I don’t think modern Japanese was meant for cursive…
I also haven’t wrote in cursive in 13 years so that’s probably contributed somewhat
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I graduated from Law School in Brazil and knowing cursive is definitely not a requirement to finish college. They don’t ask you to read the declaration of independence or constitution in cursive font. The codes of law aren’t written in cursive. The textbooks aren’t written in cursive. The tests will be printed.
The occasions where you will might have to use or read handwriting (not necessarily cursive) are:
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When taking tests. There is no requirement to write the test in cursive, however if they can’t understand your handwriting you will lose points. So it’s perfectly fine and sometimes even encouraged to write the test or essays in print-type handwriting. Which is what I did.
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A teacher will use the blackboard. Obviously not all teachers have the best handwriting. Again, even if he had the most unintelligible handwriting this is not a dealbreaker because they will only use this to explain something, so you can follow up what’s being taught. A lot of them just use print anyways.
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Signing your name. You can actually sign any gibberish, so I wouldn’t even call that cursive.
I do know how to read and write in cursive (very badly though) but I can’t say that I would be able to read something like a doctors prescription (you’d have to go to pharmacist college for that 
).
@Belthazar Does my country have such a shitty reputation ? Can’t say that I blame you 
Sorry for the long answer, but some things just get on my nerve and I don’t even know why I care so much
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This would be an extreme example:
Try writing it vertically !
(これはべです はじめまして）?
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Earlier OP used college in Brazil as an example. That’s all.
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On more than one occasion, in fact.
Is… are you just trolling, now? Why are you learning to read kanji? What do you read when there’s no furigana?
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Honestly I would’ve liked learning greek more than cursive. It’s legitimately more useful in college than cursive due to the physics, mathematics, and electronics classes I’m taking.
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Oh yeah, I see it now. Sorry! We are a rough bunch of illiterate peasants but I swear we’re nice.
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I would like this clarified. What exactly makes it essential?
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In the UK we don’t use “real” cursive with that nonsense where an l looks like a b or whatever. We just teach smooth joined writing. It allows for fast writing, is really legible, and doesn’t look that horrendous.
But in my opinion, any neatly written letters, joined up or not, capital print or lowercase, look nice.
Often on UK TV they’ll show a historical document (e.g. marriage records on a genealogy show) and no matter the social class or education level of the presenter, they will struggle to read it and require assistance from a historian. Cursive is hard to read. Not being able to read it easily doesn’t make you “illiterate”, unless the sole things you need to read are birth records from 1789.
Also some people have dyslexia which compounds difficulties.
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I’m an old(er) person, and was taught cursive in grade school. There was more than an aesthetic value - cursive done well tends to speed up the writing process, so instead of having to lift your writing instrument to form each letter, you could just flow across the paper. Of course, that doesn’t mean my handwriting is any good, and generally tends to become unintelligible as I scramble to get my thoughts on the paper, and then go back to some garbage even I can’t decipher (much like the earlier poster showed in their example). However, nowadays it’s all about typing on the myriad devices, so learning that seems to be the highest priority. (And for someone like me, I CAN type a lot faster than I can hand-write, and it doesn’t look like a mess when I come back to read it several days later.)
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I mean, i’m in my mid-twenties and i learned how to write cursive. My experience is that the cursive taught in school takes me significantly longer to write, because it has a fixed form I have to conform to. I posted a small script sample somewhere above, my regular writing is cursive, just one that developed organically. It is therefore much faster and comfortable for me to write than the formalized one (I learned pretty much the top thing in the post you replied to).
Now the question is whether learning that had an influence on the development of my personal cursive, but I personally doubt it. Organic cursive is just a natural consequence of writing quicker and raising your pen less, rather than the other way around IMO.
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Haven’t read this yet, but the abstract looks like it might be interesting for this discussion:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220679809597556
Abstract
The relationship between handwriting style and handwriting speed and legibility was investigated. Three samples of writing (narrative, expository, and copying) were collected from 600 students in Grades 4-9. The copying task provided a measure of handwriting speed, and all 3 writing samples were scored for handwriting style (manuscript, cursive, mixed-mostly manuscript, and mixed-mostly cursive) and legibility. The handwriting of students who used a mixed style was faster than the handwriting of the students who used either manuscript or cursive exclusively. In addition, papers written with mixed-mostly cursive letters generally received higher ratings for legibility than papers written with the other 3 styles did. There were no differences between manuscript and cursive in terms of legibility or speed.
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You know what gets on my nerve? People who know how to read cursive and say “I could have graduated just fine without knowing it”, without having any idea how not being able to read what a teacher wrote on the blackboard would affect them.
Can’t remember the last time I saw a teacher write on the board in cursive. In books, sure. On the board? Nope.
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@args You seem to assume that your own experiences are universal, when in reality everyone has different experiences throughout their time in school and as an adult. Thus people have varying opinions. I don’t know why that’s such a huge deal.
Perhaps cursive is more commonly used where you live. But since very few people here use cursive these days, it’s not a particularly useful skill to learn and the large portion of time spent teaching it could instead be used to teach more practical skills.
Also historical documents where it was commonly used (such as the Declaration of Independence) have been transcribed, so it’s very rarely necessary that you need to read the original document.
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No matter how many times you people diss cursive, I simply cannot imagine an intelligent adult raised in a western country not knowing how to read it. A lot of you people have a skewed perspective because you actually can read cursive, you just don’t like it, so you actually have no idea what it would be like to simply not know cursive at all.
I don’t think that anyone who can read type can’t read cursive. It’s not a different language.
The only time I ever see cursive is on labels and logos where people try to be fancy.
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Italian here, the first one is what we call “corsivo”, so what is it? cursive? handwriting? italic? Call it whatever. But that’s what people are supposed to write handwritten essays and some stuff in (up to high school). That’s how I would always write until I decided that print letters are clearer (teacher get annoyed easily with cursive they can’t read and while I wasn’t really at risk, I also didn’t want to take useless risks). I would use that handwriting only for Italian (the subject), everywhere else (history, philosphy…) in print letters for clarity.
Now I always write in print letters (“capital” print letters because they’re easier and clearer I think) and never use that “corsivo” anymore. One thing I do not agree with you guys on is speed. I was faster with that handwriting than I am now with the print letters…blame the fact that the pen has to go up and down for every letter…
Print letters may be clearer but they are not quicker to write!
Also @Ornantius what’s the second style in you photo called? They look like “non capitalized print letters” but that “l” in “like” is “corsivo” to me, and there’s no space between t and h in “th” so I’m not sure what to call it…
Ah by the way, I’m twenty something, so I think “corsivo” is still very well alive in schools here.
I was wrong. In my mind cursive was very different from print but I looked at a picture of the two scripts next to each other (not in a sentence, just the letters) and saw just how similar they were, at the most basic level. Of course I still think it is absurd to not be able to read cursive but I understand now why people called it a “font”.
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