I’m started to learn Japanese and trying to learn hiragana first. But I’m a bit worried about my handwriting, is handwriting so important when writing in Japan ?
I’m not writing so good but the letters are understandable, would my bad handwriting problem ?
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I don’t think you need handwriting other than memorizing characters.
I mean I don’t really do much handwriting for other people in my native language other than quick notes (ingredient list, grocery lists, quick notes or so).
I mean if you find yourself in Japan you can still type on your phone in Japanese and show it to people when needing something.
if you are just starting then you are at a level of japanese kid. was your handwriting good when you were in a primary school?
That depends on you.
1. Does handwriting help you learn? If yes, learn handwriting
2. Do you want to be fully functional in Japanese as opposed to only learning to read or speak? If yes, then learn handwriting
3. Do you plan to live in Japan ever? If yes then learn handwriting
It’s up to you. On the upside, stroke orders can be guessed like 98% of the time from the basic rules+common patterns, and muscle memory can help jog your memory. People have also reported that it helps avoid confusing ‘similar’ characters (e.g. 待, 侍; 動, 働; 乗, 垂, 華).
>is handwriting so important when writing in Japan
From what I heard, if you live there, you’ll sometimes need to fill out forms by hand.
I hardly ever write anything in my native language. It’s really not essential to learn how to write. It won’t really cause problems down the line unless someone is like “write in Japanese or die”. Especially if you don’t live in Japan.
However, it sounds like you’ve made up your mind so just learn to write it anyway. I will say it is kinda fun to get a good kanji pen and write stuff.
It’s questionable whether handwriting is important at all these days. Especially given the amount of handwriting a native speaker does in their own language. For me it’s basically nil. I type or text everything and I pretty much am writing all day.
Handwriting itself? Probably can get away with bad handwriting for a while. It looks like handwriting is slowly on its way out, as job seekers are avoiding places where you need to handwrite your resume.
But in terms of learning how to write? It becomes relatively important if you’re looking up kanji and don’t have the ability to copy/paste into a dictionary. Most (if not all) kanji dictionaries are still sorted by stroke count, so knowing how to break down a kanji would be pretty important later on.
I worked in China for 10 years (100% Chinese environment), and use Japanese quite often. I literally can’t write by hand at all.
Meeting notes on computer. Presentations on computer. Mostly doing things on your phone.
Just learn to type quickly and you’ll be fine.