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Simple question about learning kanji

Thorham

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Hi,

I was wondering if learning the kanji with just their meanings is enough to become proficient in their use. The point is, that learning their readings seems to be a waste of time if you're learning Japanese, because you should be able to connect the vocabulary to the kanji based on their meaning.

Is this the case, or is it better to also learn the kanji readings? If so, why?

Any replies are appreciated
 
I think you should learn kanji in context (that is, in the words they're used it, and along with learning how to use those words in sentences) - just "meanings" or "readings" alone will not get you very far.

Example, three common words: 親切 (しんせつ), 親子 (おやこ) , 切る(きる)
Can you assign a meaning to 親 or 切 which will always apply in any word you see them in?

Another one: is there a connection between the verbs 着る (きる) and 着く (つく)? Does either of these really link to 横着 (おうちゃく)?
Learn Kanji Online
- these are quite good worksheets (supposed to be used along with a particular book but you can have a look to see what I mean) - you see the kanji used in words, and then in sentences.

One thing I find good is when I come across a new kanji, to check in a dictionary what other words that kanji appears in. If you learn a few common words for each kanji, you start to get a feel for what common meanings and readings it takes.
 
Even if you know all of the joyo kanji by their meaning, you are not proficient in their use. The readings make it much easier to absorb. Studying intensely one aspect of kanji is like trying to solve a puzzle when you don't have the photo to reference; it'll take much longer to see the full picture.

Using the context as a learning tool, you can begin to recognize new compounds and your study will lead to a better understanding of how kanji acts in its natural environment - surrounded by other characters.
 
Thanks guys, good explanations.

That's what I was afraid of... It's such a pity that the Chinese characters aren't used for just their meaning everywhere, damned readings. Then again, because of cultural differences you'd get this problem:

Aquarium -> Fish tank -> 魚槽 (English)
Aquarium -> Water tribe building -> 水族館 (Japanese)

The problem here is that water tribe building doesn't make much sense in English, and fish tank might only make sense in Japanese because of English influences.
 
水族館 (suizokkan) means "aquarium," yes, but not the fish tank but the large facility you go to to see rare and interesting fishes and other marine creatures. (cf. 博物館 (hakubutsukan), museum, and 美術館 (bijutsukan), art museum)
The fish tank you can keep inside a house is called 水槽 .
 
Didn't know that, cool

Modified:

Big aquarium -> Big fish tank/Fish tank building -> 大魚槽/魚槽館 (English)
Big aquarium -> Water tribe building -> 水族館 (Japanese)

Aquarium -> Fish tank -> 魚槽 (English)
Aquarium -> Water tank -> 水槽 (Japanese)
 

I'm not sure where you're going with this. If I were you, I'd stop wasting my time pondering this and start memorizing. At the end of the day, a person who was studying while I was racking my brain trying to come up with a better, easier learning method is a few kanjis smarter than me.
 
I was referring to the problem of everyone just using kanji for their meaning to make everything easier (earlier post). I just made a correction and an addition here, nothing more.

Further more, the whole concept of characters that have a meaning is very interesting to me, more so than their connection to Japanese (and other languages), and I'm therefore interested in using them in a more language independent way, which is going to be a little bit difficult as I've explained in an earlier post.
 
Thorham said:
I was refering to the problem of everyone just using kanji for their meaning to make everything easier (earlier post). I just made a correction and an addition here, nothing more.
Click to expand...
But you were just creating new combinations that don't really have any meaning... Don't worry about the individual meanings of the characters so much, because they don't act like individual words when you put them together. When you study a character, you should look at HOW it's used, rather than just the meaning and assume that it means the same thing in all contexts.

For instance, the 館 in 水族館 denotes that it's a building with a specific purpose, like the other examples epigene used. That character hardly ever gets used on its own, but when you see it with other compounds, you will know that it's a building for such-and-such a purpose.

You probably wouldn't come up with 水族館 on your own, but don't worry about it; it's not your job to create new words; trying to translate each character and create compound english words to mirror those meanings is ultimately going to lead nowhere.

If knowing just the individual meanings worked, the examples you came up with would have been real words. They are not.

Time to change your approach?

What's the point of studying a language if you're not trying to learn the language? It's like arranging English letters randomly because you like the sounds they produce; the end result is gibberish.
 
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Actually I believe it does have a few different kun-readings with a corresponding shift in meaning from the suffix use of building, house, hall.

Big aquarium -> Big fish tank/Fish tank building -> 大魚槽/魚槽館
Click to expand...

Tank of big fish ?? -> 大魚槽/魚槽館
水槽 also has usages far removed from a home aquarium in connection with
Wastewater Treatment, water supply, transport, filtration, etc.


As nice gaijin said, the key to learning kanji efficiently is finding the radicals which correlate with particular pronounciations and meanings. Throwing stuff together randomly and then comparing it to English is like making up your mind to go headlong by the opposite road, in an extreme way.
 
Elizabeth said:
Actually I believe it does have a few different kun-readings with a corresponding shift in meaning from the suffix use of building, house, hall.
Click to expand...
Yeah I saw that too in the dictionary, though I have never seen it used on its own myself. I'll amend that to "hardly ever"
 
Just want to make it clear that my kanji combining example was just to show the potential problem of compounds being different in different languages, don't worry about it
nice gaijin said:
But you were just creating new combinations that don't really have any meaning...
Click to expand...
As far as I know, they don't have a meaning in Japanese. A combination like fish tank does have a meaning in English: fish tank.
nice gaijin said:
Don't worry about the individual meanings of the characters so much, because they don't act like individual words when you put them together.
Click to expand...
Right, and in my little example they actually do. I thought that that's how combining kanji actually works.
Well, I'm not trying to make new words, and especially in English there are more than enough words already
nice gaijin said:
If knowing just the individual meanings worked, the examples you came up with would have been real words. They are not.
Click to expand...
Fish tank simply means aquarium in English, a big fish tank is just that, a large aquarium. The point is to combine words to indicate another one that doesn't have a character of it's own. I don't see the problem with that.
nice gaijin said:
What's the point of studying a language if you're not trying to learn the language?
Click to expand...
I'm not studying Japanese yet, I must admit. It's the kanji themselves that are the most interesting to me, and basically they can be used in any language if you ignore their readings. Japan borrowed the Chinese characters, and so did other countries. This seemed interesting to me, instead of spelling every thing just write characters which are only used for their meaning.
nice gaijin said:
It's like arranging English letters randomly because you like the sounds they produce; the end result is gibberish.
Click to expand...
How is fish tank gibberish? That's the problem with reading those combinations as Japanese, it's not, it's English. The same applies to written Chinese. I'd wager (and must admit I don't know this for a fact) that when you know Japanese and try to read Chinese, that you won't be able to understand a lot of it. Compound words in one language don't always make sense in another language.

An example is the Dutch word 'dag boek' which means diary. When written in kanji when used for just their meaning, it might become something like this:日本. Well, that certainly doesn't mean diary when read in Japanese. When read as Dutch it does mean diary. That is basically what I wanted to show with the little example I came up with.


Elizabeth said:
Tank of big fish ?? -> 大魚槽/魚槽館
Click to expand...
No, a big fish tank Yeah, that's a problem. Might be better to say 'big tank of fish', but since it's fish tank in English, you'd have to write 'big fish tank'. Hehe...
Elizabeth said:
Throwing stuff together randomly and then comparing it to English is like making up your mind to go headlong by the opposite road, in an extreme way.
Click to expand...
How are those examples random? What's the problem with using Chinese characters for their meaning and using them to write English? That it's not done anywhere? Well, I don't care about that, it's an experiment.

Actually, the idea was to write a program that changes words in a text file to kanji and kanji compounds (the Japanese ones). When reading a lot of text, you'd be able to actually use the kanji all the time, while not being dependent on any one language.
 
Oh boy, another genius trying to reinvent the wheel. Nevermind then.
 
Thorham said:
J
No, a big fish tank Yeah, that's a problem. Might be better to say 'big tank of fish', but since it's fish tank in English, you'd have to write 'big fish tank'. Hehe...
Click to expand...



Take your toys and go over to Chinese, then. Where really 魚槽 IS fish tank. Because there's obviously nothing inherent in Kanji and Kanji compounds alone, Chinese or Japanese, or any natural language, that dictates complex, fully developed syntax and grammar divorced from other imput. I'm not sure what language this program is hypothetically based on, but if there's no ability to distinguish the arrangement of prepositional phases or show modifying nouns into a prepositional phrase that dictate meaning I'm not terribly impressed. How again is the text making sense through individual kanji without the author or reader essentially knowing them embedded in an already existing linguistic structure ?

"Tank of big fish"
"Big fish tank (scale)"
"Tank for big fish" etc...Ask the Chinese how they do it.


 
nice gaijin said:
Oh boy, another genius trying to reinvent the wheel. Nevermind then.
Click to expand...
I'm not another genius trying to reinvent the wheel, all I did was post a simple example with my initial post to show a certain problem, nothing more.
Elizabeth said:
Take your toys and go over to Chinese, then. Where really 魚槽 IS fish tank.
Click to expand...
I don't have to, when read as English 魚槽 is fish tank, too.
What I was thinking of is not anything advanced, writing a program that handles all grammar is a little difficult, and it may not even be needed for my purpose. Basically, I wanted to start with something that can do this:

They walked to the train station. – They 赱ed to the 鉄道駅.
I'm walking around. - I'm 赱ing 巡.

Nothing fancy, and it's just for creating an extra use for the kanji. If I'm going to study Japanese, then I don't want to have to rely on just Japanese material for using the kanji. See it as an extra stimulus to help memorize the kanji and their compounds, nothing more.
Elizabeth said:
How again is the text making sense through individual kanji without the author or reader essentially knowing them embedded in an already existing linguistic structure ?
Click to expand...
It's just an idea. I'll see if it makes sense when the basis for this program is written. It's an experiment, and without trying, I won't know if it will work or not. It just seems that it might work quite well.
Elizabeth said:
"Tank of big fish"
"Big fish tank (scale)"
"Tank for big fish" etc...Ask the Chinese how they do it.
Click to expand...
The idea would be to use kanji for meaning and the normal alphabet for the grammatical parts, which is how the Japanese seem to do it, as far as I know. For English it can be similar:

"Tank of big fish" - 槽 of 大 魚
"Big fish tank (scale)" - 大 魚槽
"Tank for big fish" - 槽 for 大 魚
 
Thorham said:
"Tank of big fish" - 槽 of 大 魚
"Big fish tank (scale)" - 大 魚槽
"Tank for big fish" - 槽 for 大 魚
Click to expand...

In Japanese the kanji 槽 is used in the sense of fish tank/aquarium is when it is used in the word 水槽. Because 槽 means a container to keep water. Bath tub is 浴槽, for instance.
You first need to know the word 水槽（すいそう） - 魚 means fish and 槽 means a container which also you might be able to keep fish in it, but there's no such a word as 魚槽 in Japanese. Fish + tank makes sense in English, but 魚槽 does not in Japanese.

Having knowledge of the meaning of each kanji does help you to understand (or even guess) what the existing word in Kanji means, but not the other way round. Putting the kanji together do not always make correct words.
If you write 大魚槽, people simply do not understand what you want to say.


You are talking about Chinese language? (Because you use a Kanji which is not Japanese.)
I do not know if this method works for Chinese or not, but as far as Japanese language is concerned, I'm afraid it does not.

I believe this is what nice gaijin and Elizabeth are talking.
 
You're right, of course. When learning Japanese, doing what I'm doing isn't very useful. The program I have in mind would only use Japanese compounds to replace words with. However, when wanting to use kanji in English for their meaning, and without any connection to existing writing systems that use kanji, then it's possible to write a program to generate compounds for existing English compounds, such as fish tank.
Again, true, but I must add that they might understand if they know you're not trying to write Japanese, but you're writing in meanings. I believe that in the old days, this is how users of Chinese characters, speaking different languages, communicated with each other, or so I've read somewhere.
undrentide said:
You are talking about Chinese language? (Because you use the Kanji which is not Japanese.)
Click to expand...
赱 is actually just not one of the jōyō kanji, but it's part of the JIS (Japanese Industrial Standards) X 0208 standard, and I got the kanji from Jim Breen's WWW Jdic. Of course this is a silly mistake, and in the test program I want to write, I would only use the jōyō part of the JIS 208 standard.
undrentide said:
I do not know if this method works for Chinese or not, but as far as Japanese language is concerned, I'm afraid it does not.

I believe this is what nice gaijin and Elizabeth are talking.
Click to expand...
This is an extension of the program idea I have, and it's not intended for use in writing systems that already use the kanji. The point is to use them in an English way. This is really just an idea, and I'm going to start by making a program that simply uses jōyō kanji and Japanese compounds to replace English words where appropriate in text files. Anything else is just for the fun of experimentation.
 
So you're basically looking to construct English phrases, replacing words with ideograms, but only certain words, and you'll be using ideograms based on their individual meanings, combining them without regard for how they are used in real languages. What is this supposed to accomplish? If you're relying on English for your sentence structure and grammar then you're basically writing in English using ideogram codewords.

English words are quickly recognized by their shape, which allows people to read quickly and easily (and also WhY ItS hARdEr tO rEAd wHEn tHE ShAPe cHaNGes), you're now talking about replacing some words with ideograms, changing the shape of the words and sentences, and forcing people to constantly switch gears (or didn't you realize that we use different parts of the brain to read ideographic and phonographic scripts, even within a single language?)

The result forces people to know English (vocabulary and grammar) and "kanji" (but just one meaning per character?, and nothing really to do with how the characters are actually used in the real world?). Gee, I wonder how you'd say "telephone."
 
nice gaijin said:
So you're basically looking to construct English phrases, replacing words with ideograms, but only certain words, and you'll be using ideograms based on their individual meanings, combining them without regard for how they are used in real languages.
Click to expand...
At first, only words that are easy to replace with the basic kanji or Japanese compounds. Later, as an experiment, the compounds become English compounds. This experiment is just that, an experiment to see how it would turn out.
nice gaijin said:
What is this supposed to accomplish? If you're relying on English for your sentence structure and grammar then you're basically writing in English using ideogram codewords.
Click to expand...
Well, code words that are known to anyone who has sufficient kanji knowledge. It's purpose, apart from the experimental version of said program, is to provide myself with a way to use the basic kanji and Japanese compounds while reading English.

Taking it further by making English kanji compounds doesn't have a practical purpose (kanji will most likely never be used in English) and it doesn't need to. Programming has been a hobby of mine for over 20 years, and it seems like a fun program to write.
Yes, I know English words are recognized by their shape, you can go as far as rearranging the letters between the first and last letters of a word, and it's still readable. Although I didn't know we use different parts of the brain for different systems, I don't see how this is a problem. Also, how difficult would it really be? If you see Latin characters in a sentence, then you know it's either a grammatical part or just a spelled word, and if you see a kanji, then you know it means something in the context of whats written. You'd simply have to get used to it.
nice gaijin said:
The result forces people to know English (vocabulary and grammar) and "kanji" (but just one meaning per character?, and nothing really to do with how the characters are actually used in the real world?). Gee, I wonder how you'd say "telephone."
Click to expand...
As far as being used as a memory aid to keep the kanji fresh in mind (I've learned about 70 or so grade one kanji over a year ago, and now I only still recognize about fifty), all the basic kanji with all their meanings will be used , while all compounds are just the Japanese compounds. The individual kanji used to replace words, would have to be the same ones used in Japanese writing where ever possible (that's one of the hard parts of writing a program like that).

For the experimental use, the kanji are simply used for their meanings (also multiple meanings per kanji) and are combined in an English way.

As for telephone, I think this is 'far speak', and it could be written like that, because there doesn't seem to be a single kanji for it.

In the memory aid this is useless, and the Japanese compound for telephone would be used.
 
I mentioned Chinese as a more natural vehicle for your system for two reasons : word order is much closer to English and it is obviously an all-kanji environment.

Kanji are used, generally speaking, to express nouns, roots of adjectives and adverbs in Japanese. Verbs would either be made entirely in English or with enough Latin alphabet supplements that the character is rendered essentially redundant (meaningless and ineffective). I mean, kanji compounds may "take care of themselves" but how would even the most basic action be conveyed with any rhythm ?

He has gone. or
He will go vs. He goes...etc.
 
Elizabeth said:
I mentioned Chinese as a more natural vehicle for your system for two reasons : word order is much closer to English and it is obviously an all-kanji environment.
Click to expand...
That would make it harder to write said program, and it would be more difficult to read the resulting text. Combining kanji with the alphabet is much closer to written Japanese, and it's easier to read, that's why I'm looking at Japanese as a basis.
Yes, that's a problem, and I'm not entirely sure of how to fix this yet, if it's even fixable in any sort of elegant way. I'll try to come up with an example text in which I'll show how I'm planning on starting. In the case of your example, it might be best to leave it as is, but I'll try to figure it out.

All this is highly experimental and I might fail, I know that
 
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As said in my previous post, I've come up with an example of what I want to do with the program I mentioned (after lots of frustration).

First my original post in normal English:

Hi,

I was wondering if learning the kanji with just their meanings is enough to become proficient in their use. The point is, that learning their readings seems to be a waste of time if you're learning Japanese, because you should be able to connect the vocabulary to the kanji based on their meaning.

Is this the case, or is it better to also learn the kanji readings? If so, why?

Any replys are apreciated

Now the same post, with English words exchanged for kanji and (I hope) Japanese compounds:

良日,

I was 驚ing if 学ing the 華字 with just their 義s is 満 to 成 勘能 in their use. The point is, that 学ing their 訓ings seems to be a 費 of 刻 if you're 学ing 日本語, 以 you should be 得 連 the 単語 to the 華字 based on their 義.

Is this the 訳, or is it 如 to also 学 the 華字 訓ings? If so, why?

Any 応ies are 認ed

Hehe, looks a little messy. Anyway, I didn't change every thing that can be changed, but I had to do this by hand using WWWJDIC, not that easy, but it should show what I want to do. Doesn't look as good as I'd hoped...
 
The impression of the first sentence would be roughly like this.

I was being surprised if learning the character specific to China with just their justice is being filled to become ??* in thier use.

*I wasn't able to understand what 勘能 means without consulting a dictionary. "Proficient" should be 熟練/精通 in this context.

Is this what you wanted to do?
 

My frank and honest comment is, the biggest problem is that in Japanese language the meaning of a single kanji is not always used/reflected in kanji compound.

I'm seeing the result in the reverse way - reading the English with kanji sprinkled, and try to guess the original text and what they're supposed to say. I'm sorry to say that it is extremely hard to make a correct guess, I need to go back to the original English text almost for every sentence.
In the above example, only two manage to make some sense, 日本語 and 単語. (And maybe 学?)

良日 : this is a possible combination but never ever used as a greeting.
驚 : means "surprise". To wonder in this context is translated as ～かと思う.
華字 : does not exist - should it be 漢字?
義 : is used in the word 定義 (definition) but when used on its own, it means justice.
満 : means full. Sufficient is 十分／充分.
成 : assume it is meant to "become" but it is commonly written in hiragana なる.
勘能: does not make sense to me. Maybe 堪能? which does mean proficient.
訓: one can only guess it has something to do 訓読み of kanji.
費: on its own means primarily "cost". It does not mean "waste". （費やす means to spend, which is not necessarily to waste.)
刻: means time but in normaly/daily Japanese time is 時間.
得: Maybe it is taken from 得る to get, but when shown on its own, one's immediate guess is "to gain" in the sense of "save (money)" (against loss).
以: one might guess correctly its meaning if one is familiar with 漢文.
如: same goes with this.
認: means "confirm"

I know the sample sentences you gave are not the final version and you intend to make modifications, but if this program is supposed to help learning kanji in Japanese language, I'm afraid it does not help much or even can be misleading for leaners - it is not a question of its picking up kanji from 常用漢字or not.

If the program converts words into kanji compounds instead of single kanji, then I think the result should be much better, though.
 
It looks like what I want to do mostly, but this example I made by hand apparently didn't turn out quite as nicely as I would've wanted...
undrentide said:
My frank and honest comment is, the biggest problem is that in Japanese language the meaning of a single kanji is not always used/reflected in kanji compound.
Click to expand...
Yes, I've seen that. Compounds don't always seem to be logical. A good example is 'silver river' for galaxy, the English compound 'star system' is much clearer. Yup, it's a problem.
After making this example, I'm not surprised...

List made by undrentide:

良日 : this is a possible combination but never ever used as a greeting. - I came up with this one myself...

驚 : means "surprise". To wonder in this context is translated as ～かと思う. - WWWJDIC says: wonder; be surprised; frightened; amazed

華字 : does not exist - should it be 漢字? - WWWJDIC says: Chinese character. Picked the wrong compound...

義 : is used in the word 定義 (definition) but when used on its own, it means justice. - WWWJDIC says: righteousness; justice; morality; honor; loyalty; meaning

満 : means full. Sufficient is 十分／充分. - Error on my part.

成 : assume it is meant to "become" but it is commonly written in hiragana なる. Yes, become. For what I want to do, hiragana shouldn't be used, only kanji or Latin characters.

勘能: does not make sense to me. Maybe 堪能? which does mean proficient. - WWWJDIC says: (adj-na) (1) proficient; skillful; (n,vs) (2) satisfaction; (n,vs) (3) {Buddh} fortitude; (P)

訓: one can only guess it has something to do 訓読み of kanji. - WWWJDIC says: instruction; Japanese character reading; explanation; read

費: on its own means primarily "cost". It does not mean "waste". （費やす means to spend, which is not necessarily to waste.) - WWWJDIC says: expense; cost; spend; consume; waste

刻: means time but in normaly/daily Japanese time is 時間. - Good to know, thanks.

得: Maybe it is taken from 得る to get, but when shown on its own, one's immediate guess is "to gain" in the sense of "save (money)" (against loss). - WWWJDIC says: gain; get; find; earn; acquire; can; may; able to; profit; advantage; benefit

以: one might guess correctly its meaning if one is familiar with 漢文. - WWWJDIC says: by means of; because; in view of; compared with

如: same goes with this. - WWWJDIC says: likeness; like; such as; as if; better; best; equal

Hmm, it seems we have a little problem here. Is WWWJDIC assigning too many meanings to the kanji? Also, it doesn't seem to indicate it's a characters primary meaning...
There is no program yet, I did the example text by hand using WWWJDIC, but I don't see how the program would actually make better single kanji choices based on the kanjidic file used by WWWJDIC. This is going to be tough...
undrentide said:
If the program converts words into kanji compounds instead of single kanji, then I think the result should be much better, though.
Click to expand...
Yes, I agree. Unless there is a kanji dictionary file as extensive as kanjidic, which indicates things like context and primary use of kanji, single kanji replacements are going to be quite useless.
 
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