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@skyblond do you know if there is some sort of asian language short hand? If not chinese any of the languages that use kanji like charachers (single characters to represent words). Im curious about forms of shorthand that migbt be applied to such scripts.
In handwriting, as myself never learnt how to do shorthand, I do have my way to write, mainly keep the pen stay on paper (aka reduce strokes). But sometimes I can't read what I write, so that's the downside.
The way you describe it, it sounds like a cursive form of kanji. Which is cool in its own right.
Im a calligrapher as a hobby and while my girlfriends language doesnt have kanji it is asian. So ive been enjoying learning more about the languages from the region.
Just a simple demo to show how I normally write. The standard one is shown on the left side, they are 7, 5 and 8 strokes. And the left side is how I write those, the first one is 2 strokes because there is a separate dot there. The rest are 1 stroke.
A fun fact: In school teacher will not allow you to write like this.I was being criticized a lot when I was in school.
And because school don't allow and of course won't teach you how to write like this, almost everyone will develop their own way to write. So when talking about handwriting, unless it's intentionally write for others, it's hard to read other people's handwriting.
And I think I won't say it's cursive. The real cursive is much beautiful than this :)
So in school youd have to learn the form on the left which is more "correct" but also less practical i guess?
In school you use pencils and pens? The older style of using brushes isnt very common for everyday writing i take it? With a brush i guess its more like calligraphy.
Actually we use pen and pencil daily. Now we only use brushes when doing calligraphy or we need write something big.
The left side is how you should write and print. And you should write like that if you want others to easily read what you write. And in school it's required to be written in the correct order of storkes, which I think some are reasonable, some are not.
This passage is write for japanese but most of the idea works for Chinese too.
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/kanji-stroke-order/
And now we're using simplified Chinese, which means much less strokes. In Taiwan and HongKong they still use traditional Chinese, which looks nicer, but with a lof ot strokes.
Some traditional Chinese looks like (copied from wikipedia):
漢字簡化運動可追溯至新文化運動中關於文字及語文教言和國家發展的討論。
The same text but in simplified Chinese:
汉字简化运动可追溯至新文化运动中关于文字及语文教言和国家发展的讨论。
Why woukd the order of strokes matter? Doesnt it look the same regardless of what order you execute the strokes in? Thanks this is all very interesting to me.
Why woukd the order of strokes matter? Doesnt it look the same regardless of what order you execute the strokes in?
I can only answer as far as Japanese is concerned, but I expect Chinese has a similar reason for stroke order. In Japanese, it is considered to be a fundamental part of writing and uniquely defines each character. The main reason for the order though is fluidity. When written correctly, each stroke leaves you (mostly) where you need to be for the next; it aids in writing for both speed and legibility. A hand-written character done in the wrong order is more than not, easily identifiable as "incorrect". This difference is much easier to see when written with a brush or flat marker, but pen, pencil, chalk, rocks, burnt sticks ...they all leave a heavy and light side for each stroke made. The order in which strokes are made becomes even more important when writing similarly to the (not cursive) example @skyblond put above. Writing anything in this style would be impossible to read if strokes were not made in the correct order.
@eshep @skyblond @freemo @SpaceLifeForm I think latin letters are similar; imagine writing letters like "r" from top right to bottom left: it would be slower, because your pencil would move more. Also, it would look a bit different, so your hurriedly-scribbled r would look different from everyone else's, and it would be harder to read. This is why kids learning to write in the latin alphabet get training on stroke ordering as well. I mean, sure: you *could* get it looking fine, just like one could write a perfect-looking "法書" with the wrong order, but it would still have those disadvantages.
