I still won't be holding my breath until I meet him.
I would like to know on what you base your contention that learning 2000+ kanji is a
prerequisite to learning Japanese....that it must be done
first before starting to learn the language or one can never hope to hold a conversation in Japanese.
I learned kanji in conjunction with learning the language, while living in Japan. My kanji studies primarily consisted of flipping through
this book, which I never approached in a systematic manner and which I never "finished". I probably learned 700~800 kanji from the book.
Meanwhile, I got my first job in Japan where I actually had to use Japanese 100 percent of the time. All verbal and written communications, Japanese only. No English anywhere near the place. I had to display some ability to read Japanese in order to
get the job in the first place.....and it didn't take anywhere near 2,000 kanji. I had to display the ability to communicate verbally in Japanese and get the job done.....and I managed to do it without having sat down and deluded myself I had "learned" 2,000 kanji before I learned a word of Japanese.
I picked up a lot more kanji without ever actively studying them, just from surrounding contextual clues and from daily familiarity. At one point I found myself with some down time and I was always hearing the favorite question excited gaijin learners love to ask each other...."How many kanji do you know?"....so I sat down with a copy of Nelson's, went through it cover-to-cover and counted. I forget the exact number but it was somewhere between 1,200 and 1,300.
I started learning Japanese when I was 19 years old. Right now I am 47. To this day I don't know 2,000 kanji. I recently started using the "Kanji Sticky" app on my iPhone to help me brush up on my recall for writing purposes (computers
killed that!) but prior to that the last time I actively sat down and tried learning kanji was probably about 1989....over twenty years ago. (And this Kanji Sticky app is also the first time in my life I've ever used anything even resembling a flash card).
In the meantime, I still work in a 100 percent Japanese-only environment. I read Japanese novels, non-fiction, newspapers, work-related documents, and whatever else comes up and I do my reading the same way I have always done all my verbal communicating....without using a dictionary. I've raised my two children as monolingual Japanese speakers. At this very minute, my wife is lying in a hospital following an emergency operation a few days ago. One thing she didn't have to worry about was whether her husband who didn't learn 2,000+ kanji before he started to learn Japanese was going to be able to understand the doctor's explanations or handle the paperwork. Quite to the contrary, I was able to sit by her bedside and read pertinent explanations from hospital printouts to her
aloud and at a normal pace and without any furigana or a dictionary.
Now.....you tell me
your Japanese language background and perhaps a little bit more about how it is impossible to do anything with Japanese unless one learns 2,000 kanji
before starting to learn the language.
I
still don't know 2,000 kanji. And I can tell you from long and varied personal experience I don't
need to know 2,000 kanji. The average foreigner can get through daily life in Japan splendidly even with way less than what I do. Most Japanese get through daily life with less than 2,000 kanji.
I'm a big proponent of foreigners in Japan learning the language and most especially learning to
read, as illiteracy is a life-limiting curse no matter the circumstances. But the idea that one
must sit down and "learn" 2,000+ kanji before starting to learn the language is demonstrably total bullsh!t and from what I can see is primarily a position touted by people who have just started learning themselves, are outside Japan, and have no contrary examples around them to disprove their silly notion.
