So I have been studying japanese everyday for the past 1 year+ and I never really write anything down on paper or ever really write any kanji. I only type the kanji or can read them when I see but if someone asks me to write something I cant really. Anyway I was wondering if you mass majority/average of learners here practice writing kanji or not?
38 comments
I personally don’t do it for every little thing I learn, but since I love Japanese penmanship, yes, I’ll write stuff out here and there. If the appearance of a new kanji or word doesn’t stick with me just by seeing it, writing it a couple of times *really slowly* usually helps a fair bit. Certainly more so than writing it sloppily ad nauseum, anyway.
I don’t handwrite anything at all, not even kana, simply because I have no need for it right now and it does not seem to help me much with remembering things (I tried in the beginning). Japanese is already taking a lot of my time and I would only learn yet another skill if I really needed it, say for school or work.
I started only practicing writing kanjis after I passed jlpt n2, for which I had studied the kanjis via keywords and vocabulary only.
Since I had up to 6th grade kanjis fresh in my head, learning how to write them was a fairly easy process. About 4 months later and I was able to write all 1026 of them, including correct stroke order. My point is, I think it would’ve taken longer if I tried to memorize the words / meanings and writing at the same time.
If you live in Japan I recommend you can at least write hiragana and katakana to fill out basic forms and maybe learn the kanjis that are part of your everyday life, such as your address.
Otherwise, I think it is totally fine to just learn how to read and associate the kanjis with vocabulary.
By the way, I am studying for the n1 now and having learned how to write the elementary school kanjis is helping a lot distinguishing the new characters. Most of them are composed of the same components I had learned before, but arranged in a different way, so there is that.
I don’t practice writing kanji.
Yes, I do but I don’t write every day just from time to time because I enjoy it. I’m originally good at memorizing kanji but after writing kanji for a while I think it improved my ability to recognize kanji even more.
When I’m using WaniKani, I tend to reinforce it with writing everything. It helps me with getting the stroke order right, too, since I only have to look that up once on [jisho.org](https://jisho.org) and I’m good.
I practise my kanjis with Anki (kanji colorizer add on) like this https://imgur.com/a/PlaYQWu
How can I make it look decent when my handwriting is already awful?
I haven’t written anything down until recently, it wouldn’t have been an effective use of time – learning to write is more of a side hobby now. At my current pace, that will take just over a year but I’m in no rush
Yes. My Japanese handwriting is better than my English handwriting
Yes, it helps me retain thousands of kanji since I use muscle memory as well as normal memory. Using multiple senses definitely makes me remember things better.
I do partly because it’s pretty enjoyable for me but I also want to be able to write cuz I want to be able to do everything that I do in English and my native language in japanese
I write a bit and find practicing new(to me) kanji relaxing. While I sometimes wonder if my old teacher would approve of my penmanship(she was so harsh sometimes!), a camera translator can still read it and I’ve seen enough native people’s handwriting to know mine isn’t that bad.
That is, I have a notebook that is entirely written in Japanese by me for self-study purposes alongside various grid-style notebooks for kanji practice purposes.
When I was learning Chinese as a foreigner, I wrote each new character multiple times, reading the pronunciation out loud. This helps to connect the sound, meaning and writing in your mind. Japanese people do this as well when they are learning the characters.
You can write on genkoyoshi paper: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08D4RPJBN/
There are also PDF files around which you can use to print pages yourself.
Another useful app is https://apps.apple.com/app/id1078107994
It gives you writing practice.
Writing helps you to be able to read. Even if you don’t need to write in daily life, it’s worth the the time when learning. Learning characters is a process of learning and forgetting and learning again. It’s not a waste of time to slow down a bit and get it right.
As foreigners, we are basically cramming characters and vocabulary, trying to learn unnaturally fast. In order to really retain things, you have to practice using them. Japanese people spend six years in elementary school learning the characters equivalent to N1. They write their homework in Japanese and they read children’s books.
Hello !
I’m new here
It’s been 20 days since I started learning Japanese, I’m learning it on Duolingo, I’ve read many reviews that it’s not that good , so which applications should I use ?
I used to avoid writing for much the same reason as you stated. Typing is 90% of what you’ll actually use.
However, I started practicing writing just for fun and it has measurably improved my reading comprehension. I would highly recommend it.
However, I would highly highly highly recommend a radical first approach to learning writing. If you don’t know what the individual radicals of a kanji are, it is going to be much harder to remember how to write kanji that are built from those radicals. I never used WaniKani, but I believe it follows that approach. Other systems follow other approaches. I used a mixture, but I would always learn the meaning of a kanji’s radicals and how to write them before I learned the primary kanji.
To learn to write 意 before you learn to write 心 立 音 is one of the most bizarre and inexplicable choices that textbooks like Genki choose to do.
I personally do, but I use Learn Japanese: Kanji Study by Chase Colburn on Android. Great app for learning and memorizing kanji and their stroke order. Because it’s on Android though, the stylus I have on my note is not very good at simulating real handwriting. Smooth plastic on glass is nothing like a pen or pencil on real paper. They have snapping options and grid sizes you can select and such to let you learn the handwriting a little easier despite being designed for phones, but it’s still got nearly as good as real pen on graph paper. Very powerful app for learning though. Many options and such, and learning is much easier when you are forced to learn the kanji by writing them in blocks of 10 kanji or so. It’s customizable though, so I only practiced kanji I was already encountering, along with kanji I hadn’t encountered yet, but knew the vocabulary for. There’s a bunch of add-ons for it and such you can buy, but I don’t personally feel like it’s needed. I only purchased the “unlock all kanji” and it was like $30 I think. Absolutely worth it since it’s a one-time purchase and I haven’t found any app that can match that quality for the price. There’s very few kanji writing apps in the first place.
Anyway, I got a cheap digital drawing tablet online and installed an Android emulator on my PC so I could do it with something more real-feeling. While I worked through Genki, or did reviews on my language learning app, I used the drawing tablet to do the work, either through a blank sheet in some drawing software for the Genki problems, or through the handwriting keyboard for the app stuff. I’m only N5, moving towards N4, but it’s been extremely powerful for improving my freeform handwriting.
I still wasn’t satisfied with how it felt, and my handwriting still felt sloppy, so I looked into different tablet cases and pen nibs, none of which are available for my model, and found out a lot of people simply place real pieces of paper over their tablet to simulate the feel, and that worked PERFECTLY. It genuinely does not feel any different from writing on real paper, yet I didn’t need to keep buying pens or additional paper, I could select calligraphy brushes and stuff for especially good looking kanji, undo strokes when I start writing the wrong kanji first, etc etc. To anyone reading this and wanting to try, BE WARNED: THIS WILL EAT THROUGH YOUR PEN NIBS QUITE QUICKLY. I haven’t fully eaten through my first one yet, but it started to wear down on one side after just one session. There was more wear in this one session than a full week of writing directly on the smooth tablet. I am okay with this personally, since I planned on getting a different pen model that does support foam nibs later, but keep that in mind. It came with like 10 extra nibs though, so I don’t imagine I’ll be getting through all of them anytime soon.
Now finally, my method isn’t the most efficient way to learn kanji at all. It’s not even top 3. But, it is a ton of fun for me, and I DO think it’s the most effective method for improving handwriting. Helps keep me motivated. And Kanji Study has the ability to directly export words found to AnkiDroid, and then syncs to AnkiWeb so you can download it directly to your desktop Anki client for review and such and keep it all synced. All in all, keeps me motivated to continue learning new kanji and new words using those kanji.
Would highly recommend if you like Kanji Study to let the app creator know that there is real demand for a native PC version, especially if that means other people can develop their own add-ons and mods for it. It is so much better than the other tools I’ve tried that it could genuinely be a standard, but I think having it limited to Android smartphones really gimps its utility. I have a phone stylus designed to simulate real handwriting but it will just never be the same when you’re writing with your finger or a stylus on pure glass. Not everyone has the PC needed to fully emulate an Android phone, so it would be sick if we could get a real version.
I write kanji on blank papers and on blackboard.
I write my sentences on paper when I do workbooks. The reason you can’t write things is because your brain literally has to develop the muscle memory and the ONLY way to do that is by actually writing. Your body is a dynamic machine and any new task has to be practiced. Also, yeah it helps with memory because you’re expanding the types of contexts you encounter the kanji.
When my mom had a stroke she had to relearn how to read plus she has memory issues. But when she writes something she has a way better chance of remembering. Her therapist had her start her day writing lists. If she wrote a grocery list she was able to remember what she wanted to get even if she forgot to bring it. But she still had to keep looking in her cart over and over and over to try to remember if she already got something.
i vaguely remember a study that showed that (with any language) if you learn it through seeing it, saying it, and writing it out then the word is retained for a more lasting effect.
No.
I do. Want to be able to physically write so it’s important to me to learn. If you have no plans to physically write then it might not matter
I don’t practice writing kanji. I write my daily diary entries in Japanese and at the end of the week I translate only words I don’t remember immediately. For example: today I went to a theme park. I know all of the words except theme park. I had to look that up so I write the english under the kanji in colored pen. I write the furigana above the kanji in a different color. I’ve noticed I retain a lot more by doing this. I no longer take paper notes besides the diary exercises.
I need to get better about actual writing output, but I do practice writing kanji alone every day. I didn’t for about my first year of learning, but after I did, my ability to recognize and recall kanji skyrocketed. I’m able to actually remember kanji by their strokes and components rather than by trying to brute force recognize the general shape, and without having to remember an additional mnemonic. Recently I’ve been using less paper and instead using an app on Android called “Ringotan” for this, it’s basically like Anki but for writing kanji with a bunch of premade decks. Although paper and pen is still the most useful for getting pretty strokes and character balance right.
People shade practicing writing, saying you’re likely never going to be in a situation where you’re forced to write, but I think it’s really worth giving a try. If it works for you as a learning method, it’s super helpful in reading and recalling words.
I’ve found that things stick better if I write them instead of just read them. It’s almost like it has to go deeper into my brain to get from my eyes to my hand, rather than just bouncing off the surface.
Also, there are lots of kanji that I can read but can’t right from memory, but very few (none?) that I can write from memory that I can’t remember at least one reading for. For new-to-me words that I find in print, if I know at least one of the kanji this well, it makes it SO much easier to look up in an online dictionary. I may be able to guess which word it is if it’s a word that I only know by sound, but have never learned the kanji for.
Absolutely. I’m going hardcore on 1-2 hours of handwritten kanji every day.
But I only started doing this after I decided I would pursue a Master’s Degree in a Japanese University. Wouldn’t have done so to this extent otherwise tbh. I have an N2, and never bothered with N1 until this year for the same reason.
Nope. Given how little I handwrite in English the effort of learning to write Kanji just isn’t worth the time.
I use pencil and paper as the friction provides feedback. We started with paper using big squares split into quarters. Gradually, the squares got smaller.
Our teachers said pencil provided better feedback than pens did.
Does the rough recycled paper used in practice books provides better feedback than high-quality copier paper? Not sure.
In a pinch, some Chinese students in class practiced the kanji using the index finger on the palm of their other hand. That is (very) fast and provides a different type of feedback; I found it helpful but can’t say if it is better or worse than writing with a pencil.
I personally don’t bother learning to write by hand, not even kana. I barely write by hand in English, much less Japanese. I can use an IME just fine and if I ever really need to write something on paper I can do it on my phone and then copy it down. It would be a big investment to learn writing and my priority is on other things (my current priority is learning to read kanji and sentences at an adult level).
Yea I do. Helps memorisation
I don’t because it would take way too much time and I don’t need it
I actually met a foreigner who used to work in HR in a Japanese company, her Japanese was obviously excellent and she told me “don’t bother practicing writing, no one writes” 😄
But of course if it helps you memorizing or if you like it, do it
If you have an android phone you can install several japanese keyboards, one of them lets you “draw” characters with your fingers, it helps you memorizing characters when you actually write them.
I practice kanji on paper as that’s the way I remember things easiest.
As for revision, I tend to only keep writing the top 100 or so most used kanji. Maybe when i’m far more confident with japanese i’ll try handwriting more of them but my focus right now is everyday language; so reading and typing kanji.
Yes. Writing stuff down is one of the best things you can do for memory.
I do. I’m in a class and the class emphasizes being good at writing, reading, speaking and listening. I’ve been doing RTK and WaniKani and I write down every new one I come across; it helps me break down the parts easier and recalling them is a lot easier this way. When I wasn’t writing them out recalling them was a lot more difficult.
Kanji is probably my favorite part of Japanese, partially because they’re like puzzles (once you know the radicals) and I just like the way the look and how to write them.
That being said, I usually only write them when I’m doing Anki Flashcards or writing prompts by hand, on either my iPad or a notebook. I feel like knowing the kanji “intimately” helps me recognize them in the wild, to distinguish them from each other and also recognize patterns between similar ones.
Now do I make a point to remember which readings are on vs kunyomi? Nope lmao.
Yep. started studying japanese with genki textbook/workbooks around august and been writing everything in japanese on notebooks daily. Already filled 2 notebooks & 3rd one is almost full lol
I’ve only been studying for about two months. I’ve never written anything down, only typing.
I’ve started playing with Ringotan app to see how I like it. I like the idea of eventually being able to write, but mostly out of interest in kanji and penmanship rather than thinking it will provide an immediate benefit to my short term studying. I’d rank it my lowest priority below everything else.