[MMM]

Originally Posted by steven

It's my opinion that spending time learning the stroke orders of kanji and kana and all that is a bit of a waste of time. It'd be worthwhile to understand the general rules, like how you usually start on the left and work your way right (same thing with up to down)... other than that is, in my opinion, overkill. As you have bigger fish to fry when learning the language.

Native speakers can "read" stroke order and I have looked at kanji that looked fine to me, but a native speaker could see the order was off (not from watching it being written, but from just looking at the written characters) and it was commented that it looked wrong. Its liek riting liek this. You can read it, but it is written wrong. We don't have stroke order in English, so it is hard to feel serious about it. It is serious.

Originally Posted by steven

Incidentally, Japanese people put stroke orders on arabic numbers and the alphabet as well. Did you know that? I'm sure there is some kind of "stroke order" for the alphabet, so to speak, but it's not like anyone really cares. That's not to mention that the Japanese stroke order of the alphabet seems to be unintuitive (of course that's my opinion). As far as arabic numerals go, try writing a "7" in Japan the way it is here. They won't accept it on any documents or forms that you have to fill out. Sometimes they will mistake it for a "1", so they want you to write it like this: " '7 " (I'm not sure if you can read that, but hopefully if you can you get what I'm saying).

I hadn't heard that before, but it may be why native Japanese tend to have such easy to read English and numerals.

Originally Posted by steven

Ironically, I've heard Japanese students who are learning English stressing over the stroke orders of their alphabet, as if it mattered... oh wait, it does because some teachers might brign it up! Sorry for this little aside, but the moral of what I'm saying is that you should apply as little of your native languages rules and characteristics as is mentally possible to the second language that you are trying to acquire.

I totally agree. We don't have stroke order in English, so to apply that rule to Japanese makes little sense. Stroke order is important in Japanese. To add stroke order in English is just as silly as to take it away in Japanese.

Originally Posted by steven

MMM, I agree that part of the purpose of writing kana / kanji over and over is to increase recognition as much as it would be to learn "how" to write them.

As far as shortcuts in Kanji learning, it is my opinion (which is contested quite a bit apparently) that knowing the words to which the kanji are applied to helps to remember kanji. There are, of course, many kanji that are used for words that would normally not be used in everyday conversation (like technical terms and the like) which would be unrealistic to assume you'd know before you started studying them. I would argue that you shouldn't be learning those words before getting the basics down, though.

I am not arguing that learning kanji in words is a bad idea, it is helpful IN UNISON with learning the proper way to write the kanji.