I’m trying to learn chinese on duolingo, and as I’m learning characters I try to write them down with the correct stroke order to help me memorize them.

I read the wikipedia article on stroke order, but there seems to be tons of exceptions and counter-intuitive stuff like the eighth stroke of “很” coming before the ninth stroke it connects to, or the order of strokes in the first radical of “忙” or whether or not “minor strokes” (丶) actually go last, etc.

Is there anyway to get better at telling what the stroke orders are, or do I just have to look it up for each character? Does it matter that much if I deviate from the standard stroke order as long as I follow the correct rules?

I’m not trying to be a calligrapher, I just want to be able to write legibly and remember what the characters are.

  • Kumikommunism [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    There aren't all that many pieces in all. You will recognize similar parts in many kanji, so if you pay attention, it's not like you will need to memorize something totally random for every character. The whole right side of the first character in your examples is extremely common. You'll learn it.

    Also Wiktionary is a website that has the origins of a lot of characters (though there's probably a better one, if anyone knows tell me). If you dig far enough through the parts of a character, you will eventually get to something tangible, if you're that kind of person. I did it for some characters, and it did help me.

    The tried and true method for native learners is just writing them a bunch so there's always that.

          • Kumikommunism [they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            It's not at all, you just don't know what you're talking about. I know a lot about Chinese but haven't spent much time learning it. I have spent a long time learning Japanese and so my first instinct to refer to the same set of characters is "kanji". I typed that without thinking about it at all.

            Kanji refers to all Chinese characters. When Japanese people talk about Chinese characters that aren't used in Japanese, they still call them kanji. Kanji and Hanzi are both anglicized forms of the exact same kanji characters: 漢字.

            I think it's kinda weird to call someone else weird when you don't know anything.

              • Kumikommunism [they/them]
                ·
                3 years ago

                No. It's extremely weird to pretend they are not the same thing, because 1) it's obviously wrong, and 2) there's clearly some motivation behind it. This was not about learning Chinese, it was about a set of characters, which China doesn't own, sorry. It's one thing and there are two anglicizations of it.

                If you are so concerned about anglicization, stop typing it in latin script and only ever type 漢字, since words can't change, I guess. Then you can pretend it's pronounced however you want.

                Also, the last line of your comment contradicts itself. If you want to pretend that the very modern version of one specific Chinese language is all that ever existed, you're going to run into the situation a lot.

                  • Kumikommunism [they/them]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    Well, sure, I mean when I talk about them with people who know Chinese, I usually call them "Chinese characters" since that's what the name means anyways. And if we're talking about Chinese specifically and its writing, sure.

                    But I'm still going to call them whatever comes to mind first, because that's how everyone's (including mine) brain works. Unless I'm ever speaking Mandarin, I'm definitely not going to make an effort to use that specific situationally "correct" word though.

            • Fleewithme [none/use name]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Kanji refers to all Chinese characters.

              That's where you're wrong, Bucko.

              I typed that without thinking about it at all.

              There's your problem, right there.

              Kanji are Japanese characters. They are fundamentally different from Chinese characters. Calling Chinese characters "kanji" is wrong.

              There are far fewer Japanese characters in the 2,136 in the jōyō kanji. That's all? You need 5,000 Chinese characters (called hanzi) to read a newspaper. Moreover Japanese never went through the simplification process of 1965 like Chinese did. The current list of standard Chinese characters contains 8,105 hanzi. Never call hanzi "kanji" again.

              • Kumikommunism [they/them]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Wow, cute essay, hope you get an A on it.

                Still doesn't have anything to do with what "kanji" means lol

                • Fleewithme [none/use name]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  Kanji refers to Japanese characters, which are distinct and different from hanzi, Chinese characters. Seriously, there isn't much overlap between them. What I can't figure out is that if you've studied...you obviously know this. So why the weird take?

                  • Kumikommunism [they/them]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    It doesn't though. You can look in any Japanese dictionary or the Japanese Wikipedia page since I assume you can read Japanese otherwise you obviously wouldn't be ignorant enough to be annoying about it, surely.