And I still think even at that they’re over-simplifying. Like, I never hand “write” things - reports, letters, email, etc - in English either. But if I had to try to go through an entire work day without jotting things down on a sticky or steno pad, however temporarily, I would notice the handicap.
Sure, I could whip out my phone and type a note. Who does that?
That said, I practice writing kanji sometimes and not other times. Just because I like it. I don’t know if it’s “helping” (learn kanji, learn the language, either one) or not. It does force me to do some E → J practice though, which WK never asks for.
Unless you plan to attend a language school in Japan or live there (even if the latter is the case, you’ll probably only need to write basic things like your name and address, anyway), I don’t think writing will serve any practical purposes. If you find that it helps you with memorization, then by all means, go for it!
I think that this is a different and not completely overlapping topic. It’s true that some people want to learn to do fancy brush calligraphy and write grass-style on fancy 和紙 and they don’t actually care about being able to handwrite Japanese in day-to-day contexts.
However that doesn’t mean that there aren’t many learners who actually do try to learn “normal” handwritten Japanese, be it through strict SRS or just regular writing/journaling practice. It doesn’t seem that uncommon either.
For instance the Anki deck I made specifically for practicing kanji drawing has around 1500 downloads so far. That’s not huge but it’s also not insignificant.
I skipped learning to write, as I believe in the modern times it’s quite useless. It’s something that I’m likely never going to use, unless I live in Japan and have to do some old fashioned paperwork. But as I don’t have plans to move to Japan, it doesn’t seem worth my time.
That said, i could definitely see it being a good way to deal with leeches. We have mnemonics for radicals and kanji, so that there’s more things attached to that “memory” we are trying to retain. With time, a few of those things could fade, but having just a few remain could still let you recall it.
Adding hand writing to specifically ones ur struggling with sounds like adding a few more “branches” to those “memories”. Dunno if that makes any sense.
If you can write a kanji from memory without any visual hints, then it follows that you will naturally be able to recognize that same kanji, right? So, figuratively speaking learning to write Kanji is baging two birds at the same time rather than one.
Might learning to write kanji take more time than learning to recognize kanji? It might, but then again it might not. For example since I have trouble retaining Kanji with ‘recognition only methods’ and end up having to go back over the same kanji again and again, recognition methods (at least those that I have tried so far) tend to be much slower for me than if I had started off by learing to write the Kanji in the first place. However, that is just me other people may have a very different experiance from mine.
“Waste of time” is entirely a subjective concept relative to your personal values. If you do not value writing Kanji then maybe it is a waste of time for you, if on the other hand you value writing kanji it is then maybe it is time worthy or “worthy of time”.
I handwrite kanji because writing helps me to remember and retain kanji longer as well far more effectively than recognition only methods. Am I satisfied? Yes, I found the method that work well for me.
I use mnemonics for complex kanji, but I also like to write out example sentences or words that contain the kanji I am trying to remember. I think the context helps me.
There is no such thing as the perfect method without respect to person. So, of course you will get mixed messages, because we all have different preferences and goals when it comes to kanji.
I would advise you to learn to handwrite, but to save on time I would recommend only learning how to write all the radicals. When you have acquired a basic understanding of writing the radicals, it will be easy to write any kanji you know from memory since the only challenge is just knowing how to compose them together and recalling the correct order to write the radicals. This will save you a lot of the pain when it comes to recalling and writing kanji! To this day I am baffled by some of the students I knew in Japanese classes who insisted on memorizing every stroke of every kanji and then complained that the task was exceedingly difficult. Those not living in Japan still benefit from learning to write insofar as it will help when using a kanji dictionary and when reading the handwriting of native speakers; it even comes with the warm and fuzzy feeling–perhaps with some wrist tension accompanying it–of having successfully written something on paper in Japanese!
You should certainly remember the kanji by its components and not individual strokes, but the real difficulty still remains to memorize which components to use if you’re not just copying text. 鬱 is not really difficult to draw… if you remember the components.
