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Yeah, I kind of have a question about writing by hand… I can read words whose kanji I know just fine and if I were to type them on a computer I’d be able to tell whether I got the right kanji or not with ease, but if you asked me to write the word in kanji out from memory then I wouldn’t be able to do it (at least that’s the case with most words, I can write some more common ones, though).
So my question is – do you think it’s acceptable to leave it as it it, just focus on learning the language itself and not worry about writing, or is it going to put me at a disadventage later on? Or maybe the writing will come naturally as I learn more and read more? 8U
I would say that it will leave you at a disadvantage later on. If you don’t know how to write the kanji, it will be hard to tell them apart once you know enough. Try imagining not being able to write English by hand? Wouldn’t that be a disadvantage?
You could get by with not knowing how to write kanji since most things are written by computer, but I would say it is a disadvantage, but if it is worth the effort is something that you will have to decide yourself ^^
I can’t see my self knowing Japanese, but not being able to write it by hand, so while going through RTK I have decided to write each kanji at least 5 times, which I can see paying off when it comes to memorization as well :D
Writing won’t come more naturally if you wait. The more kanji you know the easier it will be to confuse things with each other :P> If you don’t know how to write the kanji, it will be hard to tell them apart once you know enough.
I will have to disagree with you there
You are the more experienced of us, so you will know it better than me, but I personally think that when you know how to write the kanji, it is easier to imagine the exact form of the kanji, which sometimes might help you telling 2 almost exact kanji apart. But the real question is if it is worth the time to be learning the stroke order ^^
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This reply was modified 13 years ago by
マーク・ウェーバー.
Not being able to write English by hand wouldn’t be a disadvantage if you don’t live in a country where English is a main language. Unless irmoony has to handwrite Japanese because she either lives in Japan or has to do college/university assignments with handwritten kanji I doubt there’s any real benefit. Just learn the kanji first, then if you go to Japan take a writing class.
and being able to picture the kanji in your head will come in time, I couldn’t picture hiragana or katakana very well in my head at first, despite being able to identify them when already written down somewhere.
Knowing stroke order and count is useful (sometimes necessary) for looking up kanji in dictionaries (both electronic and paper) when you don’t know the reading.
That much I know, I’ve done RtK :p
Personally, I rather like writing kanji. I can write a sentence on a piece of paper, then immediately look back at it and go “hey, I just wrote that. Wow” =)
Let me ask you to clarify: do you mean that you can’t write the kanji just as is, on their own, or do you mean you can’t remember which kanji go in which words? I’m assuming it’s the latter, because if you’ve done RTK then you know how to write kanji (otherwise you haven’t really done RTK). I did RTK too, and while the actual writing of kanji is a piece of cake, remembering how a word is written in kanji trips me up much more than I’d like :( It can be REALLY frustrating some times :( I do Anki reviews every day, and I can generally read words if I see them but I can never seem to remember the kanji (oh how ironic). I can go kanji -> pronunciation/meaning reasonably well, but I can’t go pronunciation -> kanji that well :/ (Obviously the more the common the word, the easier its kanji is to remember, though [and by "common" I mean "how often I've seen them outside of Anki"]).
Writing can do a lot of good. It can help you solidify your understanding of the kanji and it can help you retain the kanji in your memory. I seem to remember how a kanji is broken down more thoroughly when Ive written it out where as a lot of kanji I can recognise but I couldn’t reproduce it on the spot because I’m, only used to seeing the overall image. If you’re doing that visually thats probably fine but I’d still say writing is better.
If you haven’t written at all ,but you’re through a LOT of kanji I wouldn’t worry too much about it, but if you’re not that far in still, definitely give it a go. It doesn’t add that much work and you can learn how to write them out very quickly.
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This reply was modified 13 years ago by
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