Chinese Handwriting

November 14, 2005 at 01:14 PM

I really don't know much about proper chinese handwriting, I don't mean calligraphy, I mean how the average chinese guy writes a shopping list or something. Do they write traditional or simplified? Do they join up each stroke like we join up letters? Do they have special quick ways of writing certain characters? I'd imagine if they didn't it would be really slow and inefficient compared to aphabetized languages like english and non kanji japanese. All I know is that they write boxes (normally 3 strokes) as one circle. Does anyone know how the chinese write? Any pix?

thanx

November 14, 2005 at 04:26 PM

The people in mainland uses simplified ones and those in H.K or Taiwan use the traditional ones. We don't write charactors exactly the same as the printed ones. Everyone has his own way to make write fast. And in most time, we won't get misunderstand by reading other's handwriting.

By the way, most Chinese haven't got the habbit of making a shopping list.

November 14, 2005 at 09:55 PM

see

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showpost.php?p=47974&postcount=2

and the surrounding thread for starters if you haven't already.

November 15, 2005 at 02:42 PM

On Taiwan people often use some simplifications in handwriting, but these are not always the same as the official Mainland ones.

November 15, 2005 at 08:56 PM

I think he's talking about cursive, not simplified or traditional

November 16, 2005 at 01:42 AM

Whenever I've seen a chinese person writing fast for the purpose of just jotting down notes, they dont' really connect everything together like we do, as it would probably be too messy or "cursive" and harder to deceipher.... however it still is often quite illegible to me unless I either know the context, or can just wade through the messiness and really come to see the character.

Basically, the same would go for someone trying to read our quick, messy writing: your friends at first may have a hard time, but eventually will be able to pick out the unique characteristics of your writing and be able to deceipher it.

As far as the quickly-written characters that I've seen, it just looks like a basic jumble of strokes that weren't carefully placed where they should be, so the characters look somewhat erratic.