I know this might sound a bit silly. But I’m learning how to write hiragana. Does it have to be written exactly the way it’s shown in the book? Like does hand writing really matter how neat it is? Sometimes I have a hard time tracing out the words lol but I get the idea of how it’s written!
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Why would you deliberately write it incorrectly?
Yes write it has its being shown.
Kanji has a lot more strokes to learn.
tip: buy some graph paper
a lot of writing charts for hiragana, katakana, and also kanji, use 4 grid squares.
Like all handwriting there’s some wiggle room, but if you’re already looking for shortcuts then what are you going to do when it comes to katakana and then kanji?
It gets much easier over time if you practice and it *does* suck while you’re still developing that muscle memory but it’s not going to get any easier if you don’t learn properly.
If I understand correctly, you’re referring to the font your textbook may be using? If so, no. You don’t have to write exactly like that, just like people’s handwriting in English usually doesn’t look like Times New Roman. I’d recommend googling “hiragana handwriting”, “hiragana different fonts” or something along those lines and looking up stroke order. That should give you a pretty good idea what your handwriting should look like.
What I would highly recommend is watching videos of how to write Hiragana. It’s dumb, but I cannot tell you how much easier it was for me to get my head around it and have confidence in my writing than when I got to see a normal Japanese person just writing the alphabet. This is going to sound silly, but seeing someone write it out somehow made it feel so much more real/valid to me. Watching a few also showed me what it looks like when things are written subtly different and what it looks like when something is written with a normal pen. I went, “oh.. that.. does just look like how I write it. The lines are thin so it feels strange, but that’s just what it looks like, doesn’t it?” lol
get the app ‘shirabe jisho’ not only is it super useful to look up vocabulary later on but theres also a little section that displays all the hiragana and if you tap a specific one it shows how it’s handwritten and the stroke order.
make sure you can do it right before you start getting loose with it, same as other writing systems.
So, just like in english, they don’t have to be exactly like they are written when you’re learning the letters. there’s room for messy writers, in english and Japanese. Few people write them looking exactly like the text book font.
What matters more in both languages is the symbols that look similar to other ones. Like nrh. The lines have to start and stop in the right places.
or like れねわ Or あお はほ
You need to make sure the lines are all going in the right directions and in correct relative positions.
Or when you learn hiragana you have to make sure the line in ケ goes passed the other line or else it looks like a ク。
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You should pay attention to things like that, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have perfect writing. My japanese students sure don’t.