Writing り, リ and へ, ヘ

[eeky]

Sometimes I practise handwritten Japanese, and I notice that my り (hiragana) and リ (katakana) are identical, as are my へ (hiragana) and ヘ(katakana). Should I be trying to make these pairs distinct? If so, how?

 

[Toritoribe]

り in hiragana is a bit curvy than the one in katakana, but you don't need to pay too much attention to it.(It's the same for へ and ヘ.) The more important thing, I think, is to differentiate between リ and ソ (also シ and ツ).

 

[nice gaijin]

ツ and シ still trip me up every once in a while when reading, if I'm not paying attention. It's embarrassing.

 

[Toritoribe]

Yeah, handwritten ones are sometimes tough to decipher even for natives.

We would be able to recognize known words relatively easily even if the kanas are confusing. The problem is for unknown words and the cases of the both kanas are possible. For instance, if I read a sentence メッシのファンです in an ambiguous handwritten kana without any context, I can't dicide which one is tried to be said, "Lionel Messi" or "New York Mets".

 

[hiptanaka]

Someone taught me a good trick for ツ and シ, namely that the positions of the strokes and the shapes are the same as the corresponding hiragana つ and し. That is, the former is drawn from upper left to the right then down and to the left, and the latter from upper left then down and to the upper right. Harder to explain than show on paper, but still.

 

[Toritoribe]

Here's another way to distinguish them.

Sentence structure? | Japan Forum

Actually, this is one of the ways taught to Japanese children at the first time to learn katakana.

 

[Angel Valis]

Sometimes I practise handwritten Japanese, and I notice that my り (hiragana) and リ (katakana) are identical, as are my へ (hiragana) and ヘ(katakana). Should I be trying to make these pairs distinct? If so, how?

へ and ヘ are indeed the same. However, if you'll notice, hiragana り has a hook on the left stroke pointing to the top of the right stroke, whereas katakana リ does not.

 

[undrentide]

When writing with a pen, no one really pay attention about the difference between hiragana and katakana り and へ.

Even if you use り in kanatana words or リ among hiragana, nobody would even notice it.