucapoさん

You are in good company if have bad handwriting. Many native Japanese have bad handwriting too

But seriously, the way people write in Japan is different from what is taught to foreigners, at least that's been my experience learning Japanese in the United States. I learned how to write hiragana and katakana first, then started to write kanji, but only the "square" kaisho style that's closest to what you see printed in books, but native Japanese are also taught how to write kanji in different styles that sometimes look very different from printed kanji.

The funny thing is that many Japanese say my handwriting is better than they do because my characters are all square. lol

What kind of handwriting do you mean?

In any case, if you want to improve your writing I'd learn the kana first if you haven't already learned those, because you can always write words in hiragana and katakana if you forget the kanji for a word. My sensei made us practice the correct stroke order for each kana and kanji until we could write them from memory in the same way and in the same order. This last part is most important because the order you write the strokes helps you write each word more clearly and helps you learn new kanji words more quickly because the more complicated kanji usually have parts made of kanji you already know how to write in the correct order.

Another thing I was taught when I first began to write hiragana, katakana and even kanji is that they are easier to remember as words than just by themselves.

Hope this helps.

ロバート

[Ulver_684]

im learning how to write in japanese. the problem is that i´ve never seen japanese handwriting so havent been able to compare it to mine.

i though that someone can write something (for example a japanese101 lesson)
so we all here can write , scan and then post the image to see the diference of our handwriting skills.

ok, thats all. pardon my english (it sucks)

hope to see some answers

ニコラス

I'm with you RobertF-san! I want to see JP101 staff and crew Japanese handwriting so we can compare and see everyone's personality.

It been said that your hand writing says alot about you and your character!

[Ulver_684]

im learning how to write in japanese. the problem is that i´ve never seen japanese handwriting so havent been able to compare it to mine.

i though that someone can write something (for example a japanese101 lesson)
so we all here can write , scan and then post the image to see the diference of our handwriting skills.

ok, thats all. pardon my english (it sucks)

hope to see some answers

ニコラス

I'm with you RobertF-san! I want to see JP101 staff and crew Japanese handwriting so we can compare and see everyone's personality.

It's been said that your hand writing says alot about you and your character!

[bachucapo]

maybe its interesting to decide or pick a text so everybody write down the same and compare each other handwriting.

i think a short self introduction is ok to start with something.

はじめまして。わたしわニコラスです。
宜しくおねがいします。

so, here its mine.

i wrote this fast and looks like a 5 year old handwriting if not worse.

[JonB]

at least you can read a 5 year olds writing - I guess it is similar to western capital letter writing. I can't even recognise/read my wife's kana let alone kanji!!

[bachucapo]

hi again, in my last post i forgot the image.



so here it is. is not that bad it sucks.

the idea of the jpod101 staff writing is pretty good.

hope to see more handwritng soon.

ニコラス

[kichigaijin]

at least you can read a 5 year olds writing - I guess it is similar to western capital letter writing. I can't even recognise/read my wife's kana let alone kanji!!

I would think it's more akin to printing versus cursive.
There's a cursive way to draw kanji, which then extends on to hiragana.
I imagine if you can make out the classifier (radical) then it's not so hard to read, but I'm not there yet either.

[Ulver_684]

hi again, in my last post i forgot the image.



so here it is. is not that bad it sucks.

the idea of the jpod101 staff writing is pretty good.

hope to see more handwritng soon.

ニコラス

WOW! Bachucapo-san!

Beautiful writing it really says alot about you!

Your Japanese hand writing it's great and it doesn't look of a five years old.

Keep up that great writing my friend!

[Cielo]

There's a neat book by P.G. O'Neill called A Reader of Handwritten Japanese. It includes copies of letters and notes that the author received from colleagues and friends in Japan who are native speakers and grew up writing in Japanese. There are translations for all of the texts, too, which is unbelievably helpful.

This book is out-of-print, but I found a copy of it at my university's library. If you can find it, it's really helpful for getting used to reading handwritten Japanese.

In case you're interested in improving your own handwritten Japanese, Amazon Japan has many books on the subject. Examples include:

たちまち字がうまくなる本 by 山下晴雨

みるみる字が上手くなる本 by 田中 鳴舟

I haven't tried any of these how-to-improve-handwriting books yet, so I can't tell you how useful they may be.

[jiashen]

Hihi this is my handwriting sample haha. I tried to write a little slower and more conscientiously, but this is about my average standard. And because I'm Chinese, my Kanji is naturally, um... worse than my kana hahaha. You're more familiar with the words see, so it's easier to decipher bad handwriting, or at least that's the case for me.

[Ulver_684]

Hihi this is my handwriting sample haha. I tried to write a little slower and more conscientiously, but this is about my average standard. And because I'm Chinese, my Kanji is naturally, um... worse than my kana hahaha. You're more familiar with the words see, so it's easier to decipher bad handwriting, or at least that's the case for me.

Jiashen-san!

I'm surprise with your Japanese handwriting!

It looks a little messy but on your Chinese handwriting, hope you have it better than that one.

[Inuzuka]

I am learning japanese writing for some years now, I learned it by myself, by the help of some very good websites like the one and only http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html, where you can search see beautiful animated gifs of any jouyou kanji and many more, and my first learning site http://www.kanjistep.com/ and http://japanese.about.com/ try it out, I would recommend it.

Naturally I wrote (and still write) most kanji and kana in squares, but I was surprised, how the japanese write: Often the kana are more smaller than the kanji and they are often nearly unreadable for me, because they are small and often only indicated. It needed some experience and imagination to decipher normal japanese handwriting, especially the kana. In spite of the kana you can have an impression from the kanji in jiashens handwriting photo. But that is normally, look at your own romaji, in my case it doesn´t look like the textbook version nor like the versions, I learned at school - it is something between...

Some kana and some more kanji are slightly diffrent from their schoolbook versions, i. e. そ and 言. Sadly in my own language aren´t any good schoolbooks to learn japanese, I couldn´t find rarely information there about that. Perhaps in english written schoolbooks may be more information available.

Also I still did not found any information about another japanese writing style, which appears to me like a waterfall, from the above to the ground, right to left and very fluently. It is very, very beautiful, but I am often completely unable to read this. I want to learn this, but don´t know, how?

So it may be a good Idea, that all of the japanese staff from JPod101 gives some handwriting samples to us? Not the book versions. It may be a series about differences between used handwriting and printed kana/kanji. Perhaps there are any tips how to learn the beautiful "waterfall"-font also?

[jiashen]

I don't think the people from the podcast actually read these forums actually haha, only the moderators.

I can't speak for Japanese handwriting, but as far as Chinese goes, if you use my 'neatness' as a standard, there are plenty of people who write worse than me, and at the same time plenty who write much more conscientiously. If you go to a Chinese medical hall, the people who write the ingredients lists are almost writing calligraphy (i.e. very quick and very rough). Ultimately it's all for communication; as long as your reader understands your writing, it's all good.

[Inuzuka]

sorry again for my bad english. But that´s what I tried to say. But I hope, you don´t received a false impression, jiashen. I like the way, how the japanese (and chinese, too) write the characters. That´s what I want to be able to read and write on my own, not the textbook style.