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Japanese Cursive? - Hyreia - 2009-03-30 I saw some old Chinese poems on a picture in a Chinese chicken restaurant. Naturally, I knew I wouldn't be able to understand it fully, but like any block of Chinese characters I come across, I have to see what I can recognize. They are very squiggly and absurdly hard to read. I assumed it was only for Chinese art, but then I came across a piece of Japanese art doing the same thing: http://www.kurt-panzer.de/h013.jpg (Source: http://mappingthemarvellous.wordpress.com/2007/09/ ) Unless I'm imagining things, I know it's Japanese because it's by the famous Basho and I can pick out kana here and there in this image. I *think* kana was around back then, so I'm assuming: yes, I can't read this. I assume I'll never have to be able to read this kind of stuff, but I did a little digging and found a website that describes various writing styles: http://www.takase.com/Library/Glossary.htm#KAISHO I've seen the "Tensho" or Seal Script before though. I imagine the best way to figure out how to read that is to just identify the radicals like we do with Heisig primitives... but, I'm rambling. I'll get to my point. My question is, how does one learn how to read stuff like this? How the heck does one recognize kana in this form? It just looks like the scribbling I used to do when I was little. Do they even teach people to write like this in Japanese schools? Do people write informally like this? Would it be near useless to learn how to read stuff like this (but maybe not as extreme)? (And yeah, this is my first post. Hi.) Japanese Cursive? - welldone101 - 2009-03-30 I can read some of those characters simply because I have to decipher my coworkers scribbles and they start to take on a lot of these shapes. (と starts to look more like a straight up and down line, さ just looks like a cross, ら looks like an L with a falling tip, etc.) I would imagine that encountering all sorts of handwriting over the years and knowing what shapes the kana evolved (devolved?) from would give Japanese adults a huge leg up in reading something like that. So while I haven't seen high schoolers study it in Japanese class (at least not the ones I've peaked in on, they were always kanji kanji kanji) I'd bet they pick it up on the way or spend a modicum of time maybe in elementary/junior high at it? (we don't spend much time ourselves learning cursive and we have 52 characters to learn. They'd have 49 as I doubt there's much of a katakana cursive script, or that it's any different than hiragana.) Japanese Cursive? - welldone101 - 2009-03-30 Forgot to mention, kanji look really different when handwritten. I have to constantly get them clarified for me when I encounter them in pen or pencil. I'd suggest after you get through Heisig and know their typeset look, to switch the font on here to handwritten kanji to get a feel for what it's going to look like on paper. Once you know what certain radicals look like handwritten kanji will start to jump out at you from a paper like that. I find it much easier to read the fancied up scripts than the stripped down ones. It's fun to see where there used to be lines that they have since dropped and don't write anymore. Japanese Cursive? - Codexus - 2009-03-30 Full cursive (草書) is really hard to read and I don't think that people use it in daily life (I could be wrong though). Semi-cursive (行書) is however common. Knowing the correct stroke order is crucial to be able to read those. When I first started Japanese I thought that stroke order was silly. And all the justification for it I knew was that somehow Japanese people could tell the difference and that didn't make much sense to me. Then I realized what it's for and since then I take extra care to make sure I learn it right. Japanese Cursive? - welldone101 - 2009-03-30 So I just asked my neighbors to read your picture. Their first reaction was "ooooh muzukashii sou.. zen zen yomenai" and of course I didn't believe them. They always tell me they can't write kanji but they mean other than the 3,000 that the can write. So I started pointing out characters and asking and they identified most of them. I should have remembered more, but the ones I did were starting from the fourth full line in (from the right) it says ishi, then yama, then ??, then ji (from jibun; I thought it kinda looked like niku haha, oops). So they CAN recognize a few, he read straight through about 3 sentences. But he had to guess a couple from context and left out words. Test subjects were all less then 30. Japanese Cursive? - Thunk - 2009-03-31 I have no answers for you, just empathy. I actually logged on tonight, wondering if there would be any posts about reading the handwriting. I have a decorative item covered in handwritten kanji, and it makes me crazy that I can't make out some of it. The comments here are helpful, especially the one about paying attention to the stroke order. For what it's worth, the flaschards I use have both printed and handwritten kanji on them. You can download them, here: http://www.polarcloud.com/kanji I won't put any effort into that though until I'm a well-oiled machine with everything else; kanji, kana, grammar, sentences... And I'll just hope I don't come across it too often. Japanese Cursive? - rich_f - 2009-03-31 It's hard to say how many people can read 行書 or 草書, but I wouldn't worry too much about it being a required skill. If you want to learn how to read those styles, I'd say the best way to do it is to study calligraphy. There are also some excellent reference books which will list stroke order, as well as give examples of 楷書, 行書, and 草書. If you're really interested, I recommend this book: 楷行草筆順・字体字典 第２版 (ISBN: 978-4-385-15049-9) It shows stroke order for all 3 styles (kanji are listed in order of ON-yomi, or kun-yomi if no on-yomi exists), then in a separate section, larger illustrations of the characters are shown, 1 in kaisho, 2 each in gyosho and sousho, to show variations in style. If you don't care so much about stroke order, then this book is fine: 書道三体字典ペン字三体付き (ISBN: 4-8163-3894-2) It does NOT show stroke order. It just shows 1 example each of kaisho, gyosho, and sousho in brush script, and one example of each in penji. Kanji are listed by on-yomi as well. It also has a really neat section which shows the evolution of the hiragana from kanji to gyosho to sousho to hiragana. Neat stuff. (But not very useful.) I have both, because I'm a book hoarder. (I mostly use the first one, tho. It's handy for calligraphy.) If you're interested in calligraphy, I found a couple of really good books, but they're in Japanese. They also require a certain level of skill before trying them. (They say they're for beginners, but they don't mean you. They mean beginners who are Japanese.) はじめての書道かな (ISBN:4-8195-0165-8) This book does a really good job of showing kana styles and how to write kana in calligraphy. It gives a little insight into why/how those pieces look the way they do. It even breaks down some kana bits to show how it all overlaps. Let's just say that when kana gets written in a running style, it turns into something that's difficult to interpret. (But don't mistake this for a beginner book. It's not.) はじめての書道行書 (ISBN:4-8195-0163-1) Same series, but this time with gyosho. I really like this book a lot. Again, requires Japanese knowledge, and some knowledge of calligraphy (again, not *really* for beginners), but the author has a really beautiful calligraphy style. It gives you an idea of how much writing transforms when it goes from kaisho to gyosho. Only around 95 pages, but worth it, IMO. Japanese Cursive? - Hyreia - 2009-03-31 Wow. Great replies, all. I wasn't suspecting such quick and varied responses. Continue discussing if you want, I'll edit this and give a more deserving reply tomorrow (read: today, later in the afternoon). Edit: Thanks, welldone101. I'll probably do what you suggested and switch the typeset look later for a while. But since I'm not remotely interested in art history of any language, I think I'll be okay just looking at some casual handwriting. And thank you, rich_f, I'll consider taking a look at those books (sometime... somewhere... somehow..). I have a lot of books on my to-read list for Japanese, and considering how unimportant this is for now (welldone101 is right: honestly, how much cursive Japanese am I going to read or need to produce?), so calligraphy does go to the very bottom of that stack, BUT, it is on the stack. Japanese Cursive? - liosama - 2009-03-31 I think the same story goes with English writing. Some people I've worked with (even me when im really lazy writing notes in lectures) scribble. You make out the word by the word shape and context as others have mentioned. In essence you get a feel for the style in which characters are written, and this is a cyclic effect because to get a feel for the style you have to be able to write the character perfectly (stroke order wise and all those other nuances) so that when you do write it fast, faster you get muddled mess which is what i see in that picture So for example in the word 'hello' i would write like Japanese Cursive? - EnjukuBlack - 2009-03-31 It would only be worth your time studying this extreme 'grasshand' form of writing if you have an interest in history or art. At the same time, however, Japanese handwriting can get very 'cursivy' (yes, I just invented that word). And if you plan on spending any time in Japan, it would be helpful to at least familiarize yourself with it. Good thing for us students of Japanese, cursive handwriting tends to follow standardized forms (i.e., there are acceptable and unacceptable ways of sloppifying your characters). Once you start to learn the more common patterns, reading handwriting isn't nearly as hard as it might seem at first. Much easier than the linked poem, which I would say few modern Japanese people could read.