|
 |
Chinese characters by hand — Your worst | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Everplayer Diglot Groupie China Joined 5049 days ago 69 posts - 85 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German | Message 9 of 29 01 October 2011 at 9:20am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I can imagine that writing Chinese characters can be very very difficult for learners who are only used to latin aphabets...
I don't know how you practise writing them but I guess you are "copying". However, there is probably a better way. Have you seen a kind of translucent paper before? If you are in China, you may find it in stationary stores or calligraphy section of a bookstore. Or you just find some very thin paper that is translucent. Put it on top of the characters you want to learn writing and follow the stroke on the thin paper. The characters below should be the ones of appropriate size, from exercise books or printed by yourselves(recommended) or found on Internet. Move the thin paper to practise multiple times, until you can write an entire character without any pause. Then remove the model characters and try to recall the feeling while copying your own writing. (using markers on transparencies is also fine, but it is quite slippery.) This is the way we practised Chinese calligraphy in school. Hope it is helpful to you as well. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5533 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 10 of 29 01 October 2011 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
A topic I can relate to. As g-bod, I too have stretching problems with some simple
characters such as 七, because they either come out unproportionally big or small and the fewer the lines the more confident those lines should look. Mine do not. As for complex chacaters then my current enemies are 谢 and 餐. Former one just falls apart on me horizontally and latter comes out way unbalanced and too heavy at the top. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5083 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English* | Message 11 of 29 01 October 2011 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
For writing characters by hand, the best resource I own is Chinese Cursive Script: An Introduction to Handwriting in Chinese by Fred Fang-yu Wang (here is the Amazon listing). It really is an excellent book for English-speaking students of Chinese to learn the handwritten forms.
Another good book is A Reader Of Handwritten Japanese by P. G. O'Neill (here). Unfortunately, this book is out of print. I found a copy in a library and was impressed. So, I bought a copy second hand on Abebooks (I LOVE Abe! :D )... Well, it just arrived this week. A nice, clean, tight copy, and all my own. O'Neill's book is good, in fact, it's excellent. But it's not as elementary as Fred Wang's book. Wang's book has 20 lessons, with each lesson having some characters, some notes, and a sample of handwritten Chinese (different lessons have extracts by different people, for variety's sake.) In all, you need to know only 300 or so characters to use the book. O'Neill's book, however, requires a good knowledge of Japanese from the outset. It is arranged by difficulty from Introductory to Advanced. Each lesson is a real extract from letters written to Dr. O'Neill or his colleagues, and also has reading notes, and some helpful appendices. While I think of it, Reading Japanese by Eleanor Harz Jorden (here) is also very good, and easier than O'Neill's book. It accompanies her Beginning Japanese (two volumes.) It starts with kana, then kanji. The lessons introduce about 450 kanji in all. It's good for handwriting though, because the reading section at the end of the lessons is given in both printed and handwritten forms. All good books, and worth a look, in my opinion. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Neri Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4863 days ago 16 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 12 of 29 02 October 2011 at 6:40am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I've been told my 雪, 雲 etc are ugly, and I used to have issues writing 水 and 木 so people could tell them apart. There are others too, but I don't write much lately so yeah. I dunno.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5351 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 13 of 29 02 October 2011 at 10:46am | IP Logged | |||||
I have a similar problem! When I first draw those characters, I didn't know the correct order, so I drew the left part first. Then I found out that was wrong, so I started writing it the correct way, which was much more difficult! My worst character is probably 還, there just isn't enough space to make the lower part nice or even readable :S 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Everplayer Diglot Groupie China Joined 5049 days ago 69 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German | Message 14 of 29 02 October 2011 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
Regarding this particular problem, don't be frustrated because even Chinese people have the same problem. I remember when I was in primary school almost the entire class wrote them in the wrong way at first, until our teacher told us the correct order. (Our textbooks didn't teach such things.) After knowing the correct order, many still sticked to the wrong way because it is more "convenient" or they were just used to it. I changed to the correct one but nowadays my handwriting is still ugly among natives. :( 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mayfair Diglot Senior Member Australia theasiaanalyst.wordp Joined 5419 days ago 48 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Mandarin | Message 15 of 29 05 October 2011 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I will always be confounded as to why, but I can never write 国 correctly. I always draw the bottom line of 玉 approximately where the bottom line of 口 should be, so the square never ends up closed. You would think that in the ten years or so I've known that character things would improve, but I guess it's one of life's little mysteries.
(Actually, that last part is just an excuse for not being bothered to fix my handwriting.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mani Diglot Senior Member Germany imsprachendickicht.b Joined 4905 days ago 258 posts - 323 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Swedish, Portuguese, Latin, Welsh, Luxembourgish | Message 16 of 29 06 October 2011 at 9:52am | IP Logged | |||||
|
While I was still studying Japanese (I gave up on it a few years ago, but I think I'll return someday - outside an academic surrounding when I'll have enough time to study the Kanji properly in my own speed) I always thought my 火 looked ugly.
My personal nightmare is 子. As radical it's okay, but on it's own - help! I don't know how much time I spend on practising to write it. You know that learning help for children where you have the character printed in light grey and you are following the lines to write it. I must have filled dozen of it. Each time I thought now I finally have memorized it mechanically into my handwriting and tried the next day, 子 was out of shape again ... Oddly enough I never had problems with more complex characters. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
