**Edit added one additional character (utmost)

Hi, I'm doing research on handwriting, and would like to reference the RTK method and its results. Your participation would be greatly appreciated and provide a great help.

I would like to see samples of hand written kanji and your permission to use them in a paper. No money will be made from this and all submissions will be anonymous.

I would like a photo of your hand written version of the following keywords:

child
market
hand
next
eternity　
rank
beans
becoming/similar
duty　
someone
thing
benefit　
prize　
utmost
hold　
emotion　
consummate　
rank
revise　
luxuriant　

Please use the standard form of characters (楷書kaisho) as used in printed text and not 草書(sousho)　or 行書(gyousho).
Please write these from memory and refrain from looking them up.
If you do not know the character for the keyword please write the ones you know.
You do not have to have completed the whole book to participate.
Please write on plain white paper with a blue or black pen.
Please do not use a pencil or sharp pencil.
Please do not use a 筆 or brush.
Please do not use graph paper.
Please make characters larger than 1cm x 1cm in size.
Please write 5 characters per line. For characters that you don't know please leave a blank space.
Please write the characters with the same care you would as if you were being examined.

If you post your results on this forum feel free to show off your abilities and add any of your favorite characters however please write these on a separate line clearly separated from the above specified characters. If you wish to remain anonymous please e-mail a photo of your work to:
scrt.squirrel(at)gmail(dot)com

Your co-operation is appreciated.

Thank you very much

Kind regards,

acewolk Wrote:Please use the standard form of characters (楷書kaisho) as used in printed text

If you're good at handwriting and your penmanship is as good as native Japanese speakers', your kanji look different from standard fonts such as 明朝 used in printed text. Are we supposed to mimic the "standard" character shapes that would look strange if written by hand?

"rank" shows up twice in your list. I have drawn the characters, and will scan them at the university tomorrow and post them here.

done. i'll scan and post them tomorrow.
not that we don't enjoy the opportunity to show off our penmanship, or lack thereof, but it would be nice to know what's to be done with our work (what kind of paper is it? what's the institution you're doing this for? who are you? and such) and, if possible, we'd love to read the paper once it's done (specially if it's being written in japanese, which seems likely, you being in japan and all).

i second the question, is "rank" supposed to be there twice?

Done. I will take a photo tonight and post them. I am left handed by the way. Does this have any effect on your research?

I am also interested in more details about your research as dbh2ppa before.

This is also finally to show that troll, I forgot his name, but with the anime avatar.





Top is how I wrote them for your experiment, bottom is how i'll actually write them in an exam given time constraints and what not.

I first wrote convenience/profit instead of benefit realising i haven't even learnt benefit yet. And yes as magamo said you do realise no one writes like printed text.

Does anyone know any good sites for learning the 草書 (cursive) and　行書 (semi-cursive) forms of writing. I dont do much writing but it would be useful to know.

Sorry I should have done a search before asking. There are other threads on the subject.

I'm pretty sure that when the OP says 'printed' here, it refers to the difference between print and cursive, not between printed and handwritten. While it is still true that the handwriting of Japanese adults in everyday writing is closer to the cursive forms, kaisho is a handwritten style, not a font. Try an image search for 楷書 and you'll see what I mean.

To my understanding, it's much like kids learning to write English - they are taught to write kaisho first, then as they write faster they naturally tend towards cursive (or it may be formally taught, I'm not sure).

Started RevTK 27 months ago, didn't try to be too neat. Sorry about the quality of my computer camera:

Here's mine. I got 3 wrong. (don't read if you haven't done yours yet)

thing (all I could think of was a cow and his... thing, which was the story but not the "not" / "knot")

benefit - I drew benevolent instead. Didn't realize benefit is one I haven't gotten to yet (I'm at 1750 and it's 18-hundred and something)

revise - I was thinking "revise your words until you get it just so" instead of "revise your words until you NAIL it"

It's really big from my camera phone. I didn't resize it.

http://imgur.com/cjLtP.jpg

Delina Wrote:I'm pretty sure that when the OP says 'printed' here, it refers to the difference between print and cursive, not between printed and handwritten. While it is still true that the handwriting of Japanese adults in everyday writing is closer to the cursive forms, kaisho is a handwritten style, not a font. Try an image search for 楷書 and you'll see what I mean.

To my understanding, it's much like kids learning to write English - they are taught to write kaisho first, then as they write faster they naturally tend towards cursive (or it may be formally taught, I'm not sure).

楷書 and 楷書体 are two different things. The less technical terms for them are 手書き書体 and 印刷書体 respectively. As you can see from their literal translations, the former is for handwriting (手書き) , and the latter is for printed material (印刷).

I wouldn't have said anything if the OP didn't say he's doing "research," which is supposed to be more serious than just learning kanji. In fact, the difference is so subtle I don't think it's something non-native speakers should be aware of. But reading his post, I thought he might be confusing the two styles. Actually, he said

acewolk Wrote:Please use the standard form of characters (楷書kaisho) as used in printed text

i.e., it technically means "Please use 楷書 as used in 楷書体," which doesn't make sense. Here is the article about 楷書 and 楷書体 on Japanese Wikipedia.

As for your analogy between Latin alphabet penmanship and kanji/kana writing, I can not completely agree with you. I understand that there is certain similarity and that people naturally learn to write more cursively, but I can't say 行書 and 草書 are lazy writing styles. Actually Japanese kids all take calligraphy classes at grade school. They're not taught in Japanese classes just like you don't learn math in English classes. Certainly the classes focus more on calligraphy using traditional writing utensils such as writing brushes, but they do teach what kind of shape is proper and beautiful. And I do think this has a great influence on the way Japanese write kanji by hand.

Do all kids in English speaking countries lean calligraphy in a separate class at school? Do they have to learn how to write beautiful alphabet? If not, I don't think your analogy is valid. Each kanji has meaning, and they're not "alphabet" in the first place.

Thanks for your perspective - as I mentioned it is just my impression. I am not intimately familiar with the Japanese school system, but I got that impression from people who grew up in Japan. I never meant that the other styles were lazy, just more stylized, faster and perhaps efficient. I thought the OP was making a similar analogy with print and cursive, perhaps because they knew that not everybody here is as intimately familiar with the difference between calligraphy styles as you are. I think the analogy is useful for the rest of us, and I don't think it means that we should try to write like a computer font. I'm sure if they are researching handwriting then they know the difference between characters in books and in handwriting.

My experience with learning to write in an English-language school (I'm an American native speaker but also attended schools for Americans outside the US) is that when we first learn to write, we learn 'print' or non-cursive writing. The teachers are initially very strict about form. Later I was formally taught cursive as part of English class, around third grade in public school. Again they were strict about how we formed each letter, and we were forced to turn in assignments in cursive. Later on, we were allowed to use our own style as long as it was (more or less) legible. (My handwriting has always been on the 'less' legible side, so I switched back to print as soon as it was allowed.)

I have not met all kids from all English-speaking countries, so of course I can't vouch for them.

Oh, calligraphy isn't limited to the correct vs. wrong thing. It's more like beautiful vs. ugly. Advanced students learn, say, how to make 純 look "purer" and how to write 真 the way it looks "truth." It's an art/culture class in some sense. Of course I haven't checked every school, so I can't vouch for them.

mine

i am so not used to writing this big, it looks horrid. :/
... we're still waiting on that info from the op though...

Delina Wrote:My experience with learning to write in an English-language school (I'm an American native speaker but also attended schools for Americans outside the US) is that when we first learn to write, we learn 'print' or non-cursive writing. The teachers are initially very strict about form. Later I was formally taught cursive as part of English class, around third grade in public school. Again they were strict about how we formed each letter, and we were forced to turn in assignments in cursive. Later on, we were allowed to use our own style as long as it was (more or less) legible. (My handwriting has always been on the 'less' legible side, so I switched back to print as soon as it was allowed.)

it's similar in costa rica (at least it was when I was in elementary school). first non-cursive, then some bastardization of cursive, with no slant, and no style, basically joined-print-letters, along the lines of d'nealian (oh, how I wish they had made me learn spencerian, or even palmer-style cursive), and then they leave you alone as long as it's mildly legible.

ahh turns out i got some wrong? lol

That's what you get for using heisig keywords

Would you mind explaining to us why we can't attempt a character we haven't learnt yet? I could easily write a new character I haven't ever learnt before by just looking at it, assuming there are no new radicals or anything.

@ Magamo,

Could you provide a "control" sample then? I know, it's almost as silly as asking to provide a Japanese recording in the "pronunciation assessment" thread (unless you provided it in English).

@everyone

I'm wondering where this "research" is heading. Is he going to ask the other forums for samples from students that learned in a "traditional" way? Are native Japanese going to offer analysis? Certainly the next step should be providing a page or paragraph of writing.

Out of interest, for those that have gone beyond RTK, what's been the general (honest) opinion of your handwriting. For some reason, I think the honest opinion of mine would be "Geez, writes like he's in grade school using Kanji no one uses till at least high school".

Nukemarine Wrote:Out of interest, for those that have gone beyond RTK, what's been the general (honest) opinion of your handwriting. For some reason, I think the honest opinion of mine would be "Geez, writes like he's in grade school using Kanji no one uses till at least high school".

You could say a similar thing about my handwriting in my native language using a normal alphabet Its so atrocious that I can't even read it after I write it.

Here's my attempt...

I went to a cultural festival today and had a chance to try my hand at caligraphy. Little 5 year olds writing their name in Kanji beautifully and mine comes out looking like it had been done by a blind 2 year old on crack. Seriously.

The one thing I will say about the traditional way of teaching kanji is at least it makes you're handwriting a bit more legible. Then again I can write kanji nice enough with a pen! The event inspired me to get into calligraphy though, it's really beautiful.

Here's mine:


I just finished RTK1 this week, and for my handwriting...
...compared to my 'regular' western handwriting it probably isn't too bad

@Nukemarine
Sure thing. A control group shouldn't influence other subjects, otherwise his research result would be skewed by possible specimens that tried to mimic mine. So I'll write those kanji after the OP finishes collecting handwriting kanji by RtK members.

liosama Wrote:This is also finally to show that troll, I forgot his name, but with the anime avatar.

えっ？！I'm innocent! (hopefully not me though hehe)

Delina Wrote:My experience with learning to write in an English-language school (I'm an American native speaker but also attended schools for Americans outside the US) is that when we first learn to write, we learn 'print' or non-cursive writing. The teachers are initially very strict about form. Later I was formally taught cursive as part of English class, around third grade in public school.

Hmm, funny, here in The Netherlands we learn writing cursive right from the start, connecting all letters, it actually resembles medieval script, letters like 'b' and 't' look really different. I rembember we had these special writing sheets with like 3 or 4 guide lines on one line to assist writing perfect height and perfect bows, quite strict now I think of it.

here mine

So will we hear anything about this research?

The OP only made one post, so I'm assuming you all got tricked. Now he has samples of your handwriting which can be used for world domination!

Musashi Wrote:Hmm, funny, here in The Netherlands we learn writing cursive right from the start, connecting all letters, it actually resembles medieval script, letters like 'b' and 't' look really different. I rembember we had these special writing sheets with like 3 or 4 guide lines on one line to assist writing perfect height and perfect bows, quite strict now I think of it.

Indeed, stupid system . I dropped it rightaway once we were allowed to use the regular way of writing in the 5th grade or something. The only thing I can write nowadays in cursive is my name, since its in my autograph.

Rekkusu Wrote:Indeed, stupid system . I dropped it rightaway once we were allowed to use the regular way of writing in the 5th grade or something. The only thing I can write nowadays in cursive is my name, since its in my autograph.

I know! I tried it yesterday to see if I can still write like that, but I even couldn't remember how to write certain letters like 'q' or 'x', not to mention it looked butt ugly. Maarjah, nu met kanji weer ff wat anders he