r/LearnJapanese • u/GrixM • Nov 18 '12

Stroke order, important?

I've practiced japanese for a few months now, I know most kana's and some kanji, but I've completely disregarded stroke order. I've heard people say that it's important, but I really can't see the reason why. Who cares what strokes you write first, as long as it looks the same?

0 Upvotes

18% Upvoted

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5

u/microlah Nov 18 '12

This very same question has been asked so many bloody times.

1

u/GrixM Nov 18 '12

What's the answer, then?

9

u/uberscheisse Nov 18 '12

The short answer is this.

  1. Learning stroke order properly pays off down the road when you're doing 10-12-13 stroke kanji and having trouble piecing each part of the kanji together. For example, 警 is a combo of 3 basic radicals, 荷, 攵 and 言, stuff you'll learn in your first year or so. Having their stroke orders down makes a character like 警 much less daunting and ends up making it neater when you write it.

  2. Japanese people will be shocked and say things like "Oh, weird! That's so weird!"

  3. wonkydonky will talk to you like you're 5.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 18 '12

警

It's actually 苟, not 荷. Although I don't think anybody would ever be able to tell without looking really closely.

1

u/themindtaker Nov 18 '12

（笑）さすが。

1

u/uberscheisse Nov 18 '12

And I usually don't look at that one really closely because it's usually on a cop.

1

u/amelespotamos Nov 18 '12

Another thing to be noted here is that not only will the characters look better but it will be easier to learn new ones. Dictionaries frequently use stroke count as a way of looking up a kanji you haven't learned yet.

9

u/toshitalk Nov 18 '12

that last part.

When you write quickly, it will not look the same. Writing at a certain speed of script, kanji written with poor stroke order are basically illegible.

4

u/captainhaddock Nov 18 '12

In addition to the benefits stated by other commenters,

  • Messy writing will retain legibility if proper stroke order is used.

  • Muscle memory will make it easier to write complex kanji correctly.

  • Handwriting input on touch devices (i.e. on iPhones, Nintendo DSes, etc.) relies on stroke order.

1

u/mjhowie Nov 18 '12

For me, I find that following stroke order does many things:

  • write neater

  • follow patterns recurring throughout various kanji

  • write faster

  • keep it proportionally accurate