is learning the very cursive and quite calligraphic handwriting of russian worth it or is it best to just print? who learnt it (or didn’t) and why? (if not, why?)
I know Steve’s opinion on this, haha.
The answer depends on the person and how much faith he has in the device he is using to write in Russian. Have your electronic devices ever given up the ghost? If so, maybe being able both to read and write scripts in Russian is something you should consider learning.
To me, these skills are useful, and yes, I learned how to write Russian in cursive.
Although my advice for others is “Do what works for you”, my personal belief is that it will pay in the long run to do things the right way.
People will notice if you do these things. People will take an interest in you and want to help you.
I’m not saying that I’m perfect in all the languages I’ve studied to a useful level; I’m not.
Nevertheless, I think I get a good response from native speakers and they are willing to write to me
That posted before I noticed that tag on there. Okay. Full stop.
I lived in Japan for nine years before the age of handy electronic devices, and did most of my business in Japanese. I never learned to write Japanese by hand and never felt the need for it. It depends on your interests and needs.
So, Steve-san, when you had to write something, how did you communicate? I suppose that you had pre-printed 年賀状でしょう？
Ja, Steve-san erai desu ne, demo watashi no baai wa, futsu Amerikan-jin desu kara…hisho ga nai na…
秘書=This hisho.
See, this is why everyone needs to learn Kanji, the script of the language (Cyrillic), etc.
There will be less mistakes in understanding.
Btw, Steve-san, although I was not involved in the IF challenge (Igor-Friedemann), I think that was a pretty smart move to do those two videos about political correctness; whether I agree with you or not is not the issue or even interesting.
I’m not terribly impressed by conversational polyglots who talk about languages. Everyone does that. I am kind of impressed by people who can lecture on engineering in three or four languages. Yes, they are talking about what they know, but at least it is not all about words, it’s using words to convey a message. So even though it matters not at all, I wanted to say “congrats” on taking up the challenge.
V8, We should learn languages for our own needs and purposes, for ourselves. It is not about performance. Obviously it is easer to talk about familiar subjects. As our needs expand, so do our abilities.
I agree. Each of us has our own needs and purposes, but since you brought up the topic with Japanese, how did you avoid writing in Japanese before electronic devices were commonplace? Did you write in English and simply use Japanese for socializing?
V8. I simply did not have any need to communicate in writing in Japanese. Most business dealings were done over the phone or face to face, and we had Japanese staff who wrote in Japanese for me when required.
Thank-you for your answer, Steve. I appreciate your honesty.
Although I can’t comment on the value of handwriting as it may or may not affect one’s ability to learn a language, I can say that I do enjoy learning to write Japanese characters by hand and find it to be relaxing as well as challenging. It has not had much practical value for me aside from a side effect that I am able to remember characters that I have learned to write, better than those I have not. Not that I can remember all the characters I learned to write, just that they seem to stick better once I have taken the time to learn how to write them. I have also enjoyed trying to improve my handwriting in English and would like to learn other scripts such as Russian and Korean someday as well. I know that many other people also derive considerable enjoyment from handwriting, in spite of the decline in popularity of handwritten letters and cards due to widespread use of electronic communication, it is still fun for some of us. I think that if you enjoy it, do it, but I don’t expect the act of writing by hand instead of by keyboard to work any kind of miracles.