Learning to handwrite hanzi w/out Skritter

[cunzai]

你好。This is my first post here. I'm almost at an HSK 1 level. I'd like to begin working on handwriting, but I'm not quite sure how to go about it, as I can't afford Skritter. What would be an effective way to learn hanzi? I realize rote memorization will be involved to some extent, but, you obviously can't just write a character 20 times once and remember it (most of the time). How do I create an effective pen and paper method of learning the hanzi?

 

Any advice / experience is appreciated.

 

[大块头]

The app Inkstone is an open-source alternative to Skritter, though it hasn't been updated for a few years.

 

The book Learn to Write Chinese Characters by Johan Björkstén describes stroke order rules and is a good introduction to aesthetic considerations. Don't just copy the fonts on your computer or textbook!

 

The stroke order add-on for Pleco is a good reference for the stroke order of any individual character.

 

There are likely a couple shared Anki decks for this purpose that you'll like.

[cunzai]

Thank you for the response. Inkstone doesn't appear to be available on the Apple app store (unfortunately), but I'll definitely check out the Anki decks.

 

I actually have something else I forgot to bring up in my original post: would it be a hindrance to my learning if I learned to handwrite the traditional hanzi, while mainly learning with simplified? Most of the material I'm learning Chinese with is in simplified, but I want to learn traditional too (as most of the Chinese-language media I've come across / enjoyed so far is Taiwanese).

 

 

[abcdefg]

You could go about it the way Chinese children do during early years of their public schooling. Find some grid paper and copy the characters out of a "learning to write" book over and over. You cannot buy those typical cheap booklets of grid paper in the west, so far as I know. I went through dozens of them when I lived in China. Used to love filling them up. But you can print something similar. Have a look at Hanzigrids for one convenient source. They typically have subdivided squares to help you with the proportions. 

 

https://www.hanzigrids.com 

 

Very common there (Mainland China) to see young kids after school writing their assignment of characters many times, while mom or dad keeps one eye on them. One often sees this at an empty table in the back of a restaurant where a parent works, before the supper rush starts. 

 

One of the "low tech" and inexpensive things I did starting out was use children's vocabulary books from a bookstore. These usually had the pinyin for a word, a picture of what it meant, such as an apple or a dog, and the character drawn nicely to the proper proportions. Sometimes they even had stroke order. Usually no English, but it isn't needed. I haven't looked on-line for any such items, but I'll bet they are there.  

 

The bigger problem, I think, is sticking with such a plan. It is terminally boring and easy to abandon after a week or two unless you have a teacher pushing you pretty steadily. At least that was my experience. 

 

Edit: I just now googled "Chinese writing grid paper" and found several free printable sources. Here is one of them: https://writemandarin.com/grids/ 

[mungouk]

Welcome to the forums, @cunzai

 

Tofulearn https://www.tofulearn.com/ has word lists that can train/test handwriting for both traditional and simplified characters — look for the word lists that mention "writing" rather than "recognition".

 

You can download an APP or use it via the website. It's also very useful for learning vocabulary, and has many happy users on the forums here.

 

There's a paid "Pro" mode, but you can also use it for free.

 

PS: regarding Inkstone, the source code is available on github for anyone willing/able to build it for themselves.  It's very old though (in Internet years) and I'm not sure how complicated it would be to build a Cordoba-based APP these days.

 

[abcdefg]

On 4/14/2022 at 5:06 PM, cunzai said:

I actually have something else I forgot to bring up in my original post: would it be a hindrance to my learning if I learned to handwrite the traditional hanzi, while mainly learning with simplified?

 

Of course it would be a hindrance. Not impossible, but it would slow you down. 

[cunzai]

Quote

Of course it would be a hindrance. Not impossible, but it would slow you down.

 

Yeah, that was a bit of a silly question, it makes more sense to learn to handwrite simplified.

 

Although, I would still like to familiarize myself with traditional early on. Since I'm nearly HSK 1 in simplified, would it be better to go through a flashcard deck of the vocab (set in traditional)?

[mungouk]

What's your learning goal? Are you aiming to be able to speak Chinese conversationally, or pass HSK/TOCFL exams, or mainly read/write?  Possibly mostly writing for calligraphy?

 

If you're "almost HSK1" then you have a lot of work to do before you start considering learning both traditional AND simplified, unless perhaps you're only interested in writing/calligraphy.

 

There's plenty of discussion of choosing between simplified and traditional that you can consult, both here and elsewhere... for example:

 

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/25651-learning-traditional-characters-after-studying-simplified-for-4-years/

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/14713-learning-hanzi-the-eternal-dilemma-of-simple-or-traditional/

https://www.hackingchinese.com/simplified-and-traditional-chinese/

 

Edit to add: TLDR from the third link:

 

Quote

So, you know one set and want to learn the other? Great! First, you should consider when to do this. I would say that you should wait as long as is practically possible. If you do it early, confusion will ensue. If you know several thousand characters already, however, learning the other set will be easy.

 

[Qaamar]

Hi. You don't need Skritter. I studied through advanced level (reading modern fiction and beginning Classical texts) many years ago. As beginners we used Huang and Stimson's Written Standard Chinese Volumes 1 and 2. Each will teach you 300 traditional characters and proper stroke order. They also show you the simplified ones which you need to recognize. Once you have learned several hundred, stroke order will be fairly automatic for you when seeing new words. The book includes simple reading passages which give you some context and aids memorization. As for memorization we made paper flashcards, wrote each one 5x till we "learned" it then practiced reading. These books are still around for purchase and a used copy would be fine. Or if you prefer something more modern, I read somewhere that Kubler's writing books follow similar principles.

For me writing apps do not help me learn new words as muscle memory for me is not the same as on paper. So I still use paper flash cards as well as online ones.

[cunzai]

My learning goal is skewed towards reading. I'm not necessarily looking to be "fluent" in traditional characters at this point, I just want to start familiarizing myself with them. Going through a flashcard deck of traditional characters (that I already know the simplified form of) would be a tiny, supplemental part of my routine. I wouldn't be doing much else with traditional forms.

 

I'm a broke high school student, who's self studying with the abundance of online resources (most of which is in simplified). I'm also interested in Taiwan and Taiwanese media. So I just want to do something that'll make fully delving into traditional hanzi (in the future) more of a breeze.

 

 

[Qaamar]

I don't think it would be a hindrance to you to familiarize yourself with both at all. That's how I learned years ago and many US college Chinese courses still require at least passive recognition of both. People over-mystify all of this. Moving between simplified and traditional with some ease isn't that much more effort and has a lot of benefits.

 

Aside from creating some flashcard decks, I would suggest trying to find reading material on your level and reading as much as you can. Reading makes learning the characters much faster. Instead of learning flashcards and then trying to read, if you can find materials that teach you a few characters and then put them into sentences or even a short dialogue, the memorization part comes more naturally. You don't necessarily have to learn to write each character perfectly with 100% recall - writing is an aid because it uses muscle memory to teach your brain - but it isn't the goal. The goal is to get enough memory to recognize the character when you see it in a real context, like a sentence. The hard part will be finding materials at your level that a high school student can afford.

 

The Du Chinese website has some reading material that is free although they charge for some of it  https://www.duchinese.net/lessons/welcome.   You can toggle between simplified and traditional characters for each story. When you are a bit farther along the book The Lady in the Painting by Fred Wang updated by Claudia Ross is excellent. It is available in simplified or traditional (and booksellers sometimes send the wrong one....), but the updated version comes with a CD Rom (you need a CD rom player) where you can toggle between simplified or traditional while listening to the narration. The You tube series Learn Chinese Now uses only traditional characters in their short clips https://www.youtube.com/c/learnchinesenow/playlists.  

 

But for learning to read and write I have never found a better book than the old Written Standard Chinese by Stimson and Huang. This gives plenty of reading exercises as well as the clearest grammar for beginning students I have ever found. There are used copies on Amazon for $6 https://www.amazon.com/Written-Standard-Chinese-One-Publications/dp/0887101291 It teaches traditional written forms with simplified on the side. Most importantly it uses all those characters in sentences and short dialogues from the very first lesson. People nowadays don't usually recommend textbooks, but they have many advantages. Among them saving you time searching for resources all day on the web.

[SmartHanzi]

For reading, once you have found some reading material at your level, you might want to try SmartHanzi on Windows (www.smarthanzi.net/windows) or Mac (Mac App Store). Both versions are free and support traditional and simplified characters. Make sure to download the latest version (April 2022) with stroke order for all usual characters.

 

I can't recommend enough to look at traditional characters, especially if you are interested in Taiwan. Many characters share a limited number of basic components. Learning the most frequent components in their traditional and simplified form is more than helpful to memorize characters.

[cunzai]

@QaamarSorry for the late response, but thank you for the thoughtful reply. For reading material, I've actually found a couple websites that provide a good selection of short stories for free, that's what I'm using for now. I'm also big on Anki sentence decks for learning hanzi in context. When I reach HSK 3-4, I plan on getting some graded readers / begging for a Chinese reading app subscription for Christmas

 

I'm really intrigued by your textbook recommendation, and I'm definitely willing to give it ago, considering the price. There's not much information about it on Amazon though. Would you mind explaining the general layout of each chapter? Does it teach stroke order? What sort of vocab does it introduce?

 

[Qaamar]

No worries. I am still a new member so they take a while to moderate my posts. And free reading material online is a great way to learn. Some of these apps will let you read quite a bit before they make you pay. Here's the book info:

 

Written Standard Chinese (WSC) I and II both teach 300 characters per volume (total of 600 characters). (WSC III gets you to 1000 but my class used a different book so I can't comment). There are 20 characters in each lesson, 15 lessons per volume. It does teach stroke order using numbers next to each stroke. As you progress, less stroke order is presented as you are building on known components, but all new characters are illustrated full size. I'd start with Volume I even if you know some of it, as it sets the foundation, and covers common characters that have unusual stroke orders or rare radicals. The book explains in these cases why the character is written as it is.

 

Chapter structure is as follows: 1. Grammar explanations with example sentences in pinyin, traditional characters, and English (2-3 pages). 2. The 20 characters for the chapter on one page shown with numbered stroke order, notes and vocabulary list. 3. 4-5 pages of sentences using the characters in sentences and dialogues, first in traditional, then in simplified, for reading practice. The grammar presented is based on the SSC textbooks, but the writing books are designed to be able to be used alone. The original audio is no longer obtainable. (If anyone knows where to find copies of the audio I'd love to have them:))

 

Be aware that these books are from a different era. Written by a linguist and native speaker they are structured around sentence patterns rather than topics. For example, chapter 1 teaches you how to use Stative Verbs (adjs) to make sentences like "the mountains are high" or "the books are expensive" rather than teaching you how to introduce yourself. But since you are using contemporary online materials, You Tube, etc, I don't think that would be a problem. The first 600-1000 or so characters are ones you will probably want to know anyway. Ok, maybe not oxcart from lesson 11 but it's two words you already learned anyway ;).

 

If you can get these cheaply (and beware shipping costs) I'd give Volume I a try. I recently picked them all back up again to review my writing and I couldn't find anything as straightforward or as inexpensive. It makes moving back and forth between traditional and simplified very easy. Any other questions, please feel free to ask and good luck in your adventures with Chinese.

 

 

 

 

[Qaamar]

One thing I don't see mentioned above. Scroll down on this website and there is a list of apps/websites where you can get free reading materials of different levels. Can't personally recommend any but it seems a good resource. https://heavenlypath.notion.site/Comprehensive-Reading-Guide-from-Beginner-to-Native-Novels-b3d6abd583a944a397b4fbbb81e0c38c

[cunzai]

Just ordered a copy for six dollars. Pretty excited to receive it, being able to study some without a screen sounds lovely. Thank you for taking the time to recommend it and explain the book's structure.

[Qaamar]

You are welcome, and hope you enjoy your book. It is really pleasant to take a break from all the screens once in awhile:).