Hello everyone, just had a question about the bamboo primitive when it sits at the top of a character as in 笑 or 答. I've been told that the 6th stroke, the one that points down under the horizontal stroke of the second part of the bamboo primitive, is supposed to go in this direction: / rather than in this direction: \ which it does in the first group of three strokes.

My school teaches us to write it with other direction just like in the Minna no Nihongo Kanji textbook. If I were to write 答 as it is in RTK and the way font on my computer displays it, my japanese prof would dock marks.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining this correctly, but does anyone know what's going on here with that difference? 答えてくれ?

Thanks!

Here's a link to an image of what I'm talking about. It's 答 written in the font GungSeo Regular.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/283yighrprrevjc/solution.png

taishou Wrote:答えてくれ?

Witty indeed...

If it helps, I've never seen it written as you describe, and every dictionary (even chinese (the people and the dictionaries)) I checked shows it going the same way as the third stroke, like RTK.

In 漢検 it is written as in the link you provided. On the other hand, in 漢字源 it is written the other way. The characters 漢検 are written they way they're supposed to look when handwritten, and the characters in 漢字源 are written in printed forms.

I guess it's just the difference between handwritten and printed characters, but maybe there is something else to it as well. But at least my short research agrees with the opinion of your Japanese professor.

I was recently wondering about this myself.

Not that it has much authority, but KanjiVG has it going the "handwritten way":

http://kanji.sljfaq.org/kanjivg/makepng-...88&s=3&l=3

Thanks everyone!

So, it's just a handwriting vs typeface difference. Like it is for 冷 which has a different form when handwritten, using マ as the bottom radical. That was a little confusing when learning it from the Minna no Nihongo 2 Kanji text. They have the it written both ways, but with no explaination. On one page of the lesson it's the typeface version for the example sentences and the other page it has the stroke order for the handwritten way.
After having another look, MNN2 has does the same thing for 答.

They really could have explained it better, but I suppose, having been published in 2001, they didn't really predict the death of the art of handwriting so soon!