No matter what language you are learning, writing will be an important part in your learning process. It is also the same with
Chinese. In many people' eyes, the structure of Chinese characters is so particular, and it is also hard for them to learn the stroke order of these characters. Then what is the stroke order?
Stroke order refers to the way in which Chinese characters are written. "Stroke order" can refer both to the numerical order in which the strokes of a given character are written and to the direction in which the writing instrument must move in producing a particular stroke. A stroke is a movement of the writing instrument, in modern times most commonly a pen, pencil, or writing brush.
Chinese characters are used in various forms in modern Chinese languages, Japanese, and, in South Korea, for Korean. They are known as hànzì in Mandarin, kanji in Japanese, and hanja or hanmun in Korean.
Although it would take over a thousand years for uniform, defined forms of each character to appear, now, as then, each character comprises a number of strokes which must be written in a prescribed order.
The number of strokes per character for most characters is between one and thirty, but the number of strokes in some obscure characters can reach as many as seventy. In the twentieth century, simplification of Chinese characters took place in mainland China, greatly reducing the number of strokes in some characters, and a similar but more moderate simplification also took place in Japan. The basic rules of stroke order, however, remained the same.
Development of rules
The rules for stroke order evolved to facilitate vertical writing, to maximize ease of writing and reading, to aid in producing uniform characters, and to ease the process of learning to write. The rules of the stroke order were also influenced by the highly cursive Grass Script style of calligraphy.
In China, while children must learn and use correct stroke order in school, adults may ignore or forget the normalized stroke order for certain characters, or develop idiosyncratic ways of writing. While this is rarely a problem in day-to-day writing, in calligraphy, stroke order is vital; incorrectly ordered or written strokes can produce a visually unappealing or, occasionally, incorrect character, particularly in styles such as Grass Script, in which individual strokes are often combined in fluid motions without lifting the brush from the paper.
The Eight Principles of Yong (永字八法
Pinyin: yǒngzì bā fǎ; Japanese: eiji happō; Korean:yeongjapalbeop, yngjap'albp) uses the single character 永, meaning "eternity", to teach the eight most basic strokes.This character, meaning "eternity," contains 8 stroke shapes in 5 basic and compound strokes, and is often used for practice by beginning calligraphers.
In most foreigners' eyes, the learning of Chinese characters has become the most difficult thing in the world. However, facts have shown that it can be easier if the learners learn according to some rules. What are the basic rules of Chinese Strokes.
1. Write from left to right, and from top to bottom
As a general rule, Chinese characters are written from left to right and from top to bottom. For example, among the first characters usually learned is the number one, which is written with a single horizontal line: 一. This character has one stroke which is written from left to right.
The character for "two" has two strokes: 二. In this case, both are written from left to right, but the top stroke is written first.
2. Horizontal before vertical
When strokes cross, horizontal strokes are usually written before vertical strokes: the character for "ten," 十, has two strokes. The horizontal stroke 一 is written first, followed by the vertical stroke → 十.
3. Cutting strokes last
Vertical strokes that "cut" through a character are written after the horizontal strokes they cut through, as in 書 and 筆. Horizontal strokes that cut through a character are written last, as in 母 and 海.
4. Diagonals right-to-left before diagonals left-to-right
Right-to-left diagonals (ノ) are written before left-to-right diagonals (乀): 文.
5. Centre verticals before outside "wings"
Vertical centre strokes are written before vertical or diagonal outside strokes; left outside strokes are written before right outside strokes: 小 and 水.
6. Outside before inside
Outside enclosing strokes are written before inside strokes; bottom strokes are written last: 日 and 口. This applies also to characters that have no bottom stroke, such as 同 and 月.
7. Left vertical before enclosing
Left vertical strokes are written before enclosing strokes. In the following two examples, the leftmost vertical stroke (|) is written first, followed by the uppermost and rightmost lines (┐) (which are written as one stroke): 日 and 口.
8. Bottom enclosing strokes last
Bottom enclosing strokes are always written last: 道, 週, 画.
9. Dots and minor strokes last
Minor strokes are usually written last, as the small "dot" in the following: 玉.