Chinese: NOOOOOO you can't change the order of the strokes! Now your character is 100% unrecognisable even though it looks just like the computer version!
I don’t think anyone can actually tell; it’s just “the proper way of writing”. It’s like how English speakers would find it weird to put the alphabet in a different order, even though it’s basically random.
Fun fact, that's the best way to write the the circle A symbol used by anarchists if you want that spikey graffiti look. If you just draw the a and try to make the cross bar long on purpose, it looks too intentional. But if you do the cross bar first, it looks all random and anarchist-y.
In print this is not as big of a deal because, but it becomes quite obvious in cursive handwriting or any handwriting where strokes start to connect (and there is an expectation that they connect a certain way because stroke order is always adhered to). In running scripts stroke order can definitely affect character recognizability, the same as if you were writing an English word in cursive, but started at the last letter and back-tracked to the others in some random order.
It's actually very obvious in handwriting, because Chinese strokes are so complex and long. When someone writes, they usually almost just connect the strokes together without lifting the pencil much, so those familiar with the order can tell based on how it connects
I think there could be some order to it, somewhere. Like how the vowels go A E I O U which coincidentally goes from lowest vowel to highest vowel, front then back. But that's most likely entirely random
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u/wynntari Starter of "vowels are glottal trills" Dec 23 '22
Chinese: NOOOOOO you can't change the order of the strokes! Now your character is 100% unrecognisable even though it looks just like the computer version!