I’ve been reading/hearing a lot about polite and formal ways to say things, and that “you must never say this to a Japanese person”.
And I’ve been equally reading about how if you don’t do the correct stroke order, you’ll give Japanese people an actual stroke.
I’m not lessening the importance of being polite or stroke order. I’m doing my best to learn propriety when speaking and writing kanji, but I’m curious.
I would NEVER find it offensive or rude for a foreigner who is obviously learning and struggling with English if they unwittingly made a social error by saying something that could be considered the “blunt way” of speaking from a native. I would care even less if the drew an “L” stroke order Left, Up.
Is this what it’s actually like for the everyday Japanese person or do they truly get offended by foreigners messing up the proper level of formality?
Again, this is to sate curiosity only. I have no interest in an excuse to be rude or anything.
4 comments
I have a friend from Kyoto, who grew up there in the 80s, and a friend who just got back from living in the Sendai area for 4 years. Their take is that most everywhere in the world is similar with this.
The answer is… it depends on where you are the people you’re talking to. Same as in America. I’m from the SouthEastern US, and here we have people who will be nice and not even correct someone’s English and then we have the “Well if you’re gonna come to this country you should learn the lanaguge” crowd that will yell at non-native speakers.
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Apparently in the small Japanese shops that get a lot of tourists they’ll be a little less tolerant sometimes because you’re a dime a dozen to them, but it really will come down to someone’s personality.
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Depending on how good your Japanese is it could be the difference between “give me that” and “can you hand me that please?” by just using the improper wording, even if you’re using Keigo. For instance …てください can sound like a demand to some, even though your textbook will tell you that’s polite. It’s more like “formal” would be the proper word for this way of speaking as it can also be cold, demanding, and command authority.
I like Yuta’s explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr8i2_wqsos
Nobody in Japan cares what stoke order one uses.
However, the characters look odd (maybe childish) when the wrong stroke order is used. Try writing letters in your native language with the wrong stroke order and you may get a better idea.
Also, the stroke order is efficient and makes it easier to remember how to write a character.
I can only imagine watcing someone write with wrong stroke order is like watching someone write English words not from left to right but putting the characters in random order, kind of guessing how much space sould be left in between, etc. The final product may be readable, maybe a little wonky because of uneven spaces but fine. Watching the writing process however would drive me crazy.
no one is going to care, or even notice, a stroke order error. there are an extremely few handful of character pairs that differ by only stroke length, but if you get it wrong it’s literally just a wrong letter. like “d” and “a” being the same character except for the height of the bar. (well not in this font, but you get the idea)
also proper stroke order has actually changed for some characters over time, too, and even differs between chinese and japanese even for individual characters that are literally identical (so not simplified vs traditional)
that being said, learn proper stroke order. it’s not hard, once you learn the patterns for a few radicals/components, and learn a handful of exceptions, you’re pretty much done and can properly guess 99% of any new kanji you run into