Reading foreign handwriting

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drp9341
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Reading foreign handwriting

Postby drp9341 » Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:21 am

So today I thought of something interesting. I remembered how a friend of mine learned Russian through self-study and dating a Russian girl, (he's a native polish speaker,) and he told me that when he took a class in the Ukraine, that he was very confused because he wasn't able to read what the Russian teacher was writing on the board, even when she wasn't writing in cursive.

Then I thought of another interesting experience. My friend moved to a new apartment in the US, and all 3 of his roommates were recent immigrants from Mexico. They left him a note with the wifi name and password, and he had to send me the picture because he couldn't read what was written. I forget exactly which letters/numerals he had a problem with, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Even now in Polish, for example, when my girlfriend writes down a word, she writes a lot of the letters, (the " ł " specifically comes to mind,) and without her there to show me what they mean, I would never figure it out, despite the fact that I can read perfectly well on the computer/printed materials.

I know even my cousins in Ireland, (when they send christmas cards, and they "don't speak a lick of Irish,") write a lot of letters very differently, and if I wasn't taught how to read and write by my grandmother and mom, I'm not totally sure I would be able to read them 100%.

Does anyone have any interesting stories to share like this? And if so, could you share some pictures of the handwriting and show how it's different from the printed text on the computer?

(maybe we could turn this into like a reference guide for people struggling with this?)
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Re: Reading foreign handwriting

Postby IronMike » Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:46 am

No discussion on foreign handwriting is complete without this (too-often used? I think not) meme:

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Re: Reading foreign handwriting

Postby AndyMeg » Tue Oct 10, 2017 12:36 pm

I think what you mention happens in every language. There's the "ideal" way of how a letter or character should look, and then there's the real way they look when different people write them.

Here are different ways you can encounter the same hiragana (from japanese):

Image

Here is another example, this time from a korean TV Drama:

Image

The big letters above the people are the title of the drama, which "ideally" you would expect to actually look more like this: 사랑의 온도.

My korean teacher writes the ㅏmore like a ㄴ. We know it's actually an ㅏ and not a ㄴ because of the position in which it is written within the syllable.
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Re: Reading foreign handwriting

Postby aaleks » Tue Oct 10, 2017 1:16 pm

I was taught Russian cursive/handwriting in the first grade. Later, in the 4th(5th) grade, I was taught German handwriting. That was not a big deal actually. I thought that such a thing do exist in all languages, until I really started studying English :) . But when I have to write in English by hand I use cursive anyway because it's faster and easier.
Turning back to reading foreign handwriting, usually I can decipher handwriting in a language I know, if it's not a complete mess of course, because I've been training to do it almost whole my life :) .
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tarvos
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Re: Reading foreign handwriting

Postby tarvos » Sat Oct 14, 2017 9:29 am

I nearly always write in cursive
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