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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

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.
    - livueta 6y ago
      I think it comes down to what you're optimizing for, but disagree that stroke order is essential for learning to read. Like ddevault, I learned the jouyou kanji and some extras almost entirely without stroke order. I've never even tried to handwrite most of the kanji I know because I almost exclusively care about being able to read printed text, especially in contexts where tooling isn't available (image-format scans of paper things, inside old games, etc). This is obviously anecdotal, but not having ever written most of the kanji/radicals I know didn't seem to hurt me much outside of having terrible handwriting (in the handful of occasions I ever have to handwrite in Japanese, the fact that I'm doing it at all seems to override nitpicks) and sometimes struggling to read sloppy/highly stylized handwriting (which is a valid issue). If you enjoy handwriting/learning for learning's sake more power to you, but learning stroke order isn't necessarily an integral part of learning kanji if you don't mind the tradeoffs involved.
- Grue3 6y ago
  I learned all Joyo kanji purely visually via spaced repetition (Anki). I can't actually write them from memory because I don't learn the exact strokes, just the shape of it and some specific radicals that distinguish a kanji from similar ones. I also know the general stroke order algorithm, which I use when I need to input an unknown kanji from a book or a sign, but I just use kana input method for anything else.
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

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.
  - livueta 6y ago
    I think it comes down to what you're optimizing for, but disagree that stroke order is essential for learning to read. Like ddevault, I learned the jouyou kanji and some extras almost entirely without stroke order. I've never even tried to handwrite most of the kanji I know because I almost exclusively care about being able to read printed text, especially in contexts where tooling isn't available (image-format scans of paper things, inside old games, etc). This is obviously anecdotal, but not having ever written most of the kanji/radicals I know didn't seem to hurt me much outside of having terrible handwriting (in the handful of occasions I ever have to handwrite in Japanese, the fact that I'm doing it at all seems to override nitpicks) and sometimes struggling to read sloppy/highly stylized handwriting (which is a valid issue). If you enjoy handwriting/learning for learning's sake more power to you, but learning stroke order isn't necessarily an integral part of learning kanji if you don't mind the tradeoffs involved.
Grue3 6y ago
I learned all Joyo kanji purely visually via spaced repetition (Anki). I can't actually write them from memory because I don't learn the exact strokes, just the shape of it and some specific radicals that distinguish a kanji from similar ones. I also know the general stroke order algorithm, which I use when I need to input an unknown kanji from a book or a sign, but I just use kana input method for anything else.

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.