Has anyone else had this in their mind?
I’ve been typing and reading Kana and some kanji for more than a year now… And well I don’t get to write on paper often, no matter the language. And then after some time I’d I try to grab a piece of paper and write some practice materials in japanese and holy shit I suddenly realize I can’t even remember simple kana letters.
I’ve been typing on “autopilot” for MONTHS and didn’t touch a pen for all that time and suddenly I can’t pull out most of the letters lol. I guess brain capacity isn’t as high as I thought.
So here’d an advice for new speakers: practice on paper more lol.
7 comments
I wrote a lot during my first year of JP so writing wasn’t something I was gonna forget
Then the next year or two, I mostly switched to reading books, which didn’t require me to write!!!
I tried to do it for fun last week and I couldn’t write the katakana chart out from memory 🙁 🙁 🙁
Recognition and production are different, go figure
In situations where you don’t have pen and paper handy, you can try tracing the characters in the air or on a surface with your finger (i.e. soragaki).
Yes, writing in paper is an extra step, but essential in my opinion! Learning to write helps to decipher other people (Japanese) hand writing too.
I have a flashcard deck that tests from katakana->hiragana and hiragana->katakana. If you can recognize hiragana then that will be enough to get your production skills back, and even if you don’t like SRS the number of cards will be so minimal that it shouldn’t be a big issue.
Sort of “subvocally” writing while using an app isn’t as good as actually writing by hand, but kana is simple enough to maintain with any amount of consistent effort.
Wait until you learn kanji. Even Japanese and Chinese adults start to forget how to handwrite Chinese characters once they leave school and stop writing by hand.
I’ve been learning for 12 minutes and here is my advice for new learners