Hey guys, N2 level mostly self learner. I never really wrote by hand so I am seriously lacking in ability. This does also seem to be the cause with friends who speak Japanese but do not have a background in Chinese character use, so I don’t think this is a rare situation.
My handwriting in Japanese is readable, but really bad as I have actually never studied it before. I mostly just read novels, watch TV, use it in real life, and use anki. I have been using Japanese on a daily basis for around 10 years now, but its mostly been just using and not studying if that makes sense.
I was inspired by one of my volunteer teachers to start writing more and am curious to here about the experiences of others. Has anyone started writing later in their Japanese journey? Any tips for me or others like me? Anyone care to share their timeline?
I recently moved to Japan and found that my city has a free “reading and writing” class so I will have some support once I work on a plan. My current goal is to be able to hand write kanji up to grade 6.
2 comments
You’ve gone 10 years without it so yeah you’ll be fine even if you start late.
Also you don’t really have to set a goal like grade 6 kanji. Stroke order and character balance follows pretty consistent patterns, so once you learn these you can write pretty much anything. For example, radicals are mostly written with the same stroke order everywhere.
As for learning balance and stuff like that, just look up some kaisho calligraphy or neat Japanese handwriting or something and try to copy it.
I also started learning handwriting after around the N2/N1 level, but I kinda quit after a 1000 of them. It helped a lot with being able to distinguish similar kanji, but after a while you learn all of the stroke orders and it becomes repetitive. It’s almost a year later and I wouldn’t be able to write most of them from memory, but I’m okay with that because I don’t see myself needing it anytime soon.