The Traditional Character for "this" (zhè) ?

Hi calkins. In this case, it's a font issue. The more angular script is a relatively modern font. Having said that, Chinese is a language with many distinctively different writing styles. If you look up "Chinese calligraphy" on Wikipedia, you will find many good examples. The style you are learning is 楷书 (kai3shu1), which is routinely used to teach beginners because it is considered to be clear. Please try not to worry too much. The more "cursive" styles can be opaque even to highly-educated native speakers. About ten years ago, my (then-)boss was showing a Chinese Chinese scroll, done by a famous living calligrapher in China, to the Chinese Ambassador. It took the Ambassador, his Third Secretary, and my boss fifteen minutes of earnest discussion to figure out one of the characters, a particularly stylized "世“ (shi4, as in 世界 shi4jie4, the world). I think the clue which clinched it was that the Third Secretary realized that the scroll was a fragment of a poem which she had studied before. I get the feeling that Chinese people think this is fun! The two fonts you are referring to are - fortunately for you -- the most common fonts in use today. You should be fine if you can more or less handle them.

moi, éfrède ?-)

yes, cursive. thank you auntie68

P/s: The font you are learning is the Chinese equivalent of a classic copperplate script in English (ie, close to handwriting). The more angular font is a bit more like Courier or perhaps Helvetica (ie it has a more "machine-printed" style). Don't worry!

when I was in Shanghai last fall, I was looking for picture books that weren't fairy tales or simplistic stories, came across a series in the 漫画 section and picked up quite a few : 《一个人的第一次》、《一个人住第5年》、《不[喜喜]晕!结婚进行时》、《150cm Life 高木直子》. It's all about daily life and such. The interesting thing is, they're all using a handwritten typeface, quite challenging at times but you get used to it. This reminds me I should be opening them more often.

Calkins, where did you get the animation? It's really neat.

词汇中心 (vocab corner) : 字迹 zìjì n. handwriting 字体 zìtǐ n. typeface 字形 zìxíng n. style of characters

Hi. calkins, here is a little piece of advice: When you develop your own distinctive style of Chinese handwriting, as you most certainly will, beware of the "girlfriend handwriting trap". Just about every Chinese-literate European/ American male friend of mine has made the mistake of copying (whether consciously or not) their Chinese girlfriend's handwriting style. It's very embarassing to write something down in Chinese characters, only to have your Chinese friends, stifling giggles, ask you, "Do you have a Chinese girlfriend, by any chance?" You see, younger Chinese women tend to write in a "cute", curly style. It's sort of like dotting your "i"s with hearts instead of dots. Don't want to add to your anxiety, but this is very real! But it's a great ice-breaker...

Some of my Chinese books and dictionaries about historical phonology are all written in author’s handwriting. At first I felt somewhat cumbersome, but later I came to love to read them just because of their warm and personal tastes, but basically Chinese handwritings written by ordinary people are often very difficult to “decipher”. I believe that you need a capable native “translator” to read them.

different fonts are a challenge. The one I have the most trouble with is the handwritten form.

changye, I guess your experience with Kanji gives you at a serious advantage there... I'm actually curious, are there substantial differences in the handwriting of Kanji in Japan vs Hanzi in China?

Hi goulniky, The handwritings of some educated elderly Japanese are too “artistic” to read even for natives, but generally speaking I think that Japanese people, except for me, usually write in a relatively legible hand, probably because they don’t need to hurry when writing. In short, there are much less Chinese characters in Japanese sentences than in Chinese ones. For your information, let me show you an example, a letter written in very beautiful handwriting in the middle of the following web page. The writer is a famous Japanese novelist “川端康成 (Kawabata Yasunari)”, a Nobel prize winner in 1968. I cannot simply believe that his friends and people in publishing companies could read those letters and manuscripts. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4747bc0701008i7w.html

Thanks shangye, will probably post this under 88news

@changye What a beautiful example. I have actually seen dictionaries in Japanese bookstores that list various handwritten versions of kana signs and kanji, to help those deciphering such manuscripts. It has always seems to me a science in itself...

@furyougaijin, my website carries a scanned version of a lexicon originally published in 1909, handwritten by a French naval officer, Stanislas Millot. Under the preface, you will find a transcription (in French I'm afraid) of what he was trying to do, namely design a systematic process to identify handwritten, cursive script. I got permission to post it but never got around to finish scanning all pages or translated the notes... Anyway, there's enough to give you a feel, in all 7200 different entries from 草书 and 行书 styles. To give a bit of context, this guy was called upon in 1900 to decipher a message sent to a Chinese admiral then prisoner of the Europeans, which he said "even the Japanese couldn't understand, despite their constant use of Chinese characters". Obviously, you will only find traditional characters there, though simplification did borrow a lot from the cursive script.

Brent, that's so COOL the way zhe4 writes itself! Awesome!

Thanks everyone for the insight and encouragement. I will just accept it as is, and keep taking this wonderful language one step at a time! @Lunetta & Alice : This character is an animated GIF. I got it from Wiktionary, which is great for quickly looking up stroke orders. Oh, and inserting an animated GIF into a post is just like inserting any photo (JPG, etc.). @Auntie68 : No worries about the "girlie" character writing. My characters are very manly ;-) I'm used to writing everything in all caps (from my previous life as an architect), so that has actually helped in writing characters. @RJ : 6 year old writing skill level is great! Wish I could say the same. I'd even love to have the vocabulary of a 6 year old native Chinese. @Changye : Thanks for the great link! @Goulniky : Thanks for sharing your website...lots of nice resources there.

@goulniky That's an amazing resource, good job making it available! Not sure why you're afraid of French, though?.. (^_^)

we're doomed Brent. I sent some cards to China last year for new years and I addressed them by hand. One of my coworkers commented that my characters looked just like her 6 year old daughters. I guess that makes sense since Im just a babe in this language but it aint easy.