How do the Japanese/Chinese study their alphabet?

Question

No offense or anything - I'm half-Filipino myself - and I really admire the beauty of the alphabet, but while browsing through a Japanese gift store (The DAISO, for all who know) the other day, I was intrigued... how do the people remember how to write and draw their own alphabet? I found myself struggling to even learn one letter, and I'm full of admiration for the people who have to learn a lot of this wonderfully creative pictographic alphabet. Any insight would be appreciated.

Answer 1

At the first step to study Japanese alphabet in writing, learning the stroke order of the alphabet is so important.

At Elementary school in Japan, kids start learning their alphabet from the 1st year. At elementally school in Japan, when teachers teach Japanese alphabets, they always very strict about following the stroke order rule,
So, many kids master the stroke order of every alphabet at first, while they are still writing some wrong alphabets to which right and left is written oppositely like reflected an alphabet in the mirror. then they learn or master correct alphabet little by little, some student take more than1 years to learn writing all alphabet (Hiragana, Katakana) correctly.

You can see how to write Japanese alphabets on following -learning site:

Answer 2

Hi, I'm a chinese. Well, first u have to learn the basic strokes.
Just like English alphabet where we have to trace the dotted lines.
All the characters are made up of those basic strokes which aren't a lot. Also, Chinese characters are derived from the objects which the character represents. For example, wood. The chinese character for wood looks like a tree trunk. It's not easy to learn all of these chinese characters cuz some are really complicated. Usually, we have to memorise them..writing them over and over again. I believe some Chinese find writing chinese tough too. I'm one of them.

Answer 3

Well,I learn Chinese as my second language.

First,when we are still 5 or 6,they give us these books to help us learn the basic strokes.All Chinese strokes are made up of these basic strokes(like a single vertical line,or a hrizontal curved line, or even just one speck,like this ` ).
Then as we get older,we learn more complex chinese words which make use of many of the basic strokes.We practise by copying the Chinese characters over and over again. It's really just memorising.
To improve our vocabulary,we just read,write and memorise. It's really hard for me too.My Chinese marks always pull me down. I would have gotten 1st in class if it wasn't for my chinese.......
Not only must we learn the characters themselves,we also have to learn 'han yu pin yin',which are the romanization(?) form of the words.

Hope this helps :)

Answer 4

Hello,

They learn from school there are about a certain about of chinese characters that a Japanese peson must learn , i should know cause i speak both.

I think it isn't hard it is just made out that way

じゃあまたね