Learning kanji before Japanese?

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gsbod
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Re: Learning kanji before Japanese?

Postby gsbod » Thu Jan 13, 2022 9:40 pm

I love the idea of a new language as a birthday present. Wondering what language I should get myself for my 40th?

Anyway, back to the questions about kanji. Firstly, I would say that the hardest thing about Japanese is not kanji, but vocabulary. Vocabulary is difficult because there is so much of it, and most of it is unrelated to anything in any other language you already know. If you know Chinese or Korean, this will give you a bit of an advantage in terms of Japanese vocabulary with Chinese origins, but this only covers around half of all Japanese vocabulary and is often obscured by the sound shifts since the sound systems for both languages are so radically different. There are also loads of homophones in Japanese (not to mention all the words that are not homophones, but do still sound similar), and not just for words with Chinese origins either. On top of all this, kanji is merely an additional complicating factor!

Secondly, it is important to realise that learning kanji is nothing like learning an alphabet. You won't be able to memorise a list of kanji and their pronunciations and apply it straight away to a piece of text. This is because both the pronunciation and the meaning of a kanji can vary according to the vocabulary it is used with. Some people find that memorising a keyword to go with each kanji does help with the challenge of recognising and memorising kanji based vocabulary, but in my experience it isn't actually a necessary step. Furthermore, no amount of mnemonics will stop me confusing 待つ (to wait) and 持つ (to hold) if they appear in a text where either could be correct in the context.

Anyway, if you want to explore Japanese a bit now without fully commiting, I would suggest you start with memorising the kana - first the hiragana, then the katakana. Unlike kanji, the two syllabaries really are straightforward to read and will give you an introduction to the Japanese pronunciation system and some of the very basic principles around stroke order (which you will then build on learning the kanji). It will also open up more possibilities in terms of potential resources to use if you do then want to learn a few kanji up front.
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Re: Learning kanji before Japanese?

Postby Ccaesar » Fri Jan 14, 2022 9:15 am

I have to say that learning to recognize and hold "to have" vs "to hold" apart is probably a question of pulling up your sleves and simply writing both of them out for a day, wait a day, do it again, wait two days, do it again. For every error you write it out 10 times). By now you should be able to tell them apart even if you are woken up in the middle of the night and asked to draw them out. It's tough, not the most interesting approach, and requires energy, but it works. After that add it to anki or something like that, when you get a recognition card try to write it out (in the air) if you get it right click easy, if you get it wrong you get to enjoy writing it out 10 times again! :lol:
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Re: Learning kanji before Japanese?

Postby gsbod » Fri Jan 14, 2022 12:42 pm

Ccaesar wrote:I have to say that learning to recognize and hold "to have" vs "to hold" apart is probably a question of pulling up your sleves and simply writing both of them out for a day, wait a day, do it again, wait two days, do it again. For every error you write it out 10 times). By now you should be able to tell them apart even if you are woken up in the middle of the night and asked to draw them out. It's tough, not the most interesting approach, and requires energy, but it works. After that add it to anki or something like that, when you get a recognition card try to write it out (in the air) if you get it right click easy, if you get it wrong you get to enjoy writing it out 10 times again! :lol:


If only it were that simple! The thing is, I know the difference between 待つ and 持つ and have no trouble writing out the correct one. I have written and read both several times over, so it's not for want of practice. I think it's more a case of the brain seeing what it expects to see rather than what is actually on the page, and I think the only way to deal with this is improving reading comprehension skills in general to narrow down what is possible according to what you understand of the context, meaning that over time the number of possible situations in which you might get confused are reduced.
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Ccaesar
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Re: Learning kanji before Japanese?

Postby Ccaesar » Fri Jan 14, 2022 1:18 pm

gsbod wrote:
Ccaesar wrote:I have to say that learning to recognize and hold "to have" vs "to hold" apart is probably a question of pulling up your sleves and simply writing both of them out for a day, wait a day, do it again, wait two days, do it again. For every error you write it out 10 times). By now you should be able to tell them apart even if you are woken up in the middle of the night and asked to draw them out. It's tough, not the most interesting approach, and requires energy, but it works. After that add it to anki or something like that, when you get a recognition card try to write it out (in the air) if you get it right click easy, if you get it wrong you get to enjoy writing it out 10 times again! :lol:


If only it were that simple! The thing is, I know the difference between 待つ and 持つ and have no trouble writing out the correct one. I have written and read both several times over, so it's not for want of practice. I think it's more a case of the brain seeing what it expects to see rather than what is actually on the page, and I think the only way to deal with this is improving reading comprehension skills in general to narrow down what is possible according to what you understand of the context, meaning that over time the number of possible situations in which you might get confused are reduced.



A wicked problem, hmm I think you might be on the right road to making it a technical one. I re-call self-testing from Make it stick emphasises its use in eliminating errors, but fear not, one step a day keeps Japanese in your brain every day!
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Re: Learning kanji before Japanese?

Postby golyplot » Fri Jan 14, 2022 4:35 pm

Personally, I recommend using Wanikani and going through the first 18 levels or so as fast as possible. That will give you enough kanji that you'll no longer be limited by kanji when reading beginner materials. After that, you can take the rest at a more leisurely pace.

This will take you about 17 weeks if your schedule permits going full speed on WK, and you'll also learn a lot of common vocab in the process.

When you're learning Japanese, there are lots of things that are hard about it - the kanji, the vocab, the grammar, etc. Tackling the kanji first is perfectly valid - it's more or less what I did. That being said, the goal is "get to the point where kanji don't hold you back from reading, grammar, etc.", not "Learn All The Kanji!". You still have to work on everything in tandem to some extent. There is no sense learning N1 kanji when you can't read basic sentences. You'll just forget them immediately without reinforcement. I also went through a bit of that, as you can see from my log.
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Re: Learning kanji before Japanese?

Postby lemonbird » Sat Jan 15, 2022 3:02 am

gsbod wrote:The thing is, I know the difference between 待つ and 持つ and have no trouble writing out the correct one. I have written and read both several times over, so it's not for want of practice. I think it's more a case of the brain seeing what it expects to see rather than what is actually on the page…


You said that no mnemonics will help you so what I will say might be useless to you, but just in case… You know that 持 is made with the radical 扌 which means fingers, right? (at least according to Heisig) so all kanji that have it on the left are related to holding things, reaching out with your hands for something, hitting, etc. (打 to hit, 捨 to throw, 持 to hold, 担 to carry, 掛 to hang, etc.) Please excuse me if you were already aware of this and it didn't help you.

Edit: and for 待, my mnemonic is that you go (彳) at the temple (寺) to wait for your friends.
Last edited by lemonbird on Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Remarkablemusician25
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Re: Learning kanji before Japanese?

Postby Remarkablemusician25 » Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:28 am

I have been thinking about how to get a headstart with Japanese and I think something like Duolingo would get you further than learning a few Kanji. You'd get familiarity with the language without really being invested in learning it.
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Re: Learning kanji before Japanese?

Postby devilyoudont » Wed Jan 19, 2022 1:04 am

The Japanese course for duolingo has a number of errors in it, especially when it comes to pronunciation. I can find posts online from as recently as a month ago complaining that Duolingo periodically uses the wrong pronunciation for は. For this reason, I advise against using it.
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Re: Learning kanji before Japanese?

Postby Leurre » Fri Jan 21, 2022 9:38 am

A low value and somewhat facile comment, but in almost no language besides Japanese have I seen as much talk of starting before starting. I wonder sometimes if simply starting is not better, if the point is to learn the language. That's what I did for Japanese, or currently for Chinese, and it's worked out alright.
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Re: Learning kanji before Japanese?

Postby Xenops » Sat Jan 22, 2022 7:57 pm

A thought I had, that is low-commitment, is trying out the Kanji Drop app. It's essentially old-school Tetris with kanji and radicals. Admittedly when you first play it can be frustrating if you don't know anything, but as you play by trial and error, you gain a sense of what makes a word or compound. Slowly, you learn vocabulary that way as well.
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