掲示板 Forums - How can I memorize Japanese characters better?

Thank you. Actually, I can identify hiragana and katakana now. What I'm wondering about is how to best approach writing them on paper, bc I also want/need to take lesson notes. I have written some notes, but ofc it wasn't great, and I don't remember stroke order that well.

I guess I just have to practice writing on worksheets, and get by with my chicken scratch notes until I improve...?

I was gonna write something about this which ended up going into too much detail at this point, because there are some strange discrepancies I've seen with kana such as も, and how some kanji such as 心 differs from how ふ is written. That would just morph this entire discussion into something else as they have their own rationalizations for how they're written. So I'm just gonna sum up.

I too took notes, and unless I'm mistaken somewhere, the general gist of all this is a process of elimination if you're gonna visualize and do it from memory. If there's a short stroke at the top (not dakuten/handakuten!), that goes first. Else, you look at the top left side and check for horizontal strokes. If not, then it's a vertical stroke. If it's not on the left side, then the starting point at the top middle suffices. Again, check for the horizontal first, then the vertical. Work your way to the right side, top to bottom. All of this basically follows the kanji stroke order. If you're addressing kana, like ふ, the bottom two short strokes are considered to be at the bottom, which goes last. First one is on the left, then you do the right side. That's basically it.

Interestingly, what might also help with writing (and reading) is when you deal with katakana, such as ツ and シ. Sometimes these can be hard to read by themselves at first glance, but more keen observers may see the differences more easily if they know a few things. The stroke order for these two kana don't exactly violate the kanji stroke order rule, and the order they're written is like their hiragana counterparts.

For ツ, the short strokes are first, but you start with the leftmost one, then work your way to the right and then do the final diagonal stroke. That diagonal stroke is written like most kanji I've seen, starting from the top right to the bottom left.

With シ, it's written like the direction し is written. It's the right tick, but because it's the topmost one, that doesn't violate the rule either. You do the next mark that ends up being on the left, but it's considered the "bottom", I reckon. Once you've dealt with these strokes, then you finish off with the diagonal stroke as if it were the tail end of し. Because the tail of し is flicked towards the upper right, so too is the diagonal stroke in katakana, by the way. That might seem to be an exception to the general rule, but that's one of the unique cases so far. Overall, this is one of those handy ways to tell (and use the stroke order) on the differences between those two.

And in case you have to ask, ソ and ン are basically written with the same concept as well.

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Oh wow, thank you for your very elaborate explanation! Which I have to admit was a bit over my head, beyond my knowledge, so I'll have to look at it when I get further along. I will re-read the シ and ツ part sooner than later, though, bc I did notice that the stroke order and direction for them were different from what I expected. How interesting that there are some "rules" that can guide one. But maybe there are some exceptions? I noticed that "horizontal goes first," but then there were some exceptions, when vertical was actually first, if I remember correctly...?

Gee, I can't even imagine.what writing kanji is gonna be like!

They're more like guidelines than actual rules, to me. I'd like to think that for most of the time, if it seems like it violates the rules, it probably actually doesn't. Like, there might be some nuance, though it could be for true some violations to occur that are exceptions (because, of course). All I know is that the order is usually about prioritization. It is worth a study though.

Learn learn learn!