Support NeoGAF

[zoku88]

Ok, this has been bothering me for a while, I've even asked some of the guys in lab about it..

whats the difference between 大きい　and　大きな

as in

大きい声　and 大きな声

 

[RevenantKioku]

Ok, this has been bothering me for a while, I've even asked some of the guys in lab about it..

whats the difference between 大きい　and　大きな

as in

大きい声　and 大きな声

Looking up in my Japanese dictionary, 大きな’s definition references 大きい so I'm guessing it's just some kind of poetic liberty being taken? 小さな does the same thing. I remember asking my teacher in college and her answer was vague to the point of assuming she has no idea either.
I did, although, learn that BIG is a な adjective thanks to Wendy's (as in BIGなバーガ&#12540.

 

[Zoe]

I did, although, learn that BIG is a な adjective thanks to Wendy's (as in BIGなバーガ&#12540.

Well... any adjective that doesn't end in い is going to be a な adjective...

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

Question: How effective is something like Rosetta Stone for learning Japanese? I've tried to several times to learn some of the language through books, but it just isn't working for me. I've started to look for some software, and I'm really interested in Rosetta Stone.

Honestly, I tried all kinds of stuff for years, and in the end nothing worked better than an intensive university course with good old Minna no Nihongo. I learned more in my first three months with that than all the stuff I'd tried before, including having lived there for a year while taking courses. I think it really is the most sensible and battle-tested out of all of them.

There are lots of programs and cute tricks but at the end of the day, you just have to sit down and spend a couple of years slogging through it, 5-6 days a week 2-3 hours a day. You'll be surprised at how quickly you'll improve at that rate, and how quickly you'll slide at anything less. If you really really want it, you'll manage to get through it.

 

[KTallguy]

1. 小さい部屋

2. 小さな部屋

I think that there is some nuanced difference, but I don't remember exactly what it is.
Something like this:

1. This is a small room.

2. This room is small. (slight bit more emphasis?)

 

[Masked Man]

Re: 〜いVS〜な,

I was told by my Japanese professor (native speaker) that she felt that 〜い in the case of such adjectives as 大きい was a bit more formal / proper, whereas the 〜な version was a bit more informal / colloquial. But perhaps that's just her interpretation.

 

[Jake.]

preface: i have zero interest in anime (all i've seen is akira) or videogames (haven't played on in years).


so, i've decided to study japanese again. i have now been to japan twice, once for two weeks and once for almost four months and it made me realise how much i have actually forgotten.


i studied for a year in high school and i also did a year and a half of 2hr night classes ran by a university once a week. the night classes were great but near the end i was so tired from work that i just didn't absorb anything. i easily passed the first year but i failed the second, mainly due to a lack of effort on my part.

i am now almost 23 and have forgotten almost everything. once upon a time i was slightly better than JLPT4 in speaking/listening which i realise is hardly anything but it is still miles ahead of where i am at the moment. to be honest i probably lost interest but after coming back from japan in may it has totally re-energized me in a way.

i can still read/write kana, but i have basically forgotten 90% of the vocab and how to actually speak.

at this stage, i am looking at going to university (bachelor of international studies) next year and doing japanese as my minor. however, in the mean time i want to start by myself.

i have gotten pimsleur which i feel is a great help, however is it worth looking into rosetta stone?

i also got anki although i am pretty confused how to use it, even after reading the FAQ.

what books or texts would you recommend? at the moment all i have is a japanese/english dictionary and 'japanese for busy people' volume 1 and 2 that was required for my night classes.

realistically, how many years would it take to be near JLPT1? i was presuming 3-5 years but i know i am probably way off.

i realise this is a long post but any help/advice would be appreciated.

 

[Zoe]

at this stage, i am looking at going to university (bachelor of international studies) next year and doing japanese as my minor. however, in the mean time i want to start by myself.

Review the textbooks that would be used at the university you're looking at. Because you already have prior knowledge of the language, they are probably going to make you take a placement test. That will either get you into one of the later courses or even an accelerated course, but the danger with that is you may not know everything that was taught in the previous courses even if you skills are technically on par with the rest of the class.

 

[O.DOGG]

This is a bit hard for me. Learning Japanese has been a kind of a dream of mine for the past two years or so. I decided to get accepted into a university with a solid Japanese program. I got my degree while studying abroad so I lost a year jumping through hoops to get the necessary paperwork to be allowed to even take an exam here. Took the exam, did great. And I got the results today that due to the limited number of students allowed for this major, I couldn't get in because of a low grade I got back in high school some 12 years ago. That's how things go in my country.
Anyway, I still want to learn Japanese. I watch a lot of anime and Japanese movies but that's about all the exposure I can get here. Do you guys think it is possible to learn by oneself, without a teacher? If so, how would I start? The original post left me with the impression that one has to have some basic knowledge of Japanese before they can start studying.

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

what books or texts would you recommend? at the moment all i have is a japanese/english dictionary and 'japanese for busy people' volume 1 and 2 that was required for my night classes.

For where you're at, as I said above, I found Minna No Nihongo to be the best beginner program; it's not cheap but it's the one that's used in Japan to teach foreigners Japanese, and best of all it's geared towards the JLPT. 220 kanji in the first year though, be ready for that. That's nearly one a day.

I also tried Nakama, which is okay but less sensibly laid out, and Japanese for Busy People which is pretty easy and well suited for self study, but maybe not as good overall. I went through plenty of other computer programs and "Learn Japanese in 15 minutes a day" type books and they were mostly rubbish. But at your level, technically everything helps. Absorb yourself in it as much as you can every day - there are lots of people who get all the way through school but still can't really speak or understand it at a decent level because basically without realizing it they just studied to pass tests; you need to really see and hear and use everything a couple of hundred times before it sinks in deep and you really make the language "your own." Reading kids' manga is actually not a bad way at all to get started on learning the pattern and flow of the language (any course tends to focus on phrases in isolation).

realistically, how many years would it take to be near JLPT1? i was presuming 3-5 years but i know i am probably way off.

Honestly? 5+. If you go to an intensive full-time language school theoretically you can do it in 2 years, but almost no university programs get you through all 2000 characters and 10 000 words + all the grammar in 4 years. It's just too much. Most university programs are barely enough to get you through level 2. Expect to keep studying after you graduate if you're genuinely serious about getting it all. There's all kinds of stuff that's beyond JLPT 1, even. I'm going to try tackling the kanji ken when I get back over there.

 

[Mik2121]

^^^^^ Then there's the problem I've seen with some people that has JLPT1 and then come to Japan and can't talk ffs. I "only" have JLPT2 but when it comes to actually talking, I have had much more fluent conversations (to the point of people thinking I'm Japanese when talking through the phone, lol...) than some guys that I've meet around that are so cool beause they have JLPT1


If you guys wanna practice some Japanese reading, you could try registering in Mixi and checking some of the 'learn japanese' communities and whatnot. There are also game-related communities so you can join them (you don't need approval) and read what everybody posts.

http://mixi.jp

As of right now you can only register via invitations, but I can give out a couple. I don't know exactly how many people I can invite, so I'll start inviting someone and then that person can go and invite someone else, so if you are interested PM me your email so I can send you the invite.

Whenever you get the invite, if you don't understand the Japanese to get through the menus just put some screencaps so I can guide you through it. It should be pretty easy anyway (I registered back when I had almost no idea about Japanese).



edit - Also, like LiveFromTokyo said, I also studied (in Japan actually) using the Minna no Nihongo. Quite a good and easy to understand book. Other than that, just read and maybe even talk in Japanese, even if you get lots of things wrong. If you guys want, we can have conversations around here in Japanese so everybody can participate and ask people what to use in some sentences, or why did someone use something, etc.. it could help the people that's studying it now.

 

[Zoe]

Don't you need a Japanese cell number for mixi, even if you have an invite?

 

[Mik2121]

Hardly doubt that. Even some Japanese don't have phone (no, really... maybe like a 0.1% or something like that, but still), I doubt they would not be able to register then.

Wanna try it? I can't remember honestly :/

 

[Zoe]

Hardly doubt that. Even some Japanese don't have phone (no, really... maybe like a 0.1% or something like that, but still), I doubt they would not be able to register then.

Wanna try it? I can't remember honestly :/

I'll try it, but that's the #1 complaint I hear about it around here :\

 

[Mik2121]

give me your email address so I can send you an invite.

 

[Askia47]

Mixi always sounded pretty interesting. Tell me if it works.

 

[Mik2121]

As I said, Mixi has quite a few communities. I have not checked out those learning communities, but I have a friend that was there when we were studying Japanese and he always said it was nice and sorta helpful. I always checked out just design and gaming communities so it wasn't the same stuff, but still..

 

[Zoe]

It's looking for an e-mail address with one of the cell phone companies' domains

 

[Askia47]

It's looking for an e-mail address with one of the cell phone companies' domains

so you need a cellphone? u can't use gmail or yahoo?

 

[Zoe]

so you need a cellphone? u can't use gmail or yahoo?

Nope. It says that it's incorrect.

There's a place to enter a normal e-mail, but the registration confirmation is sent to your cell.

 

[Mik2121]

Oh, weird... sorry then

 

[RevenantKioku]

That must be new because I created an account when I was still in the states.
Although that must be an anti spam bot protection idea. I haven't gotten Mixi spam in months so it must be working.

 

[Zoe]

That must be new because I created an account when I was still in the states.
Although that must be an anti spam bot protection idea. I haven't gotten Mixi spam in months so it must be working.

It's been like that for more than 6 months, but it wasn't a requirement in the old days.

 

[Masked Man]

I might also recommend the Genki series for self-study, although I highly encourage you to get your hands on the accompanying audio files if the text that you purchase doesn't come with the audio CDs. I got through the first textbook on my own last summer from mid-July until the end of August, and I tested into Japanese 201 just fine. Their implementation of kanji leaves a lot to be desired, however, so I encourage you to supplement the textbook with some other sources. I chose the Bonjinsha Kanji Book series (two basic, two intermediate) with Anki but, as RK and numerous others have pointed out, the Heisig books are more than sufficient.

 

[ProudClod]

So, after a month of loafing around, learning 2 or 3 hiragana characters at a time, I finally know how to read and write hiragana. The obvious next step is to learn katakana, right? Hopefully I can dedicate a chunk of this weekend to Japanese, and just get it over with. I want to know what step I should take after learning it?

I have this disc set called "instant immersion" for learning Japanese. I tried learning with it, but for some reason, it assumes prior knowledge of Japanese. There are 8 discs, and even the "beginner/introductory" was a jump into the deep end. It had a dictionary (I wasn't about to sit there memorizing shit from a dictionary, when I didn't even know how to read/write in Japanese yet), a few games (that, once again, required reading and writing in Japanese), and some voice recognition pronunciation stuff. There were two other software discs (intermediate, and advanced), and a crapload of audio CD's strictly for spoken Japanese. This is pretty much why I decided to learn writing and reading first and foremost. After I finish learning katakana, should I try using the disc set to learn?

 

[Jake.]

thanks for the recommendations liveinkyoto, i'll look into them.

Review the textbooks that would be used at the university you're looking at. Because you already have prior knowledge of the language, they are probably going to make you take a placement test. That will either get you into one of the later courses or even an accelerated course, but the danger with that is you may not know everything that was taught in the previous courses even if you skills are technically on par with the rest of the class.

it seems there are about four levels, but i'd much rather start at the beginning/lowest to make sure i don't miss out on anything and have a better grasp on it.

 

[Zoe]

it seems there are about four levels, but i'd much rather start at the beginning/lowest to make sure i don't miss out on anything and have a better grasp on it.

Well, like I said, if they can tell you already have a grasp of the language, they'll probably force you to take a placement test. So either don't take your studies too far or be very good at hiding how much you really know.

 

[louis89]

So are there any Japanese gaming forums, like this one? Or any forums at all, or are they all 2chan style boards? Any gaming blogs, like Kotaku and such?

It's difficult to find things to regularly read... I'm not good enough for books or newspapers (plus looking up words is a pain if it's not on a computer), or news websites, which I doubt I'd want to read anyway. But if there's a Japanese NeoGAF then I'm set.

What other websites that I can regularly read do you recommend? Ideally what I want is a Japanese version of Digg.

 

[RevenantKioku]

I just have a few game news sites (Famitsu, Game Watch) RSS feeded up so I can get news faster. That's about it. As for as boards go it's 2ch-like or nothing as far as I can find.
I've been getting into watching game plays on Nico Nico since people usually talk over them and that makes for some interesting times.

 

[Snytbaggen]

So I finally started to study Japanese at a university today (yay!) and have already gotten tons of homework for tomorrow. Around 50-55 hiragana characters, which I'm supposed to be able to recognize and be able to translate from hiragana>romaji>hiragana. On top of that, I have also gotten a lot of words I'm supposed to be able to translate from hiragana>romaji>swedish>romaji>hiragana. So GAF, is there any study technique that can help me with this task? I'm already using realkana.com to help me identifying the characters.

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

So I finally started to study Japanese at a university today (yay!) and have already gotten tons of homework for tomorrow. Around 50-55 hiragana characters, which I'm supposed to be able to recognize and be able to translate from hiragana>romaji>hiragana. On top of that, I have also gotten a lot of words I'm supposed to be able to translate from hiragana>romaji>swedish>romaji>hiragana. So GAF, is there any study technique that can help me with this task? I'm already using realkana.com to help me identifying the characters.

Learning hiragana and katakana is pretty much the easiest part of learning Japanese - in fact when I started they said we had to know them before the class started. I learned them just by copying them out until they stuck; I pretty much had them down in an afternoon. You don't really need any tricks - frankly, I don't recommend taking any shortcuts because if you don't want your handwriting to look like a 5 year old's you'll need as much practice writing them out as you can get (think of what your roman alphabet looked like when you were a kid up until you were a teenager, after you'd written the letters out thousands of times). I certainly forgot a few here and there, but over the course of the year you'll see and write them so many times you won't even think about it.

 

[Zoe]

You don't really need any tricks - frankly, I don't recommend taking any shortcuts because if you don't want your handwriting to look like a 5 year old's you'll need as much practice writing them out as you can get

Not to mention that teachers like to knock off points for using incorrect stroke orders and such.

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

Not to mention that teachers like to knock off points for using incorrect stroke orders and such.

I got lucky - my prof was an enlightened woman who didn't bother with stroke orders. Though it's meant I've had to spend a lifetime of Japanese people sucking in their breath and tut-tutting whenever I write :lol

Stroke order is the BIGGEST waste of time in learning Asian languages, and I wish that stupid linguistic old wives' tale would die off (I know it won't though). It is utterly meaningless. Only stroke direction matters, and even then only if you're using a brush.

 

[sasimirobot]

I got lucky - my prof was an enlightened woman who didn't bother with stroke orders. Though it's meant I've had to spend a lifetime of Japanese people sucking in their breath and tut-tutting whenever I write :lol

Stroke order is the BIGGEST waste of time in learning Asian languages, and I wish that stupid linguistic old wives' tale would die off (I know it won't though). It is utterly meaningless. Only stroke direction matters, and even then only if you're using a brush.

Completely disagree. The aesthetics and flow of written Japanese/Chinese is completely lost without correct stroke order.

Yes, you can get away without it (word processors, etc...) but to say you can "write" these languages and not use stroke orders is a bold face lie.
There are basic rules that you can follow so you don`t always have to learn the stroke orders for new characters from scratch, and it makes a BIG difference in how they look.

You mention "Asian languages", I wonder how many besides Japanese you can write legibly without using stroke orders because even in written phonetic Asian languages its important also.

 

[louis89]

Stroke order is the BIGGEST waste of time in learning Asian languages

But it doesn't take any time. You learn the general principles at the beginning, writing basic kanji correctly and then because nearly all kanji are made up from simpler ones you write those correctly as well. Outside of that, they're just common sense. It's not like you have to learn how to write each one individually or something.

It's there for a reason - it helps you to get the shape right and make them look like they're supposed to. I could never get か to look quite right until I realised that I was using the wrong stroke order. After that it became much easier to make it look like it should.

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

Completely disagree. The aesthetics and flow of written Japanese/Chinese is completely lost without correct stroke order.

Yes, you can get away without it (word processors, etc...) but to say you can "write" these languages and not use stroke orders is a bold face lie.

:lol What the heck are you talking about? If I write 日　with the left vertical line first it doesn't suddenly make it illegible as long as I end up with a rectangle with a line through the middle. Balance is the key issue with kanji. The order you write the strokes in doesn't magically make that happen.

There are basic rules that you can follow so you don`t always have to learn the stroke orders for new characters from scratch, and it makes a BIG difference in how they look.

See, that's not true. The general rule is left to right, top to bottom. But there are TONS of exceptions.

For instance, despite looking similar the stroke order for 毎 and 母 are different, with the second character having you go down and across to start, whereas most other box shaped kanji have you going across the top then down. That's why it's such a waste of time, learning these little irrelevancies that are undetectable - and anybody who says they can tell otherwise is full of it. Only the direction of the stroke matters, if you have one end of the stroke thicker than the other it'll look weird if that's in the wrong place.

But that's it. The order doesn't magically matter with kanji any more than it does with the roman alphabet or whether you drew the right or left eye first when drawing a smiley face.

 

[Shouta]

Stroke order doesn`t matter as long as the final product is readable and recognizable. HOWEVER, stroke order helps to memorize the character and gives you a form to practice to make it easier to write. Even in English, we use stroke order to write our alphabet as well, it`s just shorter.

 

[RevenantKioku]

Aruging about methods is far more of a time waster than learning stroke order. :lol
Anyway, stroke order helps more than it hurts. Dedicating more time to it than necessary is probably not as worthless as ignoring it completely, but you shouldn't be all OCD over it, I think.

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

Even in English, we use stroke order to write our alphabet as well, it`s just shorter.

We do? I had one teacher in junior high tell me there was an order to them, but that's the only time I've ever heard of one.

 

[RevenantKioku]

Try writing the alphabet doing all characters right to left instead. We write left to right so writing A with all your strokes going left instead of right and doing the left part last slows you down.
Actually, LiveFromKyoto, are you left handed by any chance?

 

[Brofist]

The reason for writing kanji in the proper stroke order is to make writing easier, not to make it more difficult, or to give you more annoying things to memorize. Anyway it shouldn't take that long to get the system down to a point where you can do it second nature.

 

[sasimirobot]

I just don`t see putting in the immense amount of effort to learn to read and write Japanese/Chinese and then just being "fuck it, my writing is incorrect and looks shitty but who cares?"

It makes a difference, you can't just write them all willy-nilly and have it look natural and flow correctly.

I see why native writers cringe when they see foreigners butcher characters. It would be the same if you saw somebody write English bumbling around the letter E, by starting the with the bottom stroke, pausing/fumbling around then guessing the next stroke is the top one, drawing a line down and finally finishing with a half-assed middle line because they are not sure its right...

Hey it might not be for everyone, and its easy to justify not learning how to write since its almost pointless for 90% of the people who learn Japanese/Chinese.

But if you are going down the path of learning to write why skip over something so basic that goes a long way in making your writing legible and correct?

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

I see why native writers cringe when they see foreigners butcher characters. It would be the same if you saw somebody write English bumbling around the letter E, by starting the with the bottom stroke, pausing/fumbling around then guessing the next stroke is the top one, drawing a line down and finally finishing with a half-assed middle line because they are not sure its right...

But if you are going down the path of learning to write why skip over something so basic that goes a long way in making your writing legible and correct?

If you're finished being unnecessarily insulting about somebody's handwriting and intelligence (really, could you go a little more over the top here?), can you show me a single piece of credible scientific evidence which would explain why there is any necessary difference in the end result between an E written starting from the top bar and one starting with the left vertical line? As opposed to the overwhelming amount of evidence that shows that different people have different approaches to spacial organization?

If somebody found it easier to 'anchor' the letter starting from the lefthand stroke so they knew how to space the 3 horizontal lines, whereas the person next to them is more vertically oriented and wanted to write the three horizontal strokes first (as is often the case with many kanji), why would anyone care, if that's the approach which produced the best end result for them ? The mistake is thinking that there's a "one size fits all" approach which mechanically produces the "best" result.

Have any of studied Shodo? It's ludicrous to think that there's one geometrically correct balance which is superior to all others, when true cursive style is all over the place, and the kanji themselves have been in a state of constant spacial flux for the last 3000 years. Compare the balance of Wang Zhixi, who was considered THE model calligrapher for hundreds of years, with the accepted modern form. Your average small-minded schoolteacher would flunk him. "Bar is too long! Write it again!"

Actually, LiveFromKyoto, are you left handed by any chance?

Nope. And of course, if I were, that would be incorrect too! It's traditionally been taught that left-handed writing is "wrong" and will produce "incorrect" results. In China children are taught that they must write with their right hands. That's how arbitrary this all is.

*************************

Really, this whole line of thinking derives from absurd Confucian silliness that has no bearing in science. Some Mencius-loving dimwit bureaucrat in the Zhou dynasty decided that doing something 'X' way was the will of Heaven and clearly self-evident of propriety, and so that's the way it's unquestionably had to be ever since. If that same guy and his cronies had said it was Correct Thought and the will of the ancestors to only hold the brush with your pinky and index finger every school teacher in Asia would be telling us that IT MUST ALWAYS BE THIS WAY. But it just doesn't bear out.

 

[RevenantKioku]

You're just being silly, though. It helps people, it has helped me. It's not completely without sense or reason. If you feel like ignoring it, by all means go for it. If the backlash to what you said hasn't given you one moment to question yourself, which it clearly hasn't, just go back to your own little world.
Just stop being an ass, please.

 

[zoku88]

Thanks guys for trying to help with the い　and な　thing.

I think there's a bit more difference, though, since apparently using 大きい for a sentence that says something like "please speak in a louder voice" is odd, but using 大きな isn't.

There was actually a difference written in my electronic dictionary... but it was written in jpn T_T

I guess I'll ask one of the jpn teachers when I get back next week :-/

 

[Deleted member 17706]

If anything, memorizing a stroke order has definitely made it a lot easier for me to be able to remember how to write Kanji. If you write a character in the exact same way every time then it will be much easier to remember how to write it.

I think there are plenty of arguments for why you should follow the stroke order, but I can't think of any good arguments for why you shouldn't. Sure it may not be absolutely necessary and you can still write legible characters without following a stroke order, but honestly if you are learning how to write characters anyway, it seems only natural that you would learn the proper stroke order at the same time.

 

[Shouta]

We do? I had one teacher in junior high tell me there was an order to them, but that's the only time I've ever heard of one.

It's never taught as stroke one, two, three but we're all taught pretty much the way same to write our letters. I mean the majority of folks will start with the / in A then go to \ and finish it off with the horizontal bar. I don't think I can remember seeing someone doing the letter A in backwards order.

 

[zoku88]

It's never taught as stroke one, two, three but we're all taught pretty much the way same to write our letters. I mean the majority of folks will start with the / in A then go to \ and finish it off with the horizontal bar. I don't think I can remember seeing someone doing the letter A in backwards order.

Speaking of stroke order, the way some ppl write the number 8 really bothers me. Two circles? Come on...

I wonder if its the same for japanese ppl.

 

[shanshan310]

what books or texts would you recommend? at the moment all i have is a japanese/english dictionary and 'japanese for busy people' volume 1 and 2 that was required for my night classes.

I'm using the Mirai series, which for me is excellent. It's not boring and all the topics and kanji and stuff are really useful. it works for me. However, it is aimed at high school students and may not be your style :S

This is a bit hard for me. Learning Japanese has been a kind of a dream of mine for the past two years or so. I decided to get accepted into a university with a solid Japanese program. I got my degree while studying abroad so I lost a year jumping through hoops to get the necessary paperwork to be allowed to even take an exam here. Took the exam, did great. And I got the results today that due to the limited number of students allowed for this major, I couldn't get in because of a low grade I got back in high school some 12 years ago. That's how things go in my country.
Anyway, I still want to learn Japanese. I watch a lot of anime and Japanese movies but that's about all the exposure I can get here. Do you guys think it is possible to learn by oneself, without a teacher? If so, how would I start? The original post left me with the impression that one has to have some basic knowledge of Japanese before they can start studying.

If you can't get into the university course you want, is there some sort of TAFE-esque place you can go to study and get a certificate/diploma? I don't know how it is where your from, but in Australia you can do that pretty easily, and if you get good results you can upgrade into the uni course you wanna do. Or if you wanted to study something else at uni you could probably do a diploma concurrently.
I don't recommend studying without a teacher. If you make a mistake no one will be around to correct you! If you can't get into a class, i'm sure you could find a private tutor or something. I did that for a long time, until i realised i could take Japanese through distance education. Also, you can absolutely start from scratch! you have to start somewhere.

I'm not sure if any of that helped or not, but there's a whole bunch of options for you out there if you look good luck!

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

You're just being silly, though. It helps people, it has helped me. It's not completely without sense or reason. If you feel like ignoring it, by all means go for it. If the backlash to what you said hasn't given you one moment to question yourself, which it clearly hasn't, just go back to your own little world.
Just stop being an ass, please.

Whoa - hold on a minute here. I say that I don't follow the prescribed stroke order for everything, and then I've got a guy telling me:

Yes, you can get away without it (word processors, etc...) but to say you can "write" these languages and not use stroke orders is a bold face lie.

I just don`t see putting in the immense amount of effort to learn to read and write Japanese/Chinese and then just being "fuck it, my writing is incorrect and looks shitty but who cares?"

I see why native writers cringe when they see foreigners butcher characters.

But if you are going down the path of learning to write why skip over something so basic that goes a long way in making your writing legible and correct?

So basically, within two posts I've been told I'm a bold-faced liar and can't write Japanese, I'm butchering the characters and "fumbling around", and my writing is "shitty", illegible and incorrect.

Now THAT is being an ass. I'm absolutely going to defend myself if somebody's being that way, and you would too.

Please understand I'm not debating anybody's right to find a stroke-order useful, I'm debating somebody who's being directly insulting and calling me illiterate for not using the prescribed one.

TOTAL ASIDE: And here maybe I should explain - I'm doing a Phd in East Asian studies, I know very well the history behind this and that it originates in the same kind of superstitious thinking that led people in the west to think that left-handedness was "of the devil" and had to be weeded out of children at an early age. This kind of thinking - not just as it applies to writing but nearly ALL areas of East Asian pedagogy - is a hotly debated topic in the academic community, and is part of a larger cultural debate going on in Asia. So I might not be coming at this from the same angle that others are. All of my profs from China are very anti-Confucian, especially the intellectually rigid and arbitrary Neo-confucian thinking that many in China have felt for a long time led to China's decline from a world superpower to a country that was chopped up by the colonial powers. That same thinking dominated Japan during the Edo period and has had a huge impact on the country culturally. So a lot of those perceptions have formed the way I think about this stuff, but I forget that nobody in the normal world looks at it with that kind of perspective :lol

If anything, memorizing a stroke order has definitely made it a lot easier for me to be able to remember how to write Kanji. If you write a character in the exact same way every time then it will be much easier to remember how to write it.

See, this I agree with. Yes, using a stroke order helps. It just doesn't have to be the traditional one. There's no real reason why you have to write 火 by writing the two 'outside' strokes first rather than just going left to right in a logical manner.