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Left-Handed Japanese Writing

Sakide

Kouhai
15 May 2015
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こんにちは!

Recently I've started doing tutoring lessons in Japanese for someone, and it turned out she's left-handed. While her hand looks very good, it kinda seems to me that she's struggling a little with writing Hiragana the "right" way. Is there some way for left-handed people to use an alternate stroke direction or order? Like, right-to-left instead of left-to-right?

Or should I tell her she'll have to learn to write the "traditional" way? Will she eventually get used to it?
 
The stroke order should be the same way as the right hand because of the shape of the letters/characters. I saw some left-handed people rotated the paper to the right by 45~90 degrees when writing.
 
I don't know, personally I'd say just let her write however she want, I think its okay as long as the end product looks legible
 
When writing rapidly like a running style, kana/kanji written in wrong stroke order tends to be illegible, but, yeah, my advice would be more suitable for Japanese native children who have to write kana/kanji during their whole lifetime or serious learners who are going to live in Japan.
 
As a left-hander who learned correct stroke order but who has a long habit of incorrect stroke direction on horizontal strokes my advice is to tell the student that incorrect stroke direction adversely affects legibility. Not a problem when starting out or when writing carefully, but a soon as you start getting a little bit cursive the result will really throw many native speakers off track.
 
I don't know, personally I'd say just let her write however she want, I think its okay as long as the end product looks legible


You obviously have no experience with this. Writing "however you want" can result in writing bring illegible.
 
I agree stroke order is same as right hand. I have a writing game for Japanese children and the stroke order is exact same for both right and left handed people. The only difference is they change the screen orientation. As a left handed person learning Japanese, I have only corrected for incorrect stroke order, not how I write.

She is probably just not use to writing the Japanese characters, and her ability and speed to write them will improve with time. Her characters should become legible with practice.

Maybe, trying a different writing direction will help her. I write faster when it is top to bottom and right to left than left to right and top to bottom, but that is just me. Also, she will get better as she practices writing more.
 
Maybe, trying a different writing direction will help her. I write faster when it is top to bottom and right to left than left to right and top to bottom, but that is just me. Also, she will get better as she practices writing more.

I also find it easier to go right to left.

When you start joining strokes (not quite fully lifting your pen from the paper between strokes) you're going to find that Japanese people will often have trouble reading what you wrote. It does make a difference.
 
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