Comments on: Cyrillic Handwriting - Take Three!

By: Ashalynd

Ashalynd — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:02:37 +0000

When Russian people write (I mean, with pen and / or paper), they (we ) use cursive, never print. I remember my astonishment at the fact that my classmates who went to English classes have not been taught how to write cursive in English, but were supposed to print! In Russia, only preschool kids did that. I even thought that “they did not teach them the real stuff” because of this cursive issue (I went to German classes and there we did use cursive, by the way). Of course, this all happened almost 20 years ago, and many things have enormously changed now…

Nevertheless, as far as I know, having “good handwriting style” is still considered to be something of importance there. Of course if you don’t plan ever go there or exchange notes in Russian with somebody, you won’t have much chance to see and/or use any handwriting. Just keep in mind that using cursive in Russia is normal and using printed letters is an exception

By: anka

anka — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:34:40 +0000

I write in cursive because my teachers want me to. so that rather reduces the amount of time I’d normally spend on pondering which way is better.

what is a thousand times more difficult and more essential and more fun to learn than caligraphy is the whole twisted pronunciation

By: Yakov

Yakov — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:13:31 +0000

I also have not focused on learning cursive in Russian, given that I don’t even know how to write cursive in English (like you I use a “joined print” (in my case barely legible)), and that I almost never write in Russian for any communicative purpose, only jotting down words to myself occasionally. It is however very important to learn the printed “cursive”, which they use like our italics.

By: Helena

Helena — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:07:43 +0000

sorry what I meant to write was “I don’t think my knowledge of cursive will add any value to my knowledge of the language, (…)”

By: Helena

Helena — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:06:05 +0000

Hi.
I am not sure but I believe this is the first time I post a comment on your blog. Your posts are quite interesting and I can relate to them, since I also study Russian language.
I am now trying to “re-teach” myself, because during the last two years I had absolutely no contact with the language at all, but for around 4 years I studied with a native teacher, and then I studied during 1 year with a non-native teacher.
The non-native teacher would encourage the students to always write in cursive, and she actually refused to correct work if it wasn’t in cursive, whereas the native teacher really encouraged me to write in whathever way was more legible for me - that was also block letters, just like it is for you.
This way I ended up developing an active knowledge of both cursive and block cyrilic, but to this day whenever I have to think of the graphic representation of a Russian word, I always think of with writen in block letters and not in cursive.
I my knowledge of cursive will not add any value to my knowledge of the language, and just like you said, Russian’s already dificult enough, why make it even harder? For one year my non-native teacher just made me feel like I was back in elementary school, where “caligraphy” was a mandatory subject.
I totally agree with what you said about personality.
Congratulations for your interesting blog.

By: GeoffB

GeoffB — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:27:58 +0000

Josh,

I hadn’t thought about it before, but now that you mention it, I also write with joined print, rather than proper cursive. I’ve always found that by the time I slowed my cursive down enough for the “o”s to be distinct from the “s”s, the “m”s from the “ni”s, etc, it was just as easy to print and my printing was at least moderately legible.

I suppose you can’t look the part if after casually tossing off that thought in Russian script, you have to spend the next five minutes deciphering it. Your decision is wise.

By: Camilla

Camilla — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:28:53 +0000

Ah, that indeed would help!

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:26:32 +0000

Well, a lot of the time, I don’t fully lift my pen from the page; it’s more of a lighter dragging to the next letter. I guess my writing is a mixture of printing and cursive; most of my letters are the print forms, but they’re very often joined together.

By: Camilla

Camilla — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:23:07 +0000

That’s so curious. I could never get my print as fast as my cursive, simply because there are far too many extra penstrokes and lifts - it wouldn’t be physically possible for me. I bet it’ll take ages to get my cursive Russian faster than my print though, quite a bit of practice will be due i guess.

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:16:09 +0000

Nah, my printing is quite fast; probably as fast as most folks’ cursive.