I got a copy of Hayao Miyazaki’s richly illustrated Daydream Data Notes for Christmas. Extremely pleased, I was eager to start reading; but I quickly ran into the problem that, even with an online dictionary, I have no idea what half of the kanji in the text could be. Miyazaki seems to write a lot of his kanji in a shorthand that I have no idea how to decipher.
Is there a resource for handwritten kanji that I can use? Is practice the only thing that would help, do I just need to familiarize myself with various examples of handwritten kanji?
4 comments
Probably just familiarity with the radicals and lots of repetition in seeing handwriting is the only solution to getting better at recognizing handwritten kanji to be honest. Like everything with Japanese there’s not really a fast track secret to it. Just put in the hours.
Yamasa kanji dictionary online has some handwritten references
> Miyazaki seems to write a lot of his kanji in a shorthand that I have no idea how to decipher.
maybe this can help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryakuji
Just like with reading messy English handwriting, it comes with excessive exposure and experience. Your brain simply needs more practice recognizing and completing those patterns.