# Writing differently in different languages? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 11, 2009, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353 "2009-02-11T12:01:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/1 "2009-02-11T12:01:40Z")
In this article on [handwriting recognition in Windows 7](http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/09/recognizing-improvements-in-windows-7-handwriting.aspx), they say: > [@](#): > > Before I describe our collection efforts, I would like to answer a question we are frequently asked: “Why can’t you just use an existing recognizer with a new dictionary?” One reason is that some languages have special characters or accents. But the overriding reason is because people in different regions of the world learn to write in different ways, even between countries with the same language like the UK and US. Characters that may look visually very similar to you can actually be quite different to the computer. This is why we need to collect real world data that captures exactly how characters, punctuation marks and other shapes are written. When you write a different language, does your handwriting look different? Is it possible to spot the difference between an italian writing english and a swede writing english? How exactly does all this work? ---
**Author:** ![WormTheRed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/bbe5ce/32.png) [@WormTheRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WormTheRed)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/2 "2009-02-11T13:10:16Z")
My handwriting is equally crap no matter if I write in Icelandic, Swedish, English or German. But that doesn’t answer your second question. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/3 "2009-02-11T13:42:20Z")
I could certainly tell the difference between my Cameroonian student’s handwriting and an American’s. It’s been a while so I couldn’t tell you exactly what the differences were. But there were differences in how letters were formed, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Marienee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@Marienee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marienee)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/4 "2009-02-11T14:19:38Z")
Yes. Everyone is taught in school how to write, and what they teach here is not exactly the same as what I was taught in school. It’s not hugely different but different enough that sometimes I have to look more than once to figure it out and the reverse happens also. Also, the Dutch alphabet has one additional letter just to be different. I knew a handwriting expert in my former life who could spot the probable age and education type of the writer from the handwriting, and this was within the US. It has to do with what kinds of writing was taught when. It was not determinative but more like an educated guess. Still he was right more often than you might think. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/5 "2009-02-11T14:36:29Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > When you write a different language, does your handwriting look different? Is it possible to spot the difference between an italian writing english and a swede writing english? How exactly does all this work? Your quote isn’t about people writing in a language other than their own. It’s just saying that the country you’re educated in determines how you write. That said, I can usually tell by handwriting when the writer is from Europe, rather than from the States, whatever the language. And usually when people from Asia write in English, it’s a lot more careful and neater. ---
**Author:** ![WormTheRed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/bbe5ce/32.png) [@WormTheRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WormTheRed)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/6 "2009-02-11T14:46:40Z")
> [@Marienee](#): > > Also, the Dutch alphabet has one additional letter just to be different. What letter is that? ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/7 "2009-02-11T14:55:28Z")
It’s funny - when I was taking Japanese, all the Japanese people I knew exclaimed over how neat my Japanese handwriting was, while my English handwriting is pretty messy. I mean, obviously - I hadn’t been writing it all my life and didn’t know it well enough to scrawl it. Even when I started writing a lot faster I was still to some extent “drawing letters”. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/8 "2009-02-11T15:01:16Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > It’s funny - when I was taking Japanese, all the Japanese people I knew exclaimed over how neat my Japanese handwriting was, while my English handwriting is pretty messy. I mean, obviously - I hadn’t been writing it all my life and didn’t know it well enough to scrawl it. Even when I started writing a lot faster I was still to some extent “drawing letters”. Same thing with my Korean. I think it’s because you get sloppy with your own language after time. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/9 "2009-02-11T15:02:00Z")
I can pretty much always identify an American by their handwriting. There’s a very distinct style. ---
**Author:** ![Marienee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@Marienee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marienee)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/10 "2009-02-11T15:16:06Z")
> [@WormTheRed](#): > > What letter is that? The digraph “ij”. I am trying to remember when and by whom it was eventually declared a “real” letter, it was all over the news then. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/11 "2009-02-11T15:19:02Z")
From an individual - yes, my handwriting is slower, neater and more careful in another language than it is in English, my mother tongue. When I took French, German and Italian, we spent no time on the differences of orthography because it was essentially the same set of Roman characters with accents, diacritics and a couple of oddities like the German ‘ß’. When we took Russian, we had to learn a whole other set of characters, and the surprise was that even shapes that seemed familiar were formed in a different way. Pp in Russian not only stands for a different sound, but in Russian cursive the loop on the stick is not closed. Xx in Russian cursive is formed by drawing two parentheses back to back )( rather than two straight lines that cross. Mm needs a little bump on its left side to distinguish it. I’m sure that there are hundreds of other subtle distinctions that we never covered, and left to our own devices, my class’ handwriting would have been instantly identifiable as Western. ---
**Author:** ![chocolatefrog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/41988e/32.png) [@chocolatefrog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chocolatefrog)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/12 "2009-02-11T19:20:40Z")
English is my main written language and my English handwriting is a sloppy cursive. My written Chinese on the other hand is blocky, childlike and unsophisticated, mostly due to a lack of use and practice. You could easily tell the difference between something written by a native Chinese speaker and something written by me. I think the same goes for people who don’t usually write in a language that uses a romanised script. I can easily identify their handwriting because it tends to be printed letter by letter in a slightly awkward fashion. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/13 "2009-02-11T19:50:29Z")
Handwriting is part of a culture, a little like accents. All Italians I know write numerals in a much more stylized way than Americans, things like exaggerating the curly-cue in the “nose” of the 2. Most of the Chinese people I know who emigrated to the US have striking similarities in the way they write English letters, that is distinct from people born here. I have also seen similarities in writing of a couple of German friends that is not present in handwriting of Americans. It didn’t occur to me that anyone may have done a rigorous study of this. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/14 "2009-02-11T20:06:27Z")
My Bulgarian students had this distinctive way of writing “r” that made me CRAZY. Cyrillic doesn’t have the character R and my counterpart didn’t do it, so I don’t know where they got this, but they all wrote it like a cursive r, but without the stem leading up to it. It looked like an upside-down 2. I was constantly on their case about this because IT DIDN’T LOOK LIKE AN R. They’d argue with me about it, which also made me crazy. (Don’t tell me you know more about how to write the Latin alphabet than I do, kids!) It’s a good thing I’m not a teacher anymore. My own handwriting in Bulgarian is kind of weird. I was taught using big block letters, but no one writes like this, so I attempted to adopt the cursive Cyrillic that everyone actually does use. Although my cursive in Latin letters is generally accounted as quite good, it didn’t apparently carry into Cyrillic. (My students claimed my writing was illegible.) It’s kind of hard to explain, because although Cyrillic is obviously different from Latin, they do use a lot of the same letters, but even then they’re written differently, and in a very tidy sort of copperplate script that kids are taught from the time they learn to read. I ended up kind of inventing my own writing style that was based on the lower case printing style you sometimes see on billboards. I don’t think anyone would ever mistake my writing style for that of a native speaker, but at least it’s legible. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/15 "2009-02-11T23:38:38Z")
In Latin alphabet there’s no difference when I write the language. My (extremely slow) Greek looks like 1st grade. ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2009, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/16 "2009-02-12T08:18:16Z")
Well, when I write in English I usually use cursive, and when I write in Norwegian I usually print. But that’s not a Bilingual Brain Moment, that’s a matter of practical consideration. The way handwriting is taught in Norway is radically different from my American-Catholic-school cursive, and not everyone here can fluently read my handwriting. Being the furriner, I adapt, and print. It’s just simpler all around. ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2009, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/17 "2009-02-12T08:35:01Z")
My written Arabic would never be mistaken for a native’s… it is far too neat and “perfect” most written Arabic stuff looks more like a doctor’s prescription. ---
**Author:** ![Marienee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@Marienee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marienee)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2009, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/18 "2009-02-12T09:07:22Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > My Bulgarian students had this distinctive way of writing “r” that made me CRAZY. Cyrillic doesn’t have the character R and my counterpart didn’t do it, so I don’t know where they got this, but they all wrote it like a cursive r, but without the stem leading up to it. It looked like an upside-down 2. I was constantly on their case about this because IT DIDN’T LOOK LIKE AN R. They’d argue with me about it, which also made me crazy. (Don’t tell me you know more about how to write the Latin alphabet than I do, kids!) This is how the cursive “r” is correctly written in Holland. When my kid came home with a school cursive worksheet on the letter “r” I turned it upside down and told him he was supposed to be writing “2”'s because that’s what it looked like to me. Much merriment followed. So probably they got it in school, where everybody else got their ideas about how letters are supposed to be made. ---
**Author:** ![schnuckiputzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecb155/32.png) [@schnuckiputzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/schnuckiputzi)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2009, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/19 "2009-02-12T16:49:48Z")
I have taught Croatian students whose English writing is pretty much just block letters, and an Ivory Coast student whose ‘g’ and some numbers were very different. I tend to write better in German because I am still thinking about how to spell words as I write, so I slow down. My English handwriting used to be great when I taught second grade, since I was a role model, but now that I teach high school, it’s gone to pot. No pun intended. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2009, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353/20 "2009-02-12T17:00:52Z")
> [@Marienee](#): > > This is how the cursive “r” is correctly written in Holland. When my kid came home with a school cursive worksheet on the letter “r” I turned it upside down and told him he was supposed to be writing “2”'s because that’s what it looked like to me. Much merriment followed. So probably they got it in school, where everybody else got their ideas about how letters are supposed to be made. Well, like I said, my counterpart - the Bulgarian English teacher I worked with - doesn’t do that, and they learned to write Latin letters from her. So I don’t know where they picked it up. (It’s possible she used to write it that way and then changed it in imitation of me, but I doubt it because even though I am a native English speaker and her English is abominable, she never hesitated to tell me that I was making what she perceived as a mistake.) Anyway, the two classes of children _I_ taught to write Latin letters will write rs properly, and not the wacky Dutch way. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-differently-in-different-languages/485353.md?page=2)