Does it make any sense to focus on written Japanese first?
Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:43 am
It's been my dream for a while to be able to read novels in Japanese. However, this seems to be the last skill that non-native learners of Japanese acquire so at a relaxed pace I'm probably looking at a 10-20 year timeline. I'm very much an absolute beginner at the moment, I now hiragana, katakana, and a few common kanji and I can read some simple sentences. I find it much easier to retain the meaning of words based on kanji than their pronunciation so I'm wondering if it makes any sense to ignore the spoken language for a while and just to try to get as quickly as possible to the point where I can read things that I find interesting. For example, I could work through the lessons in the "Remember the Kanji" book and then just learn vocabulary based on meaning, ignoring kanji readings. If at some point I can read books and enjoy them, I could in principle listen to an audiobook at the same time and try to get used to spoken Japanese as well.
The thing is, I don't even know if that's possible. My native language has a relatively direct, phonetic orthography and when reading books in English or French I try to at least remain conscious of pronunciation so that I don't "mispronounce" words in my head. I know that it's possible to read without subvocalizing and I'm sure there are Japanese people who are completely deaf but can read and write just fine, perhaps largely unaware of pronunciation or hiragana spelling of words that are always written using ideograms.
I couldn't find any info on the Internet about anyone attempting to learn Japanese that way, it's usually the other way around (people want to speak withouth having to learn kanji). Does anyone have any experience with a similar approach?
The thing is, I don't even know if that's possible. My native language has a relatively direct, phonetic orthography and when reading books in English or French I try to at least remain conscious of pronunciation so that I don't "mispronounce" words in my head. I know that it's possible to read without subvocalizing and I'm sure there are Japanese people who are completely deaf but can read and write just fine, perhaps largely unaware of pronunciation or hiragana spelling of words that are always written using ideograms.
I couldn't find any info on the Internet about anyone attempting to learn Japanese that way, it's usually the other way around (people want to speak withouth having to learn kanji). Does anyone have any experience with a similar approach?