Hello welcome back, this is ChineseFor.Us Hands-on Writing – Stroke by Stroke. 我是Lili.
Hey everyone, I’m Chuck. So far we’ve learned all of the strokes
and how they’re constructed. And starting from this video we’ll be talking about the
stroke order rules. There are only 8 Basic Stroke Order Rules,
today we’ll talk about the first 2. Before we start please have your practice sheet ready.
It’s important to practice along with the video, we believe that understanding the concept
is only the first step, but putting what you’ve learned into practice is what’s really going
to give you mastery of Chinese characters. The first thing we’re going to talk about
is, do you really need to follow the stroke order? If you don’t follow the stroke order
can you still write the character? Well of course you can still write the character,
but knowing the stroke order allows you to write the character more efficiently and allows
the character to have the correct proportions. Also if you don’t know the rules of stroke
order, every time you write a character you’ll have to guess how to write it.
It’s a lot harder to remember a character if you write it differently every time.
Because writing involves muscle memory, you need to repeat the same pattern.
So, following the stroke order is the most efficient way. Here’s Stroke Order Rule
No.1: “Horizontal Before Vertical”. In Chinese it’s called “先横后竖”.
“先” means “first”, and “后” means “afterwards”
“先横后竖” literally means First “Horizontal”, afterwards “Vertical”.
Basically what it means is that when there are both 横 and 竖 in a character, you write
“横” before “竖”. Here’re some example characters. OK, first
one, 十(shí). It means “No.10”, remember? The way you write it, is like this: 横, and
then竖. Now another one. “丰(fēng)”; it means
“abundant” or “plentiful”. And when you write it, you’ll write all 3 横s first,
and then finish the character with 竖. OK, the third one, 干(gān); it means “dry”.
I’ll let you decide how to write it first. Try it on your practice sheet.
Yes, the way you write “干”, is write the 2 横first, and then 竖.
非常好！So now we’ll move on to Stroke Order Rule No.2. It’s called “先撇后捺”,
which means “Downward Left Before Downward Right”
Here let’s see some examples. The first one is “人”, do you remember this one?
It means “people” or “person”. The way you write it, is to write 撇 first, and
then 捺. Here’s another: 八(bā), it’s “the
number 8” in Chinese. And sure enough, you write 撇 before 捺.
The third one, “入(rù)”; means “to enter”. And we’ll follow the “先撇后捺”
rule and write it like so. awesome! And of course not all Chinese characters are
this simple. There’re often multiple different strokes in one character. And this means,
there’re also multiple rules involved. So we’ve picked one character where you’ll
have to use both Rule No.1 and No. 2. Ready? Here it is!
It’s pronounced “木(mù)”, meaning “tree” or “wood”. And here’s how
we’ll write it. 横, 竖, 撇, 捺. And that’s it!
But just like with everything else, there’s always exceptions. Don’t worry, just stick
to the basic stroke orders, we don’t have to remember all the detailed exception rules,
because whenever you learn a new character, there’s always tracing guide for you to
follow. The more you practice writing characters the
more you’ll be able to write from intuition. So, please download the homework sheet that
we provided for you. The link is right under the video.
So I hope this video helps and next time we’ll talk about 2 more rules. Thanks and see you
next time! 谢谢！再见！