My problem is not so much stroke order as it is stroke direction. RTK gives you the basic order, but a lot of the time I'm not sure which way they're supposed to go! He gives an explanation of the general method (giving compass directions, 'northwest to southeast, west to east', something like that?), but it didn't make much sense to me. Does that matter as well, besides to Nintendo DS kanji games?

edit: I searched and found some relevant posts on direction...but I'm still not sure how important it is.

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=1374
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=1414
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=10360#p10360

Last edited by stshores24 (2008 July 11, 6:15 pm)

Stroke order is very important if you are using traditional writing pens or brushes, since the thickness of the line will be affected by the place you start it...also for reading and writing cursive.  So I guess, if you want your kanji to look nice, or at least have a consistent style, it might be more important to you at some point.  I'm not saying to memorize it, I'm just saying, that's why it's taught...

stshores24 wrote:

My problem is not so much stroke order as it is stroke direction.

Stroke direction is always obvious by looking at the kanji once you know the rules. If it helps, look up a fully-animated diagram that shows each stroke being drawn from beginning to end. Generally, a stroke is always drawn left to right. The only exception is downward curves shaped like katakana no (ノ), and slanted strokes like the top stroke (but not the other strokes) of kanji such as 手, which could be argued to just be a very compressed ノ stroke. If you study the way 手 and similar kanji are written, you will very easily be able to tell whether a horizontal line is written left-to-right or right-to-left.

By contrast, stroke order, unfortunately, is not always obvious by looking at the kanji... but if you know the order of enough kanji, your guess will probably always be good enough whether or not it's actually correct. You must know the correct order to produce good calligraphy, but otherwise it's not so important as long as you have a good feel for stroke order. (But your writing will look like crap if you go by shapes alone and neglect order entirely.)

In fact, Chinese and Japanese don't even follow the same stroke order rules, although unless you're doing calligraphy I'm sure nobody really cares whether you use Chinese order with Japanese or vice versa. For instance, in Chinese, the vertical line of 王 is the third stroke; in Japanese, it's the second.

stshores24 wrote:

Is cursive writing in Roman letters as intimidating for Japanese students as it was for me back in 8th grade?

Wow, you didn't learn cursive until 8th grade? I think it was 4th grade where we were forced to use it all the time, and I've never used it since then except to sign my name. It probably would have been a good idea for me to write my notes in school in cursive, though, just so I could keep up better with what was being said.

- Kef

alantin wrote:

lol.
Something like 4th grade for me too.
I used it all the time until a couple of years ago when I couldn't read my notes anymore..

Third grade for me. They forced us to use it, then complained when they couldn't read it. They cared less by fifth grade, but I had this music teacher who wouldn't accept anything except cursive. To this day I wonder how he knew what the hell I was writing.

Last edited by alyks (2008 July 11, 8:13 pm)

furrykef wrote:

stshores24 wrote:

My problem is not so much stroke order as it is stroke direction.

Stroke direction is always obvious by looking at the kanji once you know the rules. If it helps, look up a fully-animated diagram that shows each stroke being drawn from beginning to end. Generally, a stroke is always drawn left to right. The only exception is downward curves shaped like katakana no (ノ), and slanted strokes like the top stroke (but not the other strokes) of kanji such as 手, which could be argued to just be a very compressed ノ stroke. If you study the way 手 and similar kanji are written, you will very easily be able to tell whether a horizontal line is written left-to-right or right-to-left.

OK. I found a few sites while searching through the forums that give animated stroke order/direction diagrams, so if I have a kanji that just doesn't make sense to me, I will reference those sites. I guess I'm kind of a perfectionist in that I want it to look RIGHT. Unfortunately, I'm usually underwhelmed by my results, but one of my friends (a native Japanese who is a teacher there) said that my kanji writing is better than all of his junior high school students. So I must be doing something right...

My suggestion is to take a calligraphy class if you have one available.  I've been doing it for 2 years in Japan, and you learn stroke order REAL fast.  It's fun, characters really start to come alive.  As I've progressed, I've found it interesting how stroke order will change in the more cursive forms.

I wouldn't be entirely sure about that. I mean, some might think that learning kanji is a little excessive for the average student who just wants to be able to have a conversation. I don't think I need to finish off the counterargument here

~J, who is for the record not planning on taking calligraphy in the immediate future but may have to reconsider

It seems like when you try to look up a kanji in Windows IME's handwriting tool, it cares more about the stroke order than the actual shape.  You can get the stroke order right but have your input picture look utterly mucked up, and it will find the right kanji.  Or you can input the kanji looking perfect, but do it in the wrong order, and the tool will spit out a bunch of totally wrong kanji...

At least that's my experience so far