Japanese Language Stack Exchange
Japanese Language Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [handwriting]

手書き. Handwritten Japanese, including, but not restricted to, Japanese calligraphy.

124 questions
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Distinguishing certain characters in handwriting and print (Similar-looking Kana and Kanji)

Japanese has some sets of characters which look very similar or even identical. Obviously, context is usually more than enough to distinguish which character is intended, but I'm wondering if there are subtle differences which can be used to…
Zhen Lin
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28
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6 answers

Why are there two versions of the kanji for 冷?

The screenshot below is from Kotoba for iPhone. It shows the character for "cool", 冷 as used in the word 冷たい. However, the character in the stroke order diagram is slightly different to the main one displayed top-left! Why is this? Which one is…
MatthewD
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2 answers

What does the highlighted portion of this handwritten Kanji say?

知恵袋で***いてるし… I tried searching Google, hoping it's a phrase that might come up more often, but none of the Kanji that came up looked even remotely like the one written here. Thank you!
Bibliocharylodis
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21
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6 answers

Is exact Kanji stroke length important?

Context: I am currently on a quest to learn how to hand write the 2000 most commonly used Kanji. This requires lots of memorization, so efficiency is important. I have come across Kanji that have strokes with little "extra tails", created from a…
Blake Allen
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3 answers

Is it standard practice, or acceptable, to connect strokes in certain characters of hiragana?

I've been learning my hiragana from here: http://yosida.com/en/hiragana.html For the characters fu, mu, mo, na, ra, yu, and ya, I see a discrepancy between what's in the little box and what shows up when you click the character to see it being…
temporary_user_name
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17
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2 answers

An interesting postcard

According to my information, this postcard was sent from Japan to Russia, and probably in 1945. Needs a translation badly and nobody has seemed to care since then. I suppose that the historical kana usage can take place here. P.S.: Yes, a…
nikkou
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16
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3 answers

Is there a difference in drawing between the "mouth" and "enclosure" kanji radicals?

The two kanji radicals from the image are supposed to be 2 different kanji radicals, one meaning "mouth", and the other meaning "enclosure". I'm not sure if they are supposed to look different or not. The one above seems to have some very small…
Pablo
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15
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2 answers

Haphazard usage of katakana and hiragana for particles and okurigana

I'm looking at this picture of the 日米和親条約 (Kanagawa convention) from the late Edo period and it seems rather strange: It looks like the non-kanji parts are rather haphazardly written in katakana and hiragana. For example, the first part: 全権 ニテユカル…
ithisa
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2 answers

Why is stroke order important?

While I understand that stroke order is important, I do not understand why it is important. If the final product would look the same, why does it matter? I don't have an issue following stroke order. I'm just curious.
somehume
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12
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1 answer

Need help reading old hand-written Japanese

A friend of mine asked me for help in translating some old family documents. This particular piece is an internment card of a family member that was captured on Java by the Japanese during the second world war. After some successes, I still have…
Harm van den Brand
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12
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1 answer

Recognizing old Japanese handwriting

Can you please help me with recognizing this line in old Japanese handwriting? As I suppose, this is: ? やき ？ っすれ ？ の二 but it's most likely that I am wrong
Julia
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10
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3 answers

Why is there a difference between the hand drawn 道 and the pc font one?

I was studying this kanji and looked at the strokes order to figure out how to write it, only to realize the difference between the pc font one and the diagram. Why is the 3 look-alike only on hand drawn?
Ada
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10
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1 answer

Font used to create handwriting worksheets by primary teachers to teach Hiragana

I'm confused by all the different of fonts that can be used to learn to write Hiragana (e.g. the end loop of き may be closed or not). I understand that it is usually related to the difference between print and handwriting style, but after all my…
Pierre
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1 answer

Is it unusual in a noticeable way to slant your Japanese writing?

As a right-handed person whose first language is English, I have a natural rightwards slant to my handwriting much of the time, depending on how quickly I'm writing and what physical position I'm in as I write. I've noticed I sometimes impart this…
temporary_user_name
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8
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0 answers

Understanding difficult handwriting/calligraphy

I'm having trouble deciphering this handwriting. So far, I can definitely tell that the first column says 参拾弐 in 大事, and the fourth column says 手本. Really struggling with column two and some of column three (last two kanji are 弐号, but what's the…
Bingop
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