
Different languages: How cultures around the world draw shapes differently - hunglee2
https://qz.com/994486/the-way-you-draw-circles-says-a-lot-about-you/
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jaclaz
>they also suggest our tendencies get stronger over time. The more we write,
the more our habits become ingrained.

Not really a surprising/revolutionary conclusion, IMHO.

As a side note, this other experiment is interesting, what happens when you
are asked to draw a "common enough" (i.e. something everyone has seen and
used) and simple (yet more complex than a circle) object, like a bycicle? A
designer/artist asked people to draw a bycicle and then 3-d rendered the
sketch, Velocipedia:

[http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html](http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html)

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Geekette
That was a great project - it showed more nuance in how people communicate.
Interesting observations too; got a good laugh at the fact that oft noted
doctors' ownership of most unreadable handwriting prize translates to other
fields:

 _Some diversities are gender driven. Nearly 90% of drawings in which the
chain is attached to the front wheel (or both to the front and the rear) were
made by females. On the other hand, while men generally tend to place the
chain correctly, they are more keen to over-complicate the frame when they
realize they are not drawing it correctly. One of the most frequent issues for
participants was not knowing exactly how to describe their job in short. The
most unintelligible drawing has also the most unintelligible handwriting. It
was made by a doctor._

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barrkel
If you think of a circle as a big O, then most Westerners will start at the
top and go anticlockwise.

Myself, I start on the left and go clockwise. That's because my Os tend to be
egg-shaped, and I find it slightly easier to draw a consistent circle as two
semicircles, like a rainbow and its mirror. And of course from natural
handwriting, shapes like a, n, m etc. will incline me to go clockwise.

So to my mind it's the letter in your alphabet that's closest to a circle
given where you started, rather than direction, that matters.

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BrandoElFollito
Ha! That's interesting. As stated in an other comment, I drew the circle
clockwise (I am French).

After reading your comment and imagining the circle as a big letter O, I draw
it counterclockwise...

And then again, a neutral circle - again clockwise.

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mitchty
Ditto here, and I'm American so guess I don't count as western.

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notDavide
In drawing the circle I think it is more important where you place your
starting point than the direction of the stroke. Indeed if I start at the top
I draw it clockwise, while when starting from the bottom I draw counter-
clockwise. This seems to be the main difference between 'western' drawing and
japanese ones: the starting point.

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khedoros1
That's a good point. At least in my case, I started at the top, kind of
thinking of a clock, and drew in the appropriate direction.

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edanm
Fascinating article!

I wonder how much of this specific data was shaped by the fact that this is on
a computer? E.g. I "drew" with my trackpad. I ended up drawing the circle
clockwise, which is interesting, since I'm a native-English speaker, mostly
read/write in English (not much handwriting), but actually live in Israel.

I'm pretty sure I'd have drawn it counterclockwise if I was doing it on paper,
though.

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killbrad
This is fascinating. I'm an American and assumed most Americans would draw
their circles clockwise. Just all around a really neat piece. THIS is the type
of article that keeps me here. Great post OP.

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S_A_P
Yeah I drew my top start clockwise circle thinking all Americans/westerners
did this. Guess not.

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risyasin
Really interesting article. Nice read indeed. I always draw circles clockwise.
Actually I can write in several different alphabets. Regardless of which hand
I use. Just tested that. Latin/Cyril based ones on right hand. Clockwise.
Arabic or Kanas on left hand and again clockwise. But I don't think starting
point really matters. It's just muscle memory most of the time. Once you
learn, you keep it. If it was different, It should be counter clockwise on
left hand.

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padmabushan
Study cleverly skipped India. May be since it has lot of languages and has
been under western influence for long

~~~
killbrad
Maybe it was less sinister and just that there was not enough interesting
data?

Mini rant: No idea your nationality - most of the Indians I've met are some of
the most egotistical people in the world, and constantly feel the need to
interject themselves into everything. Maybe people from India just don't draw
statistically interesting circles.

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jerf
Now that's an insult I'm going to have to pocket for the Culture Wars:
"$YOU_PEOPLE draw statistically uninteresting circles!"

Truly _this_ is the argument that shall be the first ever to result in the
win-by-acclamation that so many have fantasized about online, yet never
experienced.

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kijin
This reminds me of something I saw in a symbolic logic course in college.

Many Western kids struggled to produce a nice-looking existential quantifier
(∃). I guess they instinctively thought of it as a mirrored "E" and found it
rather awkward to draw from right to left.

Chinese kids, on the other hand, treated the symbol as if it was the Chinese
radical 彐, which has an obvious stroke order: → ↓ → →. This resulted in a much
better-looking symbol. (Strokes within a single Chinese character almost
always go from left to right, even if the composition as a whole goes in a
different direction.)

I'm Korean, so I just drew a 크, which has the same stroke order as above.

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guruparan18
Incidentally I drew clockwise. From India. A native speaker of Tamil, and grew
up writing scripts that are circular [0](a even more rigorous circular ones
before[1]).

Not sure if the bucks the trend of others in India.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatteluttu_alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatteluttu_alphabet)

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m1el
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ens%C5%8D](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ens%C5%8D)

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pmontra
I drew the circle clockwise because I thought about clocks but yes, I draw c,
q, etc counterclockwise.

If you ever need to draw a circle without a compass see
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LvpCX89lHvU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LvpCX89lHvU)

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BrandoElFollito
I am French, I drew the circle clockwise.

I then asked my wife and she asked "left hand OK?", and drew it
counterclockwise. I then realized that I would draw it counterclockwise with
my left hand as well.

When asked to draw with her right hand, she drew it clockwise.

We are both right handed.

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jedberg
Not just the way you draw shapes but the shapes you draw are influenced by
culture and geography.

Draw a tree.

Did you just draw a stick with something puffy at the top, or something like a
christmas tree, or a palm tree? If you live in Hawaii, you probably drew a
palm, for example.

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shripadk
The problem with this is that I instinctively drew a circle starting from the
bottom and clockwise just because I was using my touchpad. But when given a
pen and paper, I would start from the right and draw counter clockwise.

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walshemj
Why would you not use a compass to draw a circle is that because I did TD
(technical drawing) at high school

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mto
Also westerner and also draw them clockwise.. Mostly from the top. I also
thought that most people would start "to the right" as we write in that
direction.

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Asraelite
It would be interesting to see the results of the same experiment with
illiterate people, or even people that can read but not write.

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Frenchgeek
And I drew it clockwise because I was using my right handed mouse with my left
hand. ( That way I can rest my elbows on my desk... )

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dmak
Couldn't it just be the difference between right handed and left handed?

