A question for native and non-native speakers

[dwcarless]

For native speakers, when you see an isolated Kanji, how do you think of it? Do you think of a sound (like an on or kun reading), or of a word that it is a part of, or of a concept, or does it depend on the individual Kanji?

For non-native speakers (and maybe native speakers too), when you started learning reading, did you use a lot literature with furigana? If so, did you find it helpful, or did it slow you down long-term by having to rely on it early?

Thanks to anyone who shares!

 

[Toritoribe]

For me, it's the last one, totally depending on the kanji.
e.g.
愛: あい and the concept "love"

偶: ぐう and a part of a compound word like 偶然(i.e., not "たま and occasionally/rarely")

 

[Mike Cash]

Furigana is a crutch. We use crutches to help us overcome our weaknesses and shortcomings, but they are to be cast aside when we gain strength.

Once you learn to read along well without them, they can actually be distracting and slow you down as you're reading.

A problem with furigana in many books I have read is that they are used haphazardly. Many times I have encountered the furigana applied to not the first instance of an uncommon or hard-to-read word, but rather to perhaps the second or third instance of it. Conscientious editors/publishers will tend to apply the furigana to the first instance of such words in each chapter of a book where it may appear. Sometimes it may appear only the first time the word appears in the book. Seldom is it applied to each and every instance.

The usage of furigana is by no means universal. It sort of depends on the target audience, I suppose. I am currently concurrently reading 仏教聖典 and 座標軸としての仏教学. The first one uses the conscientious approach: applying furigana to the first instance per chapter for not-so-common words and writes lots of stuff in hiragana rather than kanji. The second one uses furigana exceedingly sparingly. I'd prefer an approach somewhere in between the two.

What will really slow you down, if you want my opinion on it, is developing a habit of looking up everything in a dictionary as you go.

Whether I think of an isolated kanji as on or kun reading depends on whether the kanji has a kun reading or not. Since kun readings are Japanese words on their own the natural thing to do would be to think of the kun reading. By way of illustration, imagine I asked, "When you see in isolation the word 'book', what do you think of? A book, a bookshelf, or a bookstore?"

 

[Glenn]

A problem with furigana in many books I have read is that they are used haphazardly. Many times I have encountered the furigana applied to not the first instance of an uncommon or hard-to-read word, but rather to perhaps the second or third instance of it.

Or they'll put furigana over a word that it seems like everyone can read but not over words that seem more difficult. I may not be a good judge of that, though, and it may just be that I've come across this because of my own shortcomings and lack of knowledge of the language.

...and writes lots of stuff in hiragana rather than kanji.

The translation of 西遊記 I'm reading does this too, and it's frustrating and I don't understand the practice. There are plenty of words that have common kanji that they write in hiragana for some reason, and it slows me down a lot of the time. One particular instance I can think of is seeing こころのこり amidst a bunch of other hiragana, taking a second to realize it was one unit, then after thinking that 心の凝り didn't make much sense, looked it up to find out it was 心残り, which more than likely I would have been able to recognize as one unit AND would have understood the meaning of immediately if it had been written in kanji. There have been a few times when I've gotten tripped up and ended up muttering だから漢字使え、ﾁｸｼｮｳ!

 

[Mike Cash]

The books I'm reading lately talk about 畜生, so I don't find myself muttering it.

I once had some fun at work when some of the guys were looking at a map. I looked over it and shouted out, ちくしょう！ Several guys jumped up and came to see what I had found, so I pointed it out.....see right here? 「ちくしょう」.

それは「たけまつ」（竹松）だ！

 

[Glenn]

Hahahaha, that's a pretty good one!

 

[Bubble Nebula]

At the beginning of my studies, I was confronted with furigana all the time because they were used in my university's texts and textbook. However, they only used furigana for new words and usually dropped them in the next unit.
I used furigana when I knew that we're going to read a text with lots of new kanji and I was afraid of forgetting the reading when it was my turn to read. Actually, I wouldn't have needed most of the furigana, but I wanted to make sure that I could read fluently, just in case, haha. ; )
Buuut I don't use furigana anymore. I usually don't have any trouble reading kanji that I once learned and I think that it helps me to remember kanji better without the help of furigana. I think every learner is different though, so everyone should find their own method that is best for them. : )

 

[Glenn]

At Doshisha we had texts with and without furigana (the same ones; all of them), so we could read through it with the furigana and then without to make sure we were getting the readings right. It also didn't hurt that the teachers would read them for us at first, too.