Writing Japanese by hand (hiragana and Katana)

[MegeBlast]

I am very bad at writing, when I write roman letters some times people can't see what I have written and it doesn't always have a perfect "form".

With Japanese I try my best to write the different letters or combination of letters. Most of them I write perfectly like あ　お　と　え　て　ア　シ etc; the really easy ones.

But when I write for example ぬ　め　I get the strokes right and it's very easy to write. But when I write it I find out the shape of the letter isn't perfect. Like with ぬ　the last part of the last stroke (the tail) might not seem like it's the same form as the one on the examples. It might seem a little too round for example.

Is it very important for the Japanese people that the letters are written 100% accurate? And do all Japanese write the letters 100% accurate when they are writing fast in a hurry? It's not important in the west as long as they can see what you write even if it looks a little out of proportion, but I have no idea about how important it is Japan.

Thanks.

Edit: My topic was written wrong. Was suppose to be Katakana *

[GTJ]

Shoot for accuracy in the beginning. If you allow yourself to get sloppy from the beginning, can you imagine it will be any better later down the rode? Start off making every character the best you can, write them each 100 times, or whatever. Then later on when it degrades it will degrade into something much more natural looking rather than chicken scratch nobody can read.

[SceptileMaster]

Here is a picture of ぬ in 3 different handwriting fonts I have on my computer.



You don't have to be completely accurate. I've seen some pretty bad Japanese handwriting before. Way worse than in this image so you're probably fine.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by MegeBlast

I am very bad at writing, when I write roman letters some times people can't see what I have written and it doesn't always have a perfect "form".

With Japanese I try my best to write the different letters or combination of letters. Most of them I write perfectly like あ　お　と　え　て　ア　シ etc; the really easy ones.

But when I write for example ぬ　め　I get the strokes right and it's very easy to write. But when I write it I find out the shape of the letter isn't perfect. Like with ぬ　the last part of the last stroke (the tail) might not seem like it's the same form as the one on the examples. It might seem a little too round for example.

Is it very important for the Japanese people that the letters are written 100% accurate? And do all Japanese write the letters 100% accurate when they are writing fast in a hurry? It's not important in the west as long as they can see what you write even if it looks a little out of proportion, but I have no idea about how important it is Japan.

Thanks.

Edit: My topic was written wrong. Was suppose to be Katakana *

Replace "Japanese" with "English" everywhere in your post and then think about how you would answer it then. The answer will be 100% the same for Japanese.

[jesselt]

It depends on what you are writing and who you are writing it to...

Based on a Cool Japan video I watched, Japanese people (I believe...) hold handwriting to a higher degree of importance than westerners. My teacher has mentioned before that people with bad handwriting are seen as less intelligent than people with nice handwriting. Obviously this can become important when writing complicated Kanji.

[MegeBlast]

Thanks for all the helpful responds.

I will continue to write endless of Japanese letters to train my skills, but I doubt it will ever be perfect with の　め　and some others.

Gah, learning the hand writing must be the most boring part of learning Japanese. Memorizing it was at least fun.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by MegeBlast

Thanks for all the helpful responds.

I will continue to write endless of Japanese letters to train my skills, but I doubt it will ever be perfect with の　め　and some others.

Gah, learning the hand writing must be the most boring part of learning Japanese. Memorizing it was at least fun.

Kanji are superfun. Just wait until you hit an intermediate level and you realize a lot of intrinsic elements of kanji that make learning them easier.

[IcewindDude]

As said before, sloppy English is the same as sloppy Japanese. It certainly doesn't have to be printer perfect, but the more you deviate, the harder it will be to read. I've seen writing in Japanese written so bad that I had to use context of surrounding, slightly readable writing to understand what was written. I've seen worse in English... (doctor chicken-scratch... you would think they'd have a better, steady hand than that...)

And just like Kyle said, when you start to become familiar with all the "parts" (radicals) of kanji, they aren't as complex as they once seemed.