Learn to write Chinese characters

trevorb
October 16, 2010, 08:46 AM posted in General Discussion

ISBN:0-300-05771-7

AUTHOR: Johan Bjorksten

DESCRIPTION:This is a book that describes how to write chinese characters.  It covers a bit of history of various types of characters, the various types of stroke that are used in characters and then some examples of how the characters are written.  This bit writes the characters stroke by stroke building to the final character.  They are quite small but clear.

LANGUAGE: English

LEVEL: All levels, the characters explore are common ones but the stroke information and how to write them is a useful reminder.

I bought this book from Amazon.co.uk

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trevorb
October 16, 2010, 09:12 AM

For interest here are the names of the various strokes. The book goes into these in some detail explaining how they are written and where thepressureshould be on the pen etc.

横 héng Horizontal written left to right

竖 shù vertical written top to bottom

撇 piě Left leg written diagonally right to left

捺 nà Right leg written diagonally left to right

挑 tiǎo Variant of héng written left to right

点 diǎn a dot dot (can be long though)

钩 gōu a hook all sorts of hooked strokes

折zhé a bend written like L & along down

There are also some composite strokes

横折弯钩 - the second stroke in 九

竖挑 - the first stroke in 民 (down up hook ish)

撇折 - first stroke in 女

横折弯撇 - the 3 shaped stroke in 及

横折竖挑 - the bottom of the i shaped stroke in 说

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bababardwan
October 16, 2010, 10:06 AM

Thanks trevorb, it would be nice if google pinyin input let you type all those individual strokes for such a discussion. It looks l can type 丿but I can't type the stroke for 横 for example.

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trevorb

Yeah, the microsoft one is the same, makes you wonder hour you would write a book about it eh!

I did think about copying them with a scammer but don't want to get people in trouble with copy write issues ;-)

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bababardwan

I wondered if it would also be the case with other pinyin input method editors. thanks for letting me know