I’ve somewhat recently begane learning kanji, Maybe a year or so. I know maybe the first 100-150 but mostly through recognising them.
When it comes to writing them how do you guys keep it legible while also contained in the correct size. Some of these kanji have so many strokes that I find it practically impossible to write it without going into the space below. If I try my best to keep it into one lines worth of spacethen it’s so compressed that it’s impossible to make it out. Do I just need a more fine pen or something?
I’m currently using a Japanese brand of pen which is a “fine” pen. It’s called uni-ball eye fine. It looks amazing when writing kana but this is a nightmare.
3 comments
It all just comes down to practice. Try using those notebooks with square guidelines made for writing Kanji. Also try to split Kanji into radicals mentally in your head before writing them down. This will help you to plan out subconsciously which parts to shrink so that they fit nicely within the “boundary”. But honestly speaking, don’t worry too much about it. As long as its legible, you are all good. Lots of natives have horrible handwriting as as well. But if you are really determined, try joining a Japanese/chinese calligraphy club.
I can’t and don’t really write in anything smaller than a roughly 7mm*7mm space per kanji if I want to retain legibility. I find that if you keep your kanji of at least that size and be especially careful with strokes that are close together, you’ll manage to produce something resembling the kanji you were trying to write. It might not be actually have clearly distinguishable strokes, but if the shape is correct you’ll be able to recognize it (which is what writing is for, right?).
Also, yeah, a fine pen or mechanical pencil would allow you to write smaller.
Edit: oh and btw kanji in natural handwriting is slightly larger than the kana separating it, exactly because of this issue. Maybe try doing that if you’re not too restricted by space.
If you go to jisho.org and look at kanji there, it shows them in a 4×4 grid. It also shows stroke order.
If you go and buy some graph paper (big grid size if you can find it) you can try to look at where the lines lie within the grid cells when you copy the character.
AFIK it’s not that easy and takes a lot of practice to remember where all the little pieces go, but people’s handwriting usually isn’t perfectly font-like either.
Those little “flicks” at the end of strokes, those matter too. That’s definitely part of the character.