Japanese without KANJI ? possible ?
- Thread starter Ninjai
- Start date
Coffeesan
先輩
- 6 Jul 2011
- 164
- 3
Kana is basically used to write things in ''basic'' but Kanji is used to represent concepts/ideas thats why theres so bloody many. You're pretty screwed without Kanji I'm afraid mate. However as I've been told you ''only'' need to learn 1500-2000ish to get by in Japanese. Theres something like 60,000+ but the majority are either obsolete or not used in daily life.
http://
www.
kanji-a-day
.com/100kanji.php
This is apparently the 100 most used Kanji try and learn some of these, thats what I'm doing currently.
Half-n-Half
先輩
- 17 Jul 2007
- 920
- 70
You won't be able to read without kanji. Imagine never learning how to read in your mother tongue. Sure, maybe you can speak the language, but probably not at a very high/educated level.
nekojita
先輩
- 14 Jan 2009
- 1,660
- 444
Think of it this way: when you were in primary school, if you looked at a high school textbook, it would have seemed impossible that you'd ever be able to understand it.
Any language takes a long time to learn, there's no way around it. If you had those same sentences you see on the internet in kana, you still probably couldn't make sense of it, because you haven't learnt the grammar and words yet (all kana for a learner can be harder because it makes it more difficult to know where the boundaries of words are, and kana reading isn't always perfectly phonetic, e.g. してはいけません).
What you should do, instead of worrying about the "end goal", is set yourself some smaller goals. Things like what Coffeesan is doing.
Although that particular kanji list looks very odd - I wonder which websites they used to make the list up? I find it hard to believe a list which has 舞 on it as one of the top 100 kanji - and above things like 心! And 稿 - that's not common at all. I think it's being biased by the input sample - e.g. the word 検索 is very common on websites, so 検 and 索 appear high on that list.
All lists of this sort suffer from bias - many "common word" lists are made up from newspapers, and tend to be weighted towards things like economic/political terms. That's not to say that a list like that isn't useful in some circumstances, but if you're not really interested in reading the business section of the newspaper then it might not be high priority.
Any language takes a long time to learn, there's no way around it. If you had those same sentences you see on the internet in kana, you still probably couldn't make sense of it, because you haven't learnt the grammar and words yet (all kana for a learner can be harder because it makes it more difficult to know where the boundaries of words are, and kana reading isn't always perfectly phonetic, e.g. してはいけません).
What you should do, instead of worrying about the "end goal", is set yourself some smaller goals. Things like what Coffeesan is doing.
Although that particular kanji list looks very odd - I wonder which websites they used to make the list up? I find it hard to believe a list which has 舞 on it as one of the top 100 kanji - and above things like 心! And 稿 - that's not common at all. I think it's being biased by the input sample - e.g. the word 検索 is very common on websites, so 検 and 索 appear high on that list.
All lists of this sort suffer from bias - many "common word" lists are made up from newspapers, and tend to be weighted towards things like economic/political terms. That's not to say that a list like that isn't useful in some circumstances, but if you're not really interested in reading the business section of the newspaper then it might not be high priority.
Coffeesan
先輩
- 6 Jul 2011
- 164
- 3
I agree a lot of the Kanji on that site arent useful for newbies in my opinion. As I said in another thread I think about a third are quite useful. But things like the Kanji for Rice Paddy... I know the Kanji because its so simple and distinctive but will I use it in daily Japanese? Probably not
Maybe for anyone who's interested... we could compile a list of ''essential'' Kanji for beginners. By essential I mean things that would be quite useful in sentences stuff like Kanji for person, time, I, know, say, think, what, going etc
I've been trying to compile a list of Kanji to make kind of a ''Japanese Dolch list'' but it doesn't work exactly as some phrases in English seem to be meaningless in Japanese because they say them in a different way... But anyway maybe a newbie list would be cool, I've got a few
- 22 Feb 2008
- 18,266
- 4,926
Are you talking about 田? It's quite quite commonly used as a part of family names, e.g., 田中, 前田, 村田, 和田, 福田, 深田,,,. So the search result is understandable.But things like the Kanji for Rice Paddy... I know the Kanji because its so simple and distinctive but will I use it in daily Japanese? Probally not
nekojita
先輩
- 14 Jan 2009
- 1,660
- 444
I would say that a good starting list is the 教育漢字, since they're pre-separated into grade levels, but really in the long term it won't matter which exact list you use. As soon as you start reading in whatever your area of interest is you'll find yourself diverging from any standard list in favour of the words and kanji that you need to do what you want to with the language.
It's more important to have a good understanding of how kanji are constructed (radicals/components, phonetic clues) and a way of dealing with new kanji you come across - including deciding whether or not it is worth your time to learn it.
e.g. long before you have any need to learn 稿 you would probably have learnt 高 in words like 高い and 高校. This doesn't only help you remember how to write 稿 - the on-reading of both 稿 and 高 is こう, following a very common pattern: "phonetic component on the right".
It's more important to have a good understanding of how kanji are constructed (radicals/components, phonetic clues) and a way of dealing with new kanji you come across - including deciding whether or not it is worth your time to learn it.
e.g. long before you have any need to learn 稿 you would probably have learnt 高 in words like 高い and 高校. This doesn't only help you remember how to write 稿 - the on-reading of both 稿 and 高 is こう, following a very common pattern: "phonetic component on the right".
- 15 Mar 2002
- 16,758
- 2,298
Your quoting it and preserving it certainly didn't help anything. If anything, you did the poster a favor by extending the life of his post beyond the moderator's deleting it, and created more work for the moderating team.
Please don't do that again.
Please don't do that again.
Coffeesan
先輩
- 6 Jul 2011
- 164
- 3
Get laid dude, it was the first post by that guy I saw and replied too it. I didnt know he had spammed the same crap in every thread until much later. Stop making assumptions about me 'doing the poster a favour'. Chill.
- 21 May 2003
- 14,310
- 4,404
No big deal , but............
the quote did throw a minor wrench into the works as they say. When our Korean troll attacks , we click on his "statistics" for his posts. Then with just 1 click , we delete every one of his posts and ban him (which I did). Since I don't check every thread he posted in , I missed the "quote". In the future , I'll know now to check things a bit more.
Uncle Frank
the quote did throw a minor wrench into the works as they say. When our Korean troll attacks , we click on his "statistics" for his posts. Then with just 1 click , we delete every one of his posts and ban him (which I did). Since I don't check every thread he posted in , I missed the "quote". In the future , I'll know now to check things a bit more.
Uncle Frank
- 15 Mar 2002
- 16,758
- 2,298
In the future I will consider myself relieved of the need to speak to you in a civil manner.
Coffeesan
先輩
- 6 Jul 2011
- 164
- 3
You've been hostile and patronising in most posts to me and others due to some percieved superiority you seem to think you have. If you choose to consider that a civil manner thats your choice. You would do well to put pre-conceptions and assumptions aside when conversing with relative strangers because it lands you in arguments like the above.
It may be a cliche drilled into us in nursery but ''treat others as you would like to be treated yourself'' - applies to all ages. Be nice and others will return it.
I'm done with this its off topic and disrupting the thread. If you have anything else to say you know where my PM box is. Apologies for the disruption all.
- 15 Mar 2002
- 16,758
- 2,298
If you want to study Japanese seriously: learn kanji.
There are people who learn Japanese without learning kanji, but they very quickly run out of study/practice material because there are very few materials available which are in all romaji/kana.
There are people who live in Japan for any years without learning kanji. They have to rely on their spouses, children, etc to take care of reading even the most basic things.
They can't read:
Signs
Directions
Instructions
Menus
Mail
Advertisements
Labels
Notices
Warnings
Official correspondence
Their bills
Etc
Anywhere they go that involves reading anything at all, somebody has to accompany them like they were a small child unable to take care of himself....because that is essentially what they are.
If you're never going to live in Japan, aren't serious about learning Japanese, and don't mind quickly running out of learning materials: you needn't learn kanji.
There are people who learn Japanese without learning kanji, but they very quickly run out of study/practice material because there are very few materials available which are in all romaji/kana.
There are people who live in Japan for any years without learning kanji. They have to rely on their spouses, children, etc to take care of reading even the most basic things.
They can't read:
Signs
Directions
Instructions
Menus
Advertisements
Labels
Notices
Warnings
Official correspondence
Their bills
Etc
Anywhere they go that involves reading anything at all, somebody has to accompany them like they were a small child unable to take care of himself....because that is essentially what they are.
If you're never going to live in Japan, aren't serious about learning Japanese, and don't mind quickly running out of learning materials: you needn't learn kanji.
