Essays
An App to Recognize Oracle Bone Script You Draw?
Reliably recognizing finger-drawn oracle bone script is hard, and a recognizer teaches you little. Here is the honest picture and a better way to learn the script.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Seal Script to Simplified: a Calligraphy Decoder?
Want to read seal script and write the modern form? Here is why a one-tap decoder is limited, and how learning the script evolution actually unlocks it.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Can a Hanzi Tracker Handle Vietnamese Chữ Nôm?
Chữ Nôm built Vietnamese writing from Chinese characters and components. Here is what a Hanzi writing tool can and cannot do for it, honestly.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Drawing Historic Chinese Script Forms: What an App Can Do
You can practice drawing historic and local script forms you have identified, but visualizing their history is scholarly work. Recognition is not recall, and a writing tool trains recall.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Practicing Ancient Chinese Script: Oracle Bone and Bronze Forms
Want to practice ancient Chinese script like jiaguwen or bronze forms? You can drill specific forms you choose, but reading them is specialist work. Here is the take.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Learning to Write the Characters on Old Chinese Stamps
Collect old Chinese stamps and want to write their characters? A writing tool teaches them; translation needs a dictionary or expert. Here is the split.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Writing Traditional Numbers for Old-Style Maps
Drafting ancient-style Chinese maps means writing the formal numerals and directional terms by hand. Here is the bounded set to learn and how to drill it.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Can an App Read Faded Hanzi on Antiques? An Honest Take
Reading blurred, fading hanzi on antiques is OCR plus paleography, not a writing app. Here is how to identify a worn character, then practice drawing it from memory.
Lawrence Arya··6 min
Essays
Can a Writing App Validate Historic Character Components?
For a thesis on historic character components, scholarly corpora are the authority, not a learning app. A writing tool helps you practice the forms; it does not certify their history.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Research
Why Korean Hanja Maps So Closely to Chinese Characters
Korean Hanja are Chinese characters used in Korean, so their forms and components map directly onto Chinese. That means Chinese writing practice transfers, with readings the one big caveat.
Lawrence Arya··4 min