筆ペン, Learning Japanese (or Chinese) with "Paintbrush-Pens".
24 February 2016 [link youtube]
Practical advice for learning/studying/practicing Japanese (although the advice would be the same for Chinese).
Youtube Automatic Transcription
hey if you're learning Japanese you may
have thought to look into writing the language with a paintbrush Japanese and Chinese both struggle with the fact that historically the languages were not written with pens they were not written with knives or other metal implements they were written with a paintbrush as you can see this is what is called a brush pen it simulates a real paintbrush and the tip of it really is composed of a whole bunch of tiny hairs tiny pieces of plastic of course they're not not made from animal's hair so that you will get the effect to some extent of a paintbrush unlike a real paintbrush the ink is internal the edges of this are squeezy it is a soft shell pen and so if you don't have as much ink in the brush as you like you actually squeeze the body of the pen you squeeze the cartridge and that forces more ink into the tip into the paintbrush as it were so I'm here doing the traditional Chinese character for medicine the Japanese version simplifies that puts two of the two of the radicals are reduced just two brushstrokes modern Japanese and as you see if you take some time with it you can get some of the effects that snobs hope for their handwriting I'm not doing it terribly snobby job here but I'm just showing you you can get a contrast between thick and thin brush strokes you can get this effect of the the paint brush being lifted off the page and giving you sort of a faded out ending to your stroke and this sort of thing however it's an imperfect technology to say the least you are constantly managing how much liquid is in the paintbrush tip as I say by squeezing it otherwise fussing over it if you're actually writing out a page of text at the size of normal characters then well I mean just put it this way you would never use this to take notes in a classroom and you would definitely not put it in your pocket and take it on an airplane so you're limited to certain kind of desktop use however this fine fine tip if you're willing to pay close attention if you are looking with your eyes intently at the tip of the paintbrush you can get a very fine line not just a thick line it's not only useful for poster sized handwriting just giving two examples of common characters here so these are both traditional Chinese they're slightly different in their simplified forms as used in modern Japanese but I'm using the traditional character CC sort of complex and fussy character I have relatively big hands so this is the size of normal text you might take notes there are some coins for scale so yes it is possible even though this is a big contraction this is a sort of big fussy looking pen you can use a brush pen to get very fine lines that way but again your whole focus is not like writing with a ballpoint pen is going to be watching the tip of the pen move now the reality is so that that is a brush pen also called an English a full brush pen what I think the majority of people use the majority of the time definitely this was true in Taiwan in Taiwan most of the pens were buying were made in Japan is this this is a sort of hybrid this is a calligraphy pen that really is a marker so the tip of that is just a solid piece of felt with ink from an internal cartridge and you do not get any of these effects you get a slightly specially shaped marker now you can take that to the classroom you can carry that in your pocket the problem is really it's only good for sort of poster size writing not for a small fine handwriting and you don't get the type of aesthetic effects that snobs are looking for so this same company that made the full brush kind of showed you know there are many there are also these hybrid pens so this is a brush pen adapted so you can carry on your pocket you now cannot squeeze this it's a hard shell and when you take off the top again if you look carefully you can see this is um this does have fine brush it sorry bristles I suppose the word I'm looking for alright this time we'll do the Japanese versions of the character but actually I can see the problem already here so I can't control how much ink is really flowing through this with a real paintbrush needless to say you would control the ink by actually placing it on an ink stone or dipping it into an inkwell or what have you playing fast and loose with brush stroke order here actually you can see right there this is an inferior technology hmm does not work as well this this example turned out better than these and you can see I can't actually control how much ink is flowing through it but I guess you know if what you want is to get the sort of sketchy paintbrush effects you can do that with either pen not not really a useful aspect of the technology now historically Chinese and Japanese are perhaps extraordinary in having these these problems your piano calligraphy this is the sort of thing that gets sold these days this is a hi-tech calligraphy pen with a solid steel tip this is called a parallel pen because the tip is made of two parallel pieces of steel it will never wear down or or wear out very difficult to use for Asian languages at a small scale or with larger characters the differences may be subtle but again European calligraphy versus East Asian calligraphy or just just handwriting just being able to practice the language take notes it's amazing how worthless this sort of thing is compared to even the sort of mediocre hybrid approach dimensions more like a marker the Japanese have a huge variety of these things I'm showing you now this is a sort of high-tech supposedly hybrid pen for for calligraphy to make a long story short I don't recommend these they they really don't work out these basically have a ton of ink flowing through the tip so you can get some calligraphy like effects but you're basically stuck with either using brush pen or struggling along with a good quality ballpoint pen and the Japanese do make I mean these are for illustration this is the jelly roll they do make ballpoint pens that work well enough to write Japanese in a classroom although the problem is with all ballpoint pens frankly even conventional Western fountain pens your results will vary with the humidity altitude altitude because of air pressure and temperature of where you're living believe me I have experience with that you could have the same pen perform very differently in Cambodia and then get on an airplane and go up to Yunnan and China going from sea level in the tropics to 2,000 meters above sea level and in much colder climate and get very different results trying to write Asian languages that's about it as mentioned I mean Southeast Asian languages like Cambodian Sinhalese lotion Burmese language of Myanmar they were actually written using a metal knife to scratch the character into a palm leaf a leaf taken from a tree was used as the medium of writing other languages the history involves writing on leather on a vellum on parchment and so on but for languages that developed with a paintbrush still today for your own education really you're probably gonna be looking at struggling for some time your desk with a paintbrush technologically there's still no substitute for it
have thought to look into writing the language with a paintbrush Japanese and Chinese both struggle with the fact that historically the languages were not written with pens they were not written with knives or other metal implements they were written with a paintbrush as you can see this is what is called a brush pen it simulates a real paintbrush and the tip of it really is composed of a whole bunch of tiny hairs tiny pieces of plastic of course they're not not made from animal's hair so that you will get the effect to some extent of a paintbrush unlike a real paintbrush the ink is internal the edges of this are squeezy it is a soft shell pen and so if you don't have as much ink in the brush as you like you actually squeeze the body of the pen you squeeze the cartridge and that forces more ink into the tip into the paintbrush as it were so I'm here doing the traditional Chinese character for medicine the Japanese version simplifies that puts two of the two of the radicals are reduced just two brushstrokes modern Japanese and as you see if you take some time with it you can get some of the effects that snobs hope for their handwriting I'm not doing it terribly snobby job here but I'm just showing you you can get a contrast between thick and thin brush strokes you can get this effect of the the paint brush being lifted off the page and giving you sort of a faded out ending to your stroke and this sort of thing however it's an imperfect technology to say the least you are constantly managing how much liquid is in the paintbrush tip as I say by squeezing it otherwise fussing over it if you're actually writing out a page of text at the size of normal characters then well I mean just put it this way you would never use this to take notes in a classroom and you would definitely not put it in your pocket and take it on an airplane so you're limited to certain kind of desktop use however this fine fine tip if you're willing to pay close attention if you are looking with your eyes intently at the tip of the paintbrush you can get a very fine line not just a thick line it's not only useful for poster sized handwriting just giving two examples of common characters here so these are both traditional Chinese they're slightly different in their simplified forms as used in modern Japanese but I'm using the traditional character CC sort of complex and fussy character I have relatively big hands so this is the size of normal text you might take notes there are some coins for scale so yes it is possible even though this is a big contraction this is a sort of big fussy looking pen you can use a brush pen to get very fine lines that way but again your whole focus is not like writing with a ballpoint pen is going to be watching the tip of the pen move now the reality is so that that is a brush pen also called an English a full brush pen what I think the majority of people use the majority of the time definitely this was true in Taiwan in Taiwan most of the pens were buying were made in Japan is this this is a sort of hybrid this is a calligraphy pen that really is a marker so the tip of that is just a solid piece of felt with ink from an internal cartridge and you do not get any of these effects you get a slightly specially shaped marker now you can take that to the classroom you can carry that in your pocket the problem is really it's only good for sort of poster size writing not for a small fine handwriting and you don't get the type of aesthetic effects that snobs are looking for so this same company that made the full brush kind of showed you know there are many there are also these hybrid pens so this is a brush pen adapted so you can carry on your pocket you now cannot squeeze this it's a hard shell and when you take off the top again if you look carefully you can see this is um this does have fine brush it sorry bristles I suppose the word I'm looking for alright this time we'll do the Japanese versions of the character but actually I can see the problem already here so I can't control how much ink is really flowing through this with a real paintbrush needless to say you would control the ink by actually placing it on an ink stone or dipping it into an inkwell or what have you playing fast and loose with brush stroke order here actually you can see right there this is an inferior technology hmm does not work as well this this example turned out better than these and you can see I can't actually control how much ink is flowing through it but I guess you know if what you want is to get the sort of sketchy paintbrush effects you can do that with either pen not not really a useful aspect of the technology now historically Chinese and Japanese are perhaps extraordinary in having these these problems your piano calligraphy this is the sort of thing that gets sold these days this is a hi-tech calligraphy pen with a solid steel tip this is called a parallel pen because the tip is made of two parallel pieces of steel it will never wear down or or wear out very difficult to use for Asian languages at a small scale or with larger characters the differences may be subtle but again European calligraphy versus East Asian calligraphy or just just handwriting just being able to practice the language take notes it's amazing how worthless this sort of thing is compared to even the sort of mediocre hybrid approach dimensions more like a marker the Japanese have a huge variety of these things I'm showing you now this is a sort of high-tech supposedly hybrid pen for for calligraphy to make a long story short I don't recommend these they they really don't work out these basically have a ton of ink flowing through the tip so you can get some calligraphy like effects but you're basically stuck with either using brush pen or struggling along with a good quality ballpoint pen and the Japanese do make I mean these are for illustration this is the jelly roll they do make ballpoint pens that work well enough to write Japanese in a classroom although the problem is with all ballpoint pens frankly even conventional Western fountain pens your results will vary with the humidity altitude altitude because of air pressure and temperature of where you're living believe me I have experience with that you could have the same pen perform very differently in Cambodia and then get on an airplane and go up to Yunnan and China going from sea level in the tropics to 2,000 meters above sea level and in much colder climate and get very different results trying to write Asian languages that's about it as mentioned I mean Southeast Asian languages like Cambodian Sinhalese lotion Burmese language of Myanmar they were actually written using a metal knife to scratch the character into a palm leaf a leaf taken from a tree was used as the medium of writing other languages the history involves writing on leather on a vellum on parchment and so on but for languages that developed with a paintbrush still today for your own education really you're probably gonna be looking at struggling for some time your desk with a paintbrush technologically there's still no substitute for it