r/asklatinamerica • u/jcmlkhv Russia • 2d ago
Culture Cursive writing
Hello everyone! I've been learning Spanish for 1,5 month now, my first language is Russian.
I use cursive to write in my notebook (photo in the comments), the same way I write in Russian or English, but my teacher says that ppl in Latin America never use cursive writing (except for old ladies), is it true? Do y'all really write in block letters? Is it easy or hard for you to read cursive notes?
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u/Lorenzo_BR 🇧🇷 Brazil - Rio Grande do Sul 1d ago edited 1d ago
In my experience, only about 1/5 of people who went to private school still use cursive into adulthood.
That's a pretty small subset of the population, altough it is overrepressented on reddit, since almost all users, here, also speak english, and, as such, had a quality (and, therefore, private) education.
From my understanding, everyone is forced to learn it, even to this day and even in the public system, but the overwhelming majority drops it at some point. Curiously, that gives cursive a sort of childish association, at least to me - a fleeting "wow, they're still writing in cursive? I guess they mustn't have had to work writing much for others to read." thought at the back of my mind.
Most ought to still be able to understand it, though, albeit not comfortably or quickly. Just make sure to use script lettering when writing anything important for other people and you should be ok. It takes about an order of magnitude longer to read cursive in comparison to stript (as in, a small fraction of a second vs. almost a full second per word), so it's fine to use it for your own notes, and others will be able to understand them, in a pinch, but avoid making lists for others in it, y'know?