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The article briefly mentions the reason for this: Kanji. English has 26 letters which are all fairly distinct from each other even when written by a chicken on

The article briefly mentions the reason for this: Kanji. English has 26 letters which are all fairly distinct from each other even when written by a chicken on LSD. Japanese has on the order of ~2,000 characters you need to know just to graduate high school, plus thousands more to read newspapers and advanced literature, and more still for names, places, and so on. Memorizing the stroke order isn't as important as some instructors make it out to be, but it can matter when trying to decipher hand-written Japanese and serves as an additional clue as to which maybe 10 ambiguous possiblities the writer was going for in a particular character. Extending it to English seems kind of silly to us, but if the students are already taught about stroke order, and use it as a tool for memorization in their native language, it makes some sense to apply the concept to English.

Grustaf 6y ago
Sorry to disagree with you, but I’m not sure it’s even possible to learn Japanese or Chinese characters without adhering to a strict stroke order. Not necessarily the one they use (although after 2000+ years of teaching you might suspect it’s pretty optimal) but you can’t teach your hand to memorise the movement if there’s no particular order. And since there are so many common elements between characters, you can’t really choose stroke orders for each of them individually either.
- ddevault 6y ago
  I'm fluent in Japanese and I stand by what I said: "Memorizing the stroke order isn't as important as some instructors make it out to be, but it can matter [in some cases]." Also keep in mind that even native Japanese speakers struggle with Kanji, and more so with every passing year. Some of my Japanese friends with college educations struggle to even read some jouyou kanji, let alone write. With the aid of technology, modern Japanese fluency de-emphasizes the need for stroke order substantially.
  - Grustaf 6y ago
    But did you learn kanji without adhering to any particular stroke order? I taught myself around 1000 characters and I found it impossible to learn to read them without learning to write them, which in turn relied on muscle memory. I’m pretty sure muscle memory plays a very important role for most learners. I know that many young Japanese people rely on smartphones and other tech to avoid really learning kanji, but if anything that strengthens my point. It’s hard to learn to write them just by reading them, unlike English spelling for example.
    - ddevault 6y ago
      >But did you learn kanji without adhering to any particular stroke order? Yes, I learned almost entirely without learning the stroke order. I learned some basic stroke order rules which can be generally applied to many kanji/radicals and be correct enough 80% of the time. In total I spent maybe two hours on stroke order. For the record, I can hardly hand-write Japanese in the first place, maybe only 200 kanji at most. It's not necessary, however, to hand-write Japanese these days. I can read a couple thousand Kanji, however. I had no problem memorizing them without a hand-written component.
      - Grustaf 6y ago
        80% is quite a lot. And my point was never that stroke order was hard to learn, i find it very natural moat of the time. Like you say, some basic principles cover almost all cases. Like spelling in languages like Spanish. What I’m arguing is that if you had no idea about stroke order, it would be very hard to remember how to write them at all. It would just be a meaningless heap of squiggles. And sure you don’t have to be able to hand write these days, but for me that is one of the joys.
        ddevault 6y ago
        >What I’m arguing is that if you had no idea about stroke order, it would be very hard to remember how to write them at all. Yes, but it's crucially not necessary for reading them. Writing literacy in Japanese is not a common skill even among native speakers and isn't really a requirement for modern fluency given that you can use a computer to do the remembering for you.
  - snapetom 6y ago
    I learned Chinese, for all intents and purposes, as an ABC living in the west. I was taught the traditional way with a brush and calligraphy. In this method, I would agree stroke order and direction is very important. With a physical brush, the initial plot creates a wider line than when the stroke ends. Today, though, we use pencils and ballpoint pens. That initial thickness isn't reproduced. Why dose direction matter at that point? Most of the time you can't tell which direction I started my stroke. So while I think the parent response raises a good point that stroke order and direction may have been important in the development of the culture, I agree with you that it's less important these days.
    - jhanschoo 6y ago
      I agree with your broad point that stroke order need not be dogmatic to good writing, since if you look at Chinese calligraphy, it's also clear that stroke order is not set in stone. Nevertheless, I think it would interest you that you can achieve very expressive line variation with even pencil and ballpoint; the trick is to write on a stack of paper so you can vary the area of contact between tip and paper: e.g. see https://www.bilibili.com/video/av21114247/ https://www.bilibili.com/video/av21114247/
    - Grustaf 6y ago
      You can definitely tell stroke direction from a ballpoint pen, especially for short strokes and hooks, that often end with a very soft part. But in any case, stroke order is very easy to learn. You’ll pick up a few basic principles like top first then bottom, left first the right, plus the stroke order for common parts like boxes, without effort. That takes you 90% of the way, remembering the few exceptions is easy too. For me as a learner I never saw it as a burden at all.

Grustaf 6y ago

Sorry to disagree with you, but I’m not sure it’s even possible to learn Japanese or Chinese characters without adhering to a strict stroke order. Not necessarily the one they use (although after 2000+ years of teaching you might suspect it’s pretty optimal) but you can’t teach your hand to memorise the movement if there’s no particular order. And since there are so many common elements between characters, you can’t really choose stroke orders for each of them individually either.

ddevault 6y ago
I'm fluent in Japanese and I stand by what I said: "Memorizing the stroke order isn't as important as some instructors make it out to be, but it can matter [in some cases]." Also keep in mind that even native Japanese speakers struggle with Kanji, and more so with every passing year. Some of my Japanese friends with college educations struggle to even read some jouyou kanji, let alone write. With the aid of technology, modern Japanese fluency de-emphasizes the need for stroke order substantially.
- Grustaf 6y ago
  But did you learn kanji without adhering to any particular stroke order? I taught myself around 1000 characters and I found it impossible to learn to read them without learning to write them, which in turn relied on muscle memory. I’m pretty sure muscle memory plays a very important role for most learners. I know that many young Japanese people rely on smartphones and other tech to avoid really learning kanji, but if anything that strengthens my point. It’s hard to learn to write them just by reading them, unlike English spelling for example.
  - ddevault 6y ago
    >But did you learn kanji without adhering to any particular stroke order? Yes, I learned almost entirely without learning the stroke order. I learned some basic stroke order rules which can be generally applied to many kanji/radicals and be correct enough 80% of the time. In total I spent maybe two hours on stroke order. For the record, I can hardly hand-write Japanese in the first place, maybe only 200 kanji at most. It's not necessary, however, to hand-write Japanese these days. I can read a couple thousand Kanji, however. I had no problem memorizing them without a hand-written component.
    - Grustaf 6y ago
      80% is quite a lot. And my point was never that stroke order was hard to learn, i find it very natural moat of the time. Like you say, some basic principles cover almost all cases. Like spelling in languages like Spanish. What I’m arguing is that if you had no idea about stroke order, it would be very hard to remember how to write them at all. It would just be a meaningless heap of squiggles. And sure you don’t have to be able to hand write these days, but for me that is one of the joys.
      - ddevault 6y ago
        >What I’m arguing is that if you had no idea about stroke order, it would be very hard to remember how to write them at all. Yes, but it's crucially not necessary for reading them. Writing literacy in Japanese is not a common skill even among native speakers and isn't really a requirement for modern fluency given that you can use a computer to do the remembering for you.
- snapetom 6y ago
  I learned Chinese, for all intents and purposes, as an ABC living in the west. I was taught the traditional way with a brush and calligraphy. In this method, I would agree stroke order and direction is very important. With a physical brush, the initial plot creates a wider line than when the stroke ends. Today, though, we use pencils and ballpoint pens. That initial thickness isn't reproduced. Why dose direction matter at that point? Most of the time you can't tell which direction I started my stroke. So while I think the parent response raises a good point that stroke order and direction may have been important in the development of the culture, I agree with you that it's less important these days.
  - jhanschoo 6y ago
    I agree with your broad point that stroke order need not be dogmatic to good writing, since if you look at Chinese calligraphy, it's also clear that stroke order is not set in stone. Nevertheless, I think it would interest you that you can achieve very expressive line variation with even pencil and ballpoint; the trick is to write on a stack of paper so you can vary the area of contact between tip and paper: e.g. see https://www.bilibili.com/video/av21114247/ https://www.bilibili.com/video/av21114247/
  - Grustaf 6y ago
    You can definitely tell stroke direction from a ballpoint pen, especially for short strokes and hooks, that often end with a very soft part. But in any case, stroke order is very easy to learn. You’ll pick up a few basic principles like top first then bottom, left first the right, plus the stroke order for common parts like boxes, without effort. That takes you 90% of the way, remembering the few exceptions is easy too. For me as a learner I never saw it as a burden at all.