Hi!

I'm making steady progress with learning the kanji (I'm at number 440 ), but when writing them it takes me a long time, up to 20 seconds for a lot of them.

So my question is, what is the average time to write a kanji?

I've been trying to find this out, but with no results

Thanks and cheers!

I think that it'll increase naturally the more you write them. So assuming you write your characters on paper when you review them, your speed will grow naturally as the days pass.
Looking back at my "heisig review booklet", I can clearly tell that the first couple of hundred were written very carefully, and slowly and neatly etc, but as I flip through the pages I can clearly notice them getting more chaotic but fluent, and now I can write a kanji pretty damn fast, depending alot on the complexity of a character. I guess about a second maybe, for medium complexity kanji?
But here is one piece of advice: take your time when writing out the characters. Don't rush through your reviews. Your writing will suffer. Also take a look at this book: http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Write-Chines...0300057717
It's not really about learning kanji (or hanzi in this case), it's about learning to write properly. Don't necesarily do the entire book, just read the first dozen pages or something, to get an idea what you should be doing. Heisig is REALLY vague on different types of strokes, endings, etc. You can find the book through various, less legal channels if that floats your boat.

Good luck on your kanji journey!

Jorre

Thanks!

The book seem interesting. I'll take a look

Xosen Wrote:Hi!

I'm making steady progress with learning the kanji (I'm at number 440 ), but when writing them it takes me a long time, up to 20 seconds for a lot of them.

So my question is, what is the average time to write a kanji?

I've been trying to find this out, but with no results

Thanks and cheers!

Few take me more than a couple of seconds. Most tend to flow pretty well if you do them in a sensible stroke order. 20 seconds either sounds like you're trying too hard to be neat (think of how fast you write a typical english word) or you just don't know the kanji well and are trying to remember strokes (which will get better with reviews).

Some kanji like the "attack" kanji (襲) (second most strokes in the book, with 22 strokes), do take me more time. quickly and inaccurately timed: 5 to 7 seconds. 俵
(bag) takes me one and a half seconds, for ten strokes.

Thank you all! That was useful info

kanji drill books for japanese kids are great for getting your speed up and making sure you are writing correctly.

Most of the time I'm just scribbling something very fast, so that It resembles the kanji.

I don't know why It works, but it does.
Maybe it's all in the imagination...as the muscle memory takes a very long time to develop for a kanji.

like -5 seconds/character! lolz


edit: oh, forgot this aren't youtube comments... xD

Get in the habit of writing down every single word you encounter that you don't yet know and your kanji speed will go through the roof. Depending on the difficulty of the content, after two hours of reading I can easily end up with a list of 100 words or so, which begins to add up to some serious repetition (and speed). I doubt any kanji takes me more than 3 seconds to recall and write these days.

I took my sweet time writing kanji during RTK, because during the writing of each stroke was when I was really working the stories into my mind alongside the muscle memory. Now it's very quick.

@jorrebenst - 1-1.5 seconds? Video or it didn't happen.

nest0r Wrote:@jorrebenst - 1-1.5 seconds? Video or it didn't happen.

That's not 1 - 1.5, it's definitely 1.5. Rounded down, lol.

It sounds quickly, but a second is more than you think. I timed it with a chronometer.

jorrebenst Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:@jorrebenst - 1-1.5 seconds? Video or it didn't happen.

That's not 1 - 1.5, it's definitely 1.5. Rounded down, lol.

It sounds quickly, but a second is more than you think. I timed it with a chronometer.

Don't listen to this person, OP! If anyone says it takes less than 2 seconds to write a kanji besides 一, they're lying! I've never seen such extravagant exaggeration before. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist.

If you've got to lift your pen 15 times for one character, it's practically impossible to write fluidly. That's why pretty much all natives use shorthand. If you want to be able to write as fast as you do in English, that's what you'll have to learn, but you should master the proper stroke order first. It's early days yet, so don't worry too much about it.

nest0r Wrote:

jorrebenst Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:@jorrebenst - 1-1.5 seconds? Video or it didn't happen.

That's not 1 - 1.5, it's definitely 1.5. Rounded down, lol.

It sounds quickly, but a second is more than you think. I timed it with a chronometer.

Don't listen to this person, OP! If anyone says it takes less than 2 seconds to write a kanji besides 一, they're lying! I've never seen such extravagant exaggeration before. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist.

I've got one: 二! Fantastic exaggeration on your part this time, lol. There are a lot of kanji with less than 6 strokes, and unless you are really writing neatly or are relatively new to kanji, how can you spend more time on those than 2 seconds? Have you ever actually timed two seconds?
Hehe. I'm not making any claims of perfect neatness by the way, but when I'm in a rush to review my cards, I tend to write really fast...

jorrebenst Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:

jorrebenst Wrote:That's not 1 - 1.5, it's definitely 1.5. Rounded down, lol.

It sounds quickly, but a second is more than you think. I timed it with a chronometer.

Don't listen to this person, OP! If anyone says it takes less than 2 seconds to write a kanji besides 一, they're lying! I've never seen such extravagant exaggeration before. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist.

I've got one: 二! Fantastic exaggeration on your part this time, lol. There are a lot of kanji with less than 6 strokes, and unless you are really writing neatly or are relatively new to kanji, how can you spend more time on those than 2 seconds? Have you ever actually timed two seconds?
Hehe. I'm not making any claims of perfect neatness by the way, but when I'm in a rush to review my cards, I tend to write really fast...

Who said anything about more than 2 seconds? First you went from 1 second, then you said 1.5, then you said 1.5 rounded down, then you said 'but not perfectly neat'. Get your story straight! If you want to tell yourself that some illegible scribble of a few strokes is something you wrote in under 2 seconds, that's fine, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let you come in here and tell everyone you can write a 10 stroke kanji in under 1.5 seconds and leave it at that. 2 seconds is very fast, be proud if you can write a multi-stroke kanji in 2 seconds, okay?? Based on your exaggerations, I'm going to assume it takes you about 5 seconds to write a 10-stroke kanji you can actually read later. You're 100 years too early to be trying to pull the wool over nest0r's eyes.

Haha, you sir, are wonderful. First prize!
I could just as well be talking to a wall, lol. Which would be a funny sight, anyway.

Enjoy life

Jorre