How To Write Chinese Characters

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[@MandarinBlueprint]

Join our challenge and reach Chinese literacy in less than 30 days 👉🏼 mandarinbp.com/get_the_challenge ✅ WATCH THESE NEXT How To Master Chinese Characters in Seconds ▶ ▶ kzbin.info/www/bejne/iYa5eYB7itGXaqs

[@cdLevo]

As bad as Duolingo Chinese is, their character tab, where you can practice each character stroke-by-stroke, is both well-conceived and well-executed. I just wish they gave you more freedom in how to use it instead of forcing you through the whole course first.

[@rastaarmando7058]

But that won't force you to watch an ad every 2 minutes.

[@cdLevo]

@@rastaarmando7058 oh dude honestly forgot about ads. My account has been bugged since I used it in Cuba, where they don’t run ads, and now I don’t get ads despite never paying for premium. It’s so sick

[@freetranslate-u8e]

duolingo is designed for people who just want to understand a few things every day though, or people who just want to learn a few things. If you’re serious about fully integrating into a language, courses are much better. Duolingo does a lot of memorization, and some people might find that overkill while others might appreciate it.

[@cdLevo]

@@freetranslate-u8e well yeah, Duolingo is little more than like a guiding hand into A1/2, I just mean to point out that specifically their character tab-like the mechanics behind it-is really great. It’s just unfortunate that the structure around it is so elementary Would be super nice to have their character system in a completely isolated application with all common characters available to practice

[@bobwang2837]

Approved by native Chinese, this guy clearly knows how to write Chinese in a very authentic way. There's one small interesting fact though, you mentioned in the handwriting of 有, peaple "changed the stroke order" to make it easier to write, what I believe is that it is actually changed in modern textbooks and the faster handwriting stroke order should be the original order, if you look closely at ancient calligraphy scripts and see the connectivity between strokes ancient Chinese people adopted. The same also goes for 右. 有 and 右 actually shares a common radical, which is the upper left two-stroke structure, it meant right hand and was literally a drwing of right hand in the ideographic script, and they sound similarly as well. However, you stil wirte 左 and 在 with the first stroke being the 横. I grew insterest in calligraphy during my high school days and actually found quite a few changes in stroke order like this in the modern textbooks like this (the most common ones being 成, 必, etc.). They might be related to the simplification or CCP coming into power and wanting to setting new standards. Nonetheless, I appreciate your effort into studying Chinese handwriting very much and sincerely recommend you to take a basic look into calligraphy. It might clear even more confusion about handwriting and stroke order.

[@GeoScorpion]

Oh, Thanks for this! One big issue I have is that I'm one of 10% of the population that is Left-handed. Fun fact: Only 3% of the Chinese population is and I can understand why as soon as I try to write Chinese characters and pay attention to stroke order and stroke direction: I am pushing the pen instead of pulling, or pulling instead of pushing which changes the stroke width and shape. There is not a lot of info on the Internet on how to deal with that in English or Chinese (though I just realized I didn't try to find advice in Japanese...)

[@chen8934]

3%? I thought it's more than that. I was born in the 90s and I heard many of the last generation of Chinese children were beaten up for writing with left hands. Then they just switched to right hands, while kept using left hands with chopsticks, etc. Nowadays writing with left hands is perfectly normal.

[@GeoScorpion]

@@chen8934 My generation here in the US was the first allowed to use our left hands. I eat and write with my left, but throw and shoot a rifle with my right. The 3% statistic about China I pulled from several sources on the Internet. That said, it IS the Internet, so take it with a healthy dose of skepticism. In any case the writing of Chinese characters and stroke direction is definitely backward. Hooks and curves are especially problematic.

[@chen8934]

​@@GeoScorpion Wow, I never know there were also problems about left hand in the US. But I have observed many people writing Chinese using left hands. It looks indeed very different from our right-handed way, but it's purely natural for them. It's more like me writing Arabic. You can just ignore how the teachers write while only focus on the character itself. I have even seen quite a bunch of people having no fingers but writing fluent Chinese with their fists, mouths or feet so I guess it's a matter of finding one's most comfortable way for writing.

[@chen8934]

Just curious did you also find it difficult to write in English? To my observation, the ways of writing English and Chinese by left hands look very similar.

[@GeoScorpion]

@@chen8934 My biggest problem writing in English is trying to write over the top of a ring binder and the fact that my hand smudges the characters unless I curve my hand to rest over the top of the characters. Writing in Hebrew was much easier, than for other Right-handed who were used to English now that I think about it...

[@jedidja]

That last handwritten example was awesome :) (The whole video was great too)

[@MandarinBlueprint]

Glad you liked it! Thanks for watching!

[@culturalist]

rote learning is not terrible, feel free to use it just maybe not as your only method. do what works for you

[@cbysmith]

It is if you compare it to alternatives. The brain isn't constructed for rote, moreso for association.

[@culturalist]

@@cbysmith yeah.. but rote prepares you for association

[@cbysmith]

Thank you so much Luke. I actually have you as an actor, but so far as I can remember, I only have you in 了 和 来 so far.

[@youngmaxwell7847]

Writing is a very enjoyable thing!

[@Zed7762]

You should make a video of all sorts of Chinese handwriting ranked least to most legible

[@user-ki6wm9yr8r]

你的中文真不错！讲得清晰又明了，谢谢你的讲解💯

[@user-yz1hg4ro6l]

Yes, it is cool, especially how you wrote 边. thanks for sharing this!

[@Banana-uc2bq]

Awesome video as always! One question: Doesn’t the simplification of the 氵(water) radical get confused with the 讠（speech) radical?

[@MandarinBlueprint]

No, in practice that never happens, at least from the perspective of a native speaker. From a young age, we're taught to distinguish these 边旁 very clearly, with completely distinct strokes.

[@pohlpiano]

Truth is, he is writing them digitally using the Apple Pen and also some software solution to get it on the screen, so this is definitely less comfortable than on paper with the proper pen, and often there is also a problem with the responsiveness of the digital device. Actually, nowadays even my 6 years old daughter can already use the pinyin input - I believe if her school would not force her (and we did not sign her up for extra training), she might never learn to handwrite these characters at all.

[@JuJingyi-rj4yb]

Finally after a long time 😌✨

[@kilecothren7494]

Awesome video thanks Luke!

[@MandarinBlueprint]

Glad you liked it!

[@mahshidpahlevani5266]

has pushed me to train my charackters😅 ty.

[@dawudsabih1860]

I'm sorry but I mentioned something, it seems like you wrote the first stroke of 戈 ，as 丿piě, where it should be 一 héng. It just seemed that way, please correct me if I'm wrong.

[@MandarinBlueprint]

Hey there, it was a 横 horizontal character, as you can hear, I said "left to right". If it were 丿撇 I would have said "right to left"

[@samm8654]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="661">11:01</a> draw vs write 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 LoL

[@HY-gw3si]

Aren't you supposed to write the dot on the top first?

[@panneiphyu-er9po]

牛牛牛🎉🎉

[@Barbarossa-heir]

我非常喜欢写汉子❤🎉

[@jytwang]

漢「字」喔！ 漢子means something else.

[@YUNXIU-EDUCATION]

汉子 means man

[@MandarinBlueprint]

Yes! the other commenters were right, be careful about writing the right characters or it could mean something else altogether!

[@user-nk2of9zq4u]

If anyone would like to be a language exchange partner please reply to this comment 🙏🏻 i really want to learn Mandarin

[@jaliltapiw3467]

First

[@haoyang-q3f]

哈哈哈 Don't worry we chinese would laugh at that, we write much worse 😂

[@jimhandsome3479]

That true

[@SVmathfarmer]

Hi Luke nice video. I’ve been writing characters since 2009 so I’m definitely ready to do the shorthand scribbles. Is what you are showing what they call “grass script”? My HW assignment this summer was a took a photo of a chalk written menu written on a blackboard of a local restaurant in my wife’s city 荆州

[@MandarinBlueprint]

“Grass scripts" is a misnomer arising from mistranslating the first character of 草书 as literally "grass", when it's actually supposed to be "sloppy/hasty" as in 草率. So the actual name is "cursive script". And yes, 草书 is very common in both calligraphy and in daily life.