What's the stroke order logic of 臣?
xiaophil
February 26, 2010, 01:49 AM posted in I Have a QuestionI recently tried to input the stroke order for 臣 into my cell phone's dictionary. I had a heck of a time because I kept thinking that the first stroke would be verticle (see 1b below) as it is with 口 (see 2 below). But no, when writing 臣 the furthest left verticle stroke doesn't come until the very end (see 1a). What is the logic here? Specifically, why is 1a right and 1b wrong?
PS: Sorry about the primitive drawing, hehe.
changye
February 26, 2010, 02:26 AMHi xiaophil
Here is the "authentic" stroke order of "臣" in Japan, which is different from the Chinese one. Unfortunately, mine is different from both Chinese and Japanese ones. Who cares? hehe!
xiaophil
Hi Changye,
I often wondered if natives ever have trouble distinguishing which stroke should come first. Since you don't know the so-called 'right' order in this case, it makes me think that maybe natives are sometimes confused too (or like in your case, don't care). Of course, you being Japanese, the importance of stroke order might be emphasized differently than Chinese society.
I mostly agree with you--who cares? But it can be annoying looking up a word using strokes, but can't seem able to find the right sequence.
changye
HI xiaophil
I guess that "right" stroke orders are not important for most Chinese and Japanese people, at least not bothered, partly because students are usually not required to write a Chinese character in the right order in exams. (This is not a joke) On the other hand, to count strokes correctly is important for people who sometimes/often look up words in a paper dictionary.
changye
That being said, I don't mean to say foreign learners of Mandarin have no need to learn "right" stroke orders. If you learn Chinese characters from scratch, I still recommend you follow "right" stroke orders, or, at least, follow some basic rules so that you can write good-looking characters. In any case, you shouldn't waste your precious memory overly sticking to so-called "right" stroke orders.
xiaophil
February 26, 2010, 03:03 AMThanks lu laoshi. I think I got it!
xiaophil
February 26, 2010, 03:09 AMHi Changye,
I often wondered if natives ever have trouble distinguishing which stroke should come first. Since you don't know the so-called 'right' order in this case, it makes me think that maybe natives are sometimes confused too (or like in your case, don't care). Of course, you being Japanese, the importance of stroke order might be emphasized differently than Chinese society.
I mostly agree with you--who cares? But it can be annoying looking up a word using strokes, but can't seem able to find the right sequence.
changye
February 26, 2010, 12:41 PMThat being said, I don't mean to say foreign learners of Mandarin have no need to learn "right" stroke orders. If you learn Chinese characters from scratch, I still recommend you follow "right" stroke orders, or, at least, follow some basic rules so that you can write good-looking characters. In any case, you shouldn't waste your precious memory overly sticking to so-called "right" stroke orders.
simonpettersson
February 26, 2010, 08:33 PMHere's the logic: The bottom horizontal stroke is always always done last (I'm sure someone can find an exception, but it's a pretty hard and fast rule). Since the left and bottom strokes are combined into one stroke, that means that entire stroke has to be last.
So why are the left and bottom strokes combined into one when they're not in the mouth radical? Well, in any angular structure like this, there's usually merging of strokes going on. Since the strokes in a box are always the horizontal one and the vertical one, which are done left-to-right and top-down, never right-to-left or bottom-up, that means the only strokes that can be combined are the left and the bottom one (you can't combine the left and top ones without reversing the direction of one of them).
The left and bottom strokes in the mouth radical could certainly be combined into one stroke, but for some historical reason that hasn't happened. Compare with the boxes in 母 and 贯. They're both done by combining the top and right strokes as well as the bottom and left ones. You can think of the mouth radical as an "irregular" radical with a special stroke order.
So there's the logic behind it all. The weird stroke order isn't in 臣; it's in 口.
bababardwan
"You can think of the mouth radical as an "irregular" radical with a special stroke order."
..really? You've provided a couple of good examples to back this up but from what I've seen I still would have thought this was more the exception than the rule ..i.e. that the stroke order for 口 seems pretty typical.I really don't know enough to know if what I'm saying is right though as I'm merely going from my observation.Is there any source that comments on this? My limited understanding about stroke order is that inside to outside,etc is all about not smudging the ink in the old days.I don't know if these are valid examples of what I'm saying or not:
面，鬼，贵，国，四
。。or if I've missed the point somehow.
bababardwan
February 26, 2010, 11:09 PM"You can think of the mouth radical as an "irregular" radical with a special stroke order."
..really? You've provided a couple of good examples to back this up but from what I've seen I still would have thought this was more the exception than the rule ..i.e. that the stroke order for 口 seems pretty typical.I really don't know enough to know if what I'm saying is right though as I'm merely going from my observation.Is there any source that comments on this? My limited understanding about stroke order is that inside to outside,etc is all about not smudging the ink in the old days.I don't know if these are valid examples of what I'm saying or not:
面，鬼，贵，国，四
。。or if I've missed the point somehow.
lujiaojie
February 26, 2010, 01:56 AMWhen write 汉字，we always write from inside to outside.