As both the regular readers of this blog will be aware, I have been learning Japanese and finding it hard. After much careful analysis, I have reached the conclusion that it is hard to learn because it is written all funny.
Specifically, beginners' lessons are written very funny indeed, in romaji (i.e. in latin characters). That makes the words moderately easy to pronounce but hard to look up in the dictionary, because their are so many homophones that you are bound to choose the wrong meaning half the time. Lessons written in kana are easier to pronounce but you still have the homophone problem, and you have the additional problem that Japanese people don't put spaces in between words.
But we aren't MEANT to read Japanese in kana, anymore than we are meant to read knitting patterns. Japanese people use about 2,000 kanji, which are sort of pictorial clues to what the word means. Pepper your writing with kanji, and it becomes easy to read, understand and look up in dictionaries. It doesn't matter anymore that there are not spaces between words, because the hiragana that's left in acts as a skeleton to show you where the words start and end. You just need to learn how to recognise, pronounce and translate 2,000 assorted squiggles. Not my idea of fun, but if other language obsessives can do it, so can I.
The advice I have had from other Japanese learners is: buy a book, make some flashcards, download a trainer program. I'm not going to do any of those. I use LingQ, you see. It's not that I love LingQ and can't bear to be unfaithful to it (I'm sure LingQ is broadminded enough to understand if I visit other websites from time to time), it's just that other websites have a nasty habit of not being fully compatible with LingQ. And this is irritating, because I really do love LingQ.
So this is what I'm doing. I have found a list of the most common kanji at http://nihongo.isc.chubu.ac.jp/wwkanji2k/frequencyTable.html. I am importing them, ten at a time, into LingQ using the "add a list of terms" function on the vocabulary page. Then I edit each new lingQ, adding the most common pronunciation (and, if I feel like it, a mnemonic) as the hint, the most common meaning as the meaning, and tagging as "kanji". It's a slow job, admittedly. If only we could import a data file then it would save editing 2,000 individual LingQs. Still, I wouldn't call it difficult. I can do it while watching Basil Brush, drinking a cup of tea and avoiding doing the washing up. I spend a lot of time avoiding the washing up.
Now I can do my own kanji flashcard drills, and LingQ keeps track of what I'm learning and what I've learned. I can drill English -> Japanese or Japanese -> English, shuffle the cards, use the pronunciation as a hint to the meaning or not. It's as good as any online kanji drill I've found and it also has the nice bonus that the kanji I'm learning will show up in yellow in the lessons I study, while the kanji I've learned will show up with an underline. If I want to be reminded of the meaning I can do a mouseover on the kanji in the lesson.
Now I'm just wondering, why do other people make learning kanji so hard?
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Dear Helen
ReplyDeleteI am not a teacher of Japanese, nor am I a linguist. So please take my advice as just a personal tip from your friend. Your way of learning Japanese by learning kanji is correct. These are some reasons.
The most important thing (and the luckiest?) for learners of Japanese to remind is that in Japanese the order of words is not so important as in English.
For example, わたしは、とうきょうに きのう、いきました。( I went to Tokyo yesterday ) can be expressed as きのう、わたしは、とうきょうに、いきました。or,とうきょうに、きのう、わたしは、いきました。or, とうきょうに、きのう、いきました、わたしは。
Each one of these expressions can covey almost the same meaning.
Japanese, however, is quite strict about particles, such as は、が、に.
Because it is particles that decide how each word should work in the sentence. For example, the word ending with はalways works as the subject in the sentence.
But we, native speakers of Japanese, could understand what you are trying to say, according to the words you use even if you omit particles.
In my opinion, Japanese learners should start to learn Japanese by obtaining as many words as possible, rather than spending so much energy on trying to understand how each particle works.(Of course if you do not mind, it is very useful, though).
And to learn kanji is the strongest way to obtain Japanese vocabulary because kanji is the symbol of idea or concept. Example, if you know 花(
a flower), you might easily guess the meaning of 花屋 (a flower shop), or花束（flower bouque).
I am very happy to know my native language is attracting so many people in the world now.
Hey Helen,
ReplyDeleteNice one. Just a question, why not import the 100 (or whatever) most common kanji all at once, make LingQs without hints for each one, then when you run across them in yellow in a reading you can finishing editing the LingQ with the benefit of context. Just a thought.
dooo