I just start memorizing kanji last friday and i can read 180 kanji now my problem is i can read those 180 when i see them for example in aniki, in this website and some pictures from a conversation in a visual novel but i cant write them will this become a problem for me if i continue doing like this
I'm going to say no. After a while, I found I could spontaneously write many kanji, despite having never practiced them. It's actually kind of amazing, but you get to know them so well that you can just naturally write them. Also, don't forget you're most likely going to use a keyboard, in which case knowing the readings of the characters is really the issue.
Of course, if you want to have anything like "nice" handwriting, then you'll have to practice. My handwriting is horrible in any language, but I really don't care. Thankfully, I'm a fab-a-lous typist.
The only downside to practicing writing is the time it takes. It will help your recall of the characters, but arguably not enough to compensate for the time it takes.
Ultimately, it's up to you, whether having nice handwriting is really worth it to you. Bearing in mind, of course, there's a lot of other places you could be expending the same effort.
Animosophy
Member
Registered: 2013-02-19
Posts: 180
If you're using Anki, aren't you supposed to write the kanji down? There's a shared deck on the website with a large "KanjiStrokeOrder" font for RTK 1+3 and the 2010 joyo kanji. At least that's how I thought you were supposed to go about it. I've got about 40 pages worth of messy kanji collages in front of me. Bad handwriting on closer inspection, but nice to flick through.
It doesn't take long, either. My average answer time is 20.something seconds per card, and I go through about 60 new kanji/day.
Then again I'm on my gap year, and I have no responsibilities.
NightSky
Member
From: Japan
Registered: 2008-04-13
Posts: 302
Let me just add a vote for not bothering to learn to write. Besides half the time the problem isn't being able to remember how to write a single character anyway, its remembering which two characters even made up some word compound.
I completed a Nintendo DS app years ago which including writing up to about 1000 characters, and although I think this was helpful, I never learned any further and I've never written anything since. I've never found this any hindrance for learning to recognise words and for being able to read, so considering the huge time sink it is to learn to do properly I'm not at all convinced its worth it.
I learn to read Kanji as I learn new words within Anki, so for any new word I learn I'll always learn how its written too. I feel like I have very little 'overhead' or extra time being spent on Kanji, they just get absorbed naturally and I'm then able to read them fine or write them on a PC or IPhone with no problems.
For some of my friends that are convinced they need to be able to write all the characters, they are all way behind my own reading ability. And that's because they have separated out the process and try to power through Kanji as a separate thing -- and since its so time consuming and takes a lot of effort to see any benefit at all, they tend to get behind, or end up giving up on writing altogether.
I have a Japanese friend who moved to the UK when she was about 10 or so, and moved back after University. She speaks at native level and can read perfectly too, but her writing is bad since she stopped learning to write when she was so much younger. She doesn't feel the need to get any better at it since she so rarely has to write by hand, and when she does need to (say, when taking notes in a business meeting) she takes all the notes in English. Apparently even if she knows how to write the character, its still faster to just write in English anyway.
So yeah, I suggest you do that.
