How do I search the meaning of a kanji if I don't know how to read it?

What I’m I doing wrong?

This is a real problem. We don’t learn the stroke order here in WK and if it’s a kanji that I don’t recognize, how will I even know de stroke order BTW?

What is that strange loop doing on top? :slight_smile:

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Tofugu has an article on stroke order fundametals. Just apply those generally and it will get what you meant.

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Ok, no loops and I used the correct stroke order your picture suggested, it still didn’t recognize it:

There are two stroke order scripts for WK, once you know the basics you can also guess unknown kanji.

As others said the recognition from jisho is probably not the best, I would guess that your “error” was that the second stroke was too vertical and the system wanted to go with “|” instead.

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I have tried a crooked version of 大 (much worse than yours), and it worked.
Captura%20de%20pantalla_2018-08-06_18-14-04

Got it, I was doing the second stroke from down to up… it only recognizes it if you do from up to down

Great! :+1::+1::+1:

You could install something like TamperMonkey and this script to learn the stroke order on WK

I think jisho seems pretty temperamental, especially compared to Google handwriting input on my phone. I suspect jisho’s algorithms are less sophisticated and more fragile than other alternatives Pictured here is the same kanjii drawn on shiro by myself, @lamperez, and @tandeitnik. The first two match 大 but the last doesn’t. Sure, I’d say stroke direction could have also played a factor, but the red lines indicate, to me, that jisho relies a good bit on how the endpoints of the strokes align to each other in the relative space of the kanjii. I tried a few dozen times on jisho in a hurry and found Google’s handwriting input much more forgiving. ymmv, of course.

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Or handwriting entry, Google Translate again. For that you’ll need to get the hang of stroke order, though.

In my experience stroke order doesn’t matter at all on Google Translate, but on Jisho you have to use the correct stroke order and the correct proportions and the correct orientation and you have to do it during the correct moon phase.

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Because I was curious I tried some extra wrong stroke order for your example.

Midori gave me some nice suggestions, worth the 9.99$ for me:

Google translate:

So if you have an iOS device, I can really recommend Midori. For me it was the turning point in not being scared of reading content without furigana anymore. I’m still to lazy to do it but at least I could do it now :wink:

Jisho. You can just draw it. But be warned, it might not recognize the character immediately and give you a bunch of options that look nothing like what you drew. Or, if you know the radicals, you can choose the ones in the kanji with a different option they have.

Personally I use https://kanji.sljfaq.org/

It gives the option to ignore stroke order, which generally works well for me.

Mind you, I’m always on PC, I don’t know if it’s any good on phone or tablet.

I like Midori too and it’s what I use for all my kanji drawing look ups. I probably under-utilize the lists and history section but I should use more it given the cost of $10. What do you typically use for?

I only use it for looking up words (by either drawing the kanji or the kana because I never took the time to get used to a kana keyboard and I like drawing them). I don’t use the lists either because for me it is all WaniKani and Anki, nothing else. But to me it feels like the lookup functionality alone was worth the 10$.

Kanji handwriting recognition is the best things about Google Translate. Almost makes up for the rest of its failures :grin:

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Sincerely, between all the above sugestions, in my opinion the best one was by far “OCR from Google Translate App from phone”. 1) It’s FREE; 2) It’s really accurate; 3) Easy and quick to use. I’m talking about the feature of taking a picture of the kanji/vocabulary, not the handwriting.

Google OCR hasn’t been working for me for ages, and it’s been bugging me a lot.

Discovered yesterday I’d had mobile data turned off all that time…

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