From: Andrew Dunbar
Message: 5192
Date: 2005-07-30
> On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 12:59:53 -0400, Marco CimarostiI also recall the right-to-left CJK thread here or
>
> <marco.cimarosti@...> wrote:
>
> > Nicholas Bodley [mailto:nbodley@...]
> >> First, cultural; I have little or no idea about
> >> the sociology of "lefties" [...]
> >
> > I, for one, didn't even imagine that such a thing
> > as a "sociology of lefties" could exist. :-)
>
> Maybe I misused the torm "sociology". I was
> referring to prejudices, folk tales, supposed
> inferiorities and superiorities, handheld and
> hand-operated devices, et cetera.
>
> >> Second, for instance, the usual way to start to
> >> draw a square box, iirc, is to write the top
> >> stroke left to right, keep pen/brush in contact,
> >> then make the down stroke. IIrc, that counts as
> >> one stroke -- a bent one.
> >
> > Quite right, but you forgot the left side, which
> > is drawn first; the bent stroke for top and right
> > sides is second, and the bottom stroke is last.
>
> Thank you! A courteous correction. I try to write a
> CJK character only every few weeks, if that, on
> average, and never learned how. Keeping
> proportions is hard! It's like supervising a
> five-ring circus. :)
>
> >> More generally, this has implications for several
> >> details; is right-to-left (RtL) char. seq.
> >> acceptable?
> >> (My guess: Only rarely)
> >
> > Your guess is too possibilist: such a thing
> > absolutely forbidden.
>
> A local restaurant (Beijing Star, iirc) has large
> hanzi above its front windows, and they are written
> RtoL. Some time back, I asked about this, maybe
> here, maybe elsewhere; I was told that RtoL
> sequence is occasionally used, at least (iirc) in
> China, for ceremonial purposes, perhaps. Now that
> I think of it, I'm reminded of the Japanese taxicabs
> that are (or were) lettered front to back; that
> sequence is apparently much more important than
> RtoL or LtoR, so the left side says "IXAT" in
> romaji.
> [...]Really? To me it seems they rely heavily on the stroke
> > An orthodox stroke order is essential for at least
> > two reasons:
> >
> > 1) Developing a readable handwriting.
> [...]
>
> > 2) Being able to look up characters in a
> > dictionary. There are several ways of indexing
> > characters, but all of them rely basically on
> > the orthodox stroke order.
> In the past, I've studied some of the methods; TheFor me looking up characters in a Chinese or Japanese
> Nelson kanji dictionary was probably the first; I
> also learned about the "four-corners" scheme, and a
> four-digit index (iirc), perhaps related to the
> "four-corners" scheme. However, I'm relatively
> familiar with the usual radical and stroke-count
> indices, but given a particular radical and a given
> number of strokes, I'm lost and have to be patient.
> I'm thinking that knowledge of stroke order might
> help simplify finding a given character when many
> have the same radical and stroke count.
> >> Of course, top down doesn't matter as much.http://en.wiktionary.org -- http://linguaphile.sf.net/cgi-bin/translator.pl
> >
> > It does matter just as much. The rules of "stroke
> > order" determine not only the number, shape and
> > direction of strokes but also, as the term says,
> > their order.
>
> I'm sorry; I was too concise, especially for the
> context. What I meant was that when writing
> characters from top to bottom, in columns,
> "lefties" shouldn't have much more difficultty
> that "righties", to coin a term.
>
> > Most radicals are on the left, but some of them
> > are on right, top, bottom, or even on two or more
> > sides.
>
> Surely; thank you for refreshing my memory.
>
> > It is the geometric position of components which
> > is important for the stroke order, not their
> > function.
>
> >> It seems possible that an experienced eye could
> >> tell that CJK text was written by a "leftie".
> >
> > Probably that's much more difficult than with
> > Western scripts, because of the rigidly
> > determined direction of brush strokes.
> >
> > However, it is probably possible for an
> > experienced eye. E.g., perhaps the slant of
> > vertical strokes differ slightly depending of
> > which hand you used.
>
> (IIrc, Weiben Wang clarified this. I don't want to
> go back to see, just now. Trying to catch up...)
>
> > You are probably aware that Western left-handed
> > children, in their first attempts to write, have
> > a natural tendency to write from right to left,
> > mirroring all letters.
>
> Thank you; no, I was not aware of that.
>
> > Well, someone told me that, in Israel and Arab
> > countries, left-handed children have a tendency
> > to write from left-to-write instead!
>
> I *love* it! (US, and maybe Brit. slang...)
>
> > Yeah. It seems that, in the middle of the Sahara,
> > it is not so easy to buy toilet paper. :-)
>
> And water for washing is in very short supply.
>
> >> (Btw, boustrophedon, anyone? :) )
> >
> > Only when eating my risotto.
>
> :)
>
> Thank you, indeed!
>
> Best regards,
>
> --
> Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass. (Not "MA")
> The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath
> Inspired, long ago, by Dr. Mario Pei's books
>
>
>
>
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