哈囉，大家好！ 哈啰，大家好！
I’m Grace.
Have you ever wondered how, given that
each Chinese character has many strokes,
people manage to write them quickly
for class notes or when filling out paperwork?
As a native Chinese speaker,
today I'll share with you
how I write in daily life.
Some of the tips I provide
might also help you start writing faster.
Let's go!
First, let me give you a little background
on how native Chinese speakers
learn to write Chinese characters.
When we're young,
we start to practice writing them at school.
We’ll write a character over and over again,
understanding its radical,
the stroke order and writing direction.
After a lot of practice,
we start being able to write them
without having to think much about
their structure and their stroke order.
It kind of becomes automatic to us.
However, there is still a big difference
between how children and adults write.
Here,
這是我小時候寫的字 这是我小时候写的字
These are the Chinese characters I wrote
when I was little,
是我寫給媽媽的母親節卡片 是我写给妈妈的母亲节卡片
Btw, I’m from Taiwan,
so this has Traditional Chinese characters.
You can see that
each character is written quite big
and each stroke is rather separated.
This is usually how children write,
because they’re still practicing
writing Chinese characters
and getting better at it.
Now compare this
to my Chinese writing when I was in university.
It’s an exam paper on Chinese Philosophy.
This exam took about 3 hours
and I wrote around 2000 to 2500 Chinese characters.
I don’t write particularly fast,
but I'm fast enough to finish my exams
and take notes in class.
You can see that
some of the characters are more connected
compared to how I wrote as a child.
The strokes connect even more obviously
if you look at my professor's writing.
Here are some writings from my other teachers.
Because they have numerous assignments to grade,
they need to write pretty fast.
You can see that they connect many strokes
and write quite like cursive.
Honestly, I can’t even read some of the words sometimes
because they’re written too cursively.
This is just to show you
how the Chinese characters can look like
when native speakers write fast,
but it doesn’t mean that you need to write like this,
I personally don’t write so cursively.
But I still write way faster
compared to how I wrote as a child.
Now let’s talk about the reasons
why I’m writing faster now.
Firstly, it’s because…
As I mentioned earlier,
when we’re children,
we learn to write Chinese characters
with their stroke order and writing direction.
After a lot of practice,
now when I’m writing a character,
I write down one stroke,
and I’ll immediately know
where the next stroke is
and my hand would just move there
without much thinking.
So if you’re also practicing or planning to
start writing Chinese characters,
it’s important to know their stroke order
and the direction to write them in,
like from left to right, from top to bottom etc.
By practicing them
with their stroke order and direction,
you’ll start developing
muscle memory in writing them.
And if you need help with that,
I recommend using Skritter,
it’s a useful tool
for helping you learn Chinese characters.
It not only provides you with a guide
on how to write each character,
you can also learn more details about
the characters along the way.
I’ll put the link in the description,
feel free to check it out!
But if you want a free tool,
you could use “Pleco”,
a Chinese dictionary.
You can search a word in it
and click on “stroke”
then you can see the stroke order
for that particular character.
OK, The second reason is that
When I was little,
I learned to write Chinese characters
stroke by stroke,
which is crucial for building a strong foundation.
However, as we grow older
and face situations that require faster writing,
many people begin to
connect some strokes in characters.
For example,
here is how to write “所以 (so)” in a standard way.
But the way I’ll write it now is…
I connect some strokes when writing,
and while doing so,
I also change the original direction
of how some strokes should be written, like this:
I also do this with 口
when it is used as a component, like this:
It’s just the way I do it
because it helps me write faster,
but it doesn’t mean that
every native Chinese speaker
writes in this way.
People have their own preferred ways
to connect strokes,
which is why there are many different writing styles.
I also have a friend
who doesn’t connect strokes
yet still writes quite fast.
Here is what her writing looks like.
Now I’ll demonstrate
five common words
to give you a sense of
how I connect some strokes when writing.
These words are the same in both
simplified and traditional characters,
so don’t worry about the difference.
Also, just a heads up
the stroke order I use
might not be the most standard
Because as I was growing up,
I may have developed some habits
that made it easier for me to write
and became accustomed to writing in that way.
Now, let’s take a look at them:
The last tip I use
to make myself write faster is
In traditional Chinese,
some characters really have
a lot of strokes.
As a traditional character user,
sometimes I simplify complex characters.
I learned most of the simplified versions
from my teachers.
For example,
I have a teacher
who always wrote 數 like this
So I started to write like this as well.
Some other examples,
You can see that some of these
are not the same as
the standard simplified characters.
This is mostly because
they’re usually just for yourself to read,
so you can simplify it quite freely.
However, it's important to note that
we usually do this only
when the writing is for personal use
such as taking notes in class
or writing to-do lists.
When I’m writing assignments
or filling out paperwork,
I never make these simplifications
because others might not understand
what I’ve written.
Today’s video is not a tutorial
on exactly how to write faster.
As you've seen,
people have different writing styles,
and my intention is simply to
share my personal experience.
I hope you find it both fun and helpful!
Now, I’m curious—
have you ever felt like
you don’t write fast enough?
Or, if you do write quickly,
what’s your secret?
What techniques have you used
to improve your writing speed?
feel free to share them in the comments.
By the way,
I’m also considering making a video about
the basics of writing Chinese characters
but I’m not sure
if there’s much interest in that.
Please comment and let me know
if you would find this type of content helpful.
Alright!
如果你喜歡今天的影片 如果你喜欢今天的影片
別忘記按讚、訂閱和分享哦！ 别忘记按赞、订阅和分享哦！
And also, if you would like to support me
in making more content,
please visit my ko-fi page.
The link is in the description below.
Thank you so much!
Last but not least,
if you want to learn some
daily Mandarin expressions,
check out my Instagram @gracemandarin
那我們下次見囉！拜拜！ 那我们下次见啰！拜拜！