Going through RTK, Heisig says that the cornucopia has two strokes, not three. But on Yamasa, everything with it always has three. In particular, I was looking at income, #1510, and apart from having more strokes than Heisig says, it is in a completely different order. This is a link to it: http://yamasa.cc/members/ocjs/kanjidic.n...enDocument

Who's right? Heisig or Yamasa?

I recall a few discussions on this. Try this one: income

Yeah, I figured someone must have already noticed.

Something that I gleaned from reading through that discussion linked to above: It seems that there really is no EXACT, UNBENDABLE way to write the Kanji, and that different authorities side with different writing traditions. This is interesting to me. I had heretofore thought that kanji writing had to be right; that the stroke order could not vary even one bit, else the Japanese would have a hard time understanding what is being written (which doesn't really make sense to me, given that the final forms would look the same... Any truth to this?).'

It's nice to think that I don't have to worry as much now as I did in the past.

Thanks for the link!

[Katsuo]

MethodGT Wrote:the stroke order could not vary even one bit, else the Japanese would have a hard time understanding what is being written (which doesn't really make sense to me, given that the final forms would look the same... Any truth to this?)

If we carefully and precisely copy the strokes of a printed kanji one-by-one, then it will be readable regardless of the stroke order chosen.

But in normal handwriting greater speed is required, and it becomes natural to join some strokes together and also to change the angle of many strokes so that they more easily flow to the next.

Using a different stroke order to standard would make these changes inconsistent and reduce legibility.

Sorry, but I don't buy that reasoning.

The only usefulness I've found to keeping the stroke order, is for tracing the kanji on the air with your finger, as a way to tell your friend to which one you are referring.

For the most part, I enjoy to write kanji in unusual stroke orders just to see my pals look to me as if I just killed a sacred cow.

DrJones Wrote:Sorry, but I don't buy that reasoning.

The only usefulness I've found to keeping the stroke order, is for tracing the kanji on the air with your finger, as a way to tell your friend to which one you are referring.

I guess you aren't planning on learning to write or read any calligraphy styles then, or anyones normal handwriting for that matter...

MethodGT Wrote:Going through RTK, Heisig says that the cornucopia has two strokes, not three. But on Yamasa, everything with it always has three. In particular, I was looking at income, #1510, and apart from having more strokes than Heisig says, it is in a completely different order. This is a link to it: http://yamasa.cc/members/ocjs/kanjidic.n...enDocument

Who's right? Heisig or Yamasa?

As fabrice doesn't seem to be interested in having a study page for each primitive (skipped in reviews but useful for notes and stories), or a forum thread equivalent for each kanji and primitive, people tend to post notes on primitives in the study page for the first kanji it apprears in, in this case see
http://kanji.koohii.com/study/index.php?framenum=1508 for my notes and links to earlier forum threads. Cornucopia is a particularly weird one though...

Also, out of interest, I'm guessing it's a common word in the US due to the Thanksgiving associations? Not so much here...

No, not really. Cornucopia is a rare word, rarely used. It's usually used to indicate a wide variety or large amount of something, like "A cornucopia of ____." But the actual cornucopia object only shows up in a lot of cheesy Thanksgiving decorations... it's still an odd word to use as a keyword.

And yes, stroke order DOES matter. I've had several Japanese teachers (and my Chinese calligraphy teacher) recognize bad stroke order just from looking at the finished product. Bad stroke order can make for unreadable characters if you're in a hurry. Proper stroke order will make your characters readable even if you rush a bit.

Heisig doesn't always get stroke order right, but he does a good job of getting close. I haven't really checked other sources for the stroke order for cornucopia, but it may be one of the few where stroke order isn't as critical... but I'm sure there's an authority out there somewhere (especially in the calligraphy world) who would say something definitive.

Thanks for the replies everyone. So I guess my epiphany that stroke order isn't important might have been too quick a realization on my part. I see Katsuo's and Rich's point about quick writing. I guess they would definitely be right, because it seems like rows of horizontal lines are always connected in quick writing (kind of like a bunch of Z's on top of each other), and probably other things too. And Japanese readers would be used to seeing only one way of quick writing. If the stroke order was changed, there would be connector lines all over the place, and legibility would go way down.

About the word 'cornucopia', rich_f is right. It is a seldom used word, even though there are pictures of it everywhere during Thanksgiving.

Cangy, I didn't see your story for shout until now. I think if I would have seen it, I wouldn't have started this topic.

cangy Wrote:I guess you aren't planning on learning to write or read any calligraphy styles then, or anyones normal handwriting for that matter...

Most of times you have to write quickly, you are taking notes for your personal use. Same with other people. The only common exceptions are medical notes (that you don't have to understand) and post-it notices that can be understood from context.

Instead of rote memorizing the stroke order for +2000 kanji, I just studied the basic rules that apply for most of the kanji. There are some exceptions, but the end result is not so different to care about it, in my experience, and most text you read nowadays isn't even hand-written. I just prefer to focus my study on things that are worth more.

About the Cornucopia thing. It's a mythical horn, also called Horn of abundance. You could take delicious food from it and it never emptied. You can see one in Disney's Fantasia. Heisig choose that word because people on the US use it as a symbol for Thanksgiving but, because no one else celebrates Thanksgiving, it's a very bad choice of keyword for us Europeans. If it's for some use to you, I've given it the alternate meanings "aircraft" and "4" on my stories (I recall that this 'cornucopia' primitive was really assigned to two primitives that were close to each other, that's why I assign a different tag to each one).

Yeah, in the US, I've heard a cornucopia referred to as a "Horn of Plenty," and that's the symbolism it implies for Thanksgiving. A horn overflowing with the products of a rich fall harvest.