So I’m using Duolingo to learn Japanese. I was wondering why it’s having me draw the character this way, with that part taken out.


So I’m using Duolingo to learn Japanese. I was wondering why it’s having me draw the character this way, with that part taken out.

11 comments
  1. Because that is the way to handwrite the kana. When I see the connected version of the kana written out, not printed, i assume that the writer is a child.

  2. Japanese is in some ways much more lax than English when writing characters (and in some ways much stricter). As long as a reader can tell where your stroke is *going*, it doesn’t matter so much where it *ends*. This is a part of why pixel fonts on retro games are annoying to read, even for native Japanese gamers.

    You can see a humorous example of the importance Japanese places on strokes in [this](https://ameblo.jp/hitomi-nakahashi/entry-12376123961.html) well-intentioned, yet misguided set of absurd standards for writing Roman characters.

  3. I always thought of those kind of differences like how a person writing English writes a lower-case “a” Do you honestly know anyone who really does the curved bit at the top? But we still know it’s an “a” 🤷

  4. It’s similar to how hardly anyone writes “a” like it is usually represented in text, but instead we write it like the Greek letter alpha “α”

  5. My explanation was alsways: when you write it by hand the strokes at the missings parts are alwas fast and when fast enough the stroke would be missing

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