What is Chinese Cursive_ _ TutorMing Blog.pdf

5/4/2015 What is Chinese Cursive? | TutorMing Blog

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What is Chinese Cursive? August 20, 2014 (http://www.tutorming.com/blog/index.php/what-is-chinese-cursive/) / Sara

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As a native speaker of Mandarin, a question I often get from my foreign friendsis What does Chinese cursive look like?

We dont really have a word for cursive in Mandarin. The closest is (cosh), literally means rough script. The character also appears in the phraserough draft, , however it is also the character for grass. Thus, you maynotice that sometimes Chinese cursive is mistranslated into grass script. Ifsomeones handwriting is messy or rough, you can use the word as anadjective.

Note: Chinese cursive is different from Chinese calligraphy. Calligraphy is theart of putting ink on paper in words. Chinese cursive is merely a style ofpenmanship. There are Chinese calligraphers that choose to write in print.

Below is an example of Chinese cursive side by side with normal Chinesetypography.



(http://www.tutorming.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/cursive-chinese.png)

Image Source: Wikipedia

As you can see, the number of strokes diminishes and the strokes mergetogether. To put it quite simply, Chinese cursive to us looks like Englishcursive does to you.

Most modern Chinese is written from left to right, however calligraphersusually write the traditional way up to down and right to left.

Cursive Chinese handwriting is extremely difficult for beginners at Chinese toread. In order to read Chinese handwriting, you need to know the strokes.Especially the order of the strokes, and which way they are written. With thosewho write with very languid strokes, even native speakers have those whatthe heck is that supposed to say? moments. There are times when someoneshandwriting is so scribbled that even were at complete losses as to what itsays.

That is partially why Chinese cursive is no longer as commonly used. It can bedifficult to read, and in the digital age, many people type on a computerinstead of writing things by hand.



Handwriting is sometimes considered as a representation of that person. Infact, people have once used these interpretations to compare the handwritingof two opposing leaders in Chinas history: Mao Zedong and Chiang-Kai-shek.

(http://www.tutorming.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/handwriting.jpg)

From Maos handwriting (left) we can see that it is very script-like. People havesaid that his handwriting has no frame, just like that of a poets, which theysay represent his style of thinking.

Chiangs writing, on the other hand, looks extremely neat and orderly. Eachcharacter would fit into a perfect square. People say that it looks like thewriting of a military man, which perhaps represented his philosophy.

What do you think? If you learn Chinese, would you attempt ?

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Comments

7 Stroke Order Rules for Chinese | TutorMing Blog(http://www.tutorming.com/blog/index.php/7-stroke-order-rules-for-chinese/) says:

April 3, 2015 at 1:06 am (http://www.tutorming.com/blog/index.php/what-is-chinese-

cursive/#comment-37748)

[] Chinese. Having the wrong stroke order would cause ink to falldifferently on the page and make Chinese cursive literally indistinguishable.No worries, were here to []

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