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I came to Textfugu from Tofugu after completing the Hiragana section. I found the course amazing and felt comfortable with Hiragana in a few days. But to quote the site:
No Writing: “WHAT? NO WRITING!?” you scream. I know what you’re thinking. But, think about it for a moment. When’s the last time you actually wrote something by hand? Probably the last time you had to sign your name on a receipt at a restaurant. The need to write by hand is going down. Most of your written communication comes in the form of typing. Learning to read can be done very quickly and is very useful. Learning to write doubles or triples how long it takes to learn hiragana, with very little real-life benefit. It will be important to learn eventually, but for now you have more important fish to fry.
Textfugu includes writing. Which came first or is it now the important time to learn to write?
I think Koichi’s opposition is mostly to the standard practice in Japan of hours of rote copying, but I do kinda think he takes it a bit too far.
There is some logic, though – in Japan, aside from students learning in schools, writing on phones and computers has increasingly become the norm. In fact, the most recent update to the Joyo Kanji (the list of 2000-and-change kanji defined by the government as all the kanji that may be used in official documents and newspapers and whatnot) took the opportunity to add a bunch of kanji for which the words are in common use, but the characters are just plain too fiddly or complex to write by hand. Like 熊 (くま).
My take: if you enjoy the writing of things, go ahead and learn how to write them. You may need to study the stroke orders (and the ways some characters change when handwritten) from other sources, though.
I think I will learn to write Hiragana and Katakana as it’s useful aid to learning. I’ve been using a keyboard for 99% of the written word for 20+ years and avoid pen and paper wherever possible, mostly because I can’t read my own handwriting!
I just do all the writing exercises with a keyboard. Other than looking cool being able to hand write Japanese is not something I need. You could argue learning to draw it helps you memories the kanji but I feel like you can spend your time better studying grammar.
I’m using the keyboard. I’m getting pretty quick at typing hiragana and learnt a shortcut to switch keyboards which is a massive help. I really struggled with remembering and pronouncing じゃありません until I started typing it repeatedly. It was a huge help with my pronunciation and I don’t think I could have done that writing on paper because I can type as fast as I write.
I’m getting pretty quick at typing hiragana and learnt a shortcut to switch keyboards which is a massive help.
Alt+Shift is pretty standard for most IMEs. =)
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