Thread: Effing problems with Cyrillic

I've been practising my cursive (curly joined up writing) Cyrillic for many weeks now, and am fairly pleased with the results. I don't know if a Russian could read it, but at least now I can, which is a big improvement on the scrawls I was making at first.

Only one letter still gives me problems, the eff (ф). I have seen several examples of it written in cursive, but I stil can't work out what order to do the pen strokes in. It looks rather like a q then a p written almost on top of it. Is that how you write it, ie, left-hand loop, then tail, then right-hand loop? Or do you do a sort of infinity sign then put the tail down the middle of it? And do you do the capital one in the same way?

I personally write it like 'q' and, then you are at the bottom, emidiatly start the part of 'p' from the lowest point (vertical lines almost as one). The capital letter almost same only bigger. I already forgot how my teacher in the first class taught me. May be some other way...

this is how I do it(it looks much better done in pen on paper... i had to use a mouse for this...). First I do the stem and then i just add the circles... if I had a scanner I'd make a better description.-- I usually dont connect the next letter.

Oo... stem first never occurred to me! Do you do the left-hand circle anticlockwise first, then the right-hand circle clockwise? Or right-hand circle anticlockwise?

Perhaps it isn't really important, but when I see my kids writing letters awkwardly I show them how the grown-ups write them, on the grounds that the "grown-up" way is easier to read and makes you write faster in the end.

First - left-hand circle anticlockwise, than line down, line up and finaly right-hand circle clockwise.

I usually do the stem as I have shown, then the left hand circle counter-clockwise and the other side however I feel at the time... ^^

Unfortunately I lift my pen off the paper when I write cursive, I am not an excellent teacher probably, although the professors who taught me seem to think I write well(and a russian lady from siberia suggested I do the stem first)-- like I said If I had a scanner I could show you a much better example, something like a child's book maybe like the post above did.

Originally Posted by Plastic-Saint

...and a russian lady from siberia suggested I do the stem first)...

Russian letters are not kanji, so it isn't too important in what fashion to write them, but Ramil's way is the most common and "correct" (if you may say that). Writing the stem first will slow your writing speed down.
Kids do that, or adults when they use block letters. Your russian teacher probably suggested to write the stem first to keep it simple.

probably. I must admit russian is the only language I use any script in... english and german I use block lettering and never learned cursive.(russian I was forced to learn it in)

Originally Posted by Plastic-Saint

-- like I said If I had a scanner I could show you a much better example, something like a child's book maybe like the post above did.

You could try to take a picture of it with a digital camera, then blow it up using your picture software. Once you do that, you can do a Print Screen and create a pic of that blown up picture, would not be the best but could do the trick.

good idea Tobii, but I think Ramil's example is best anyways...maybe next time ^^