I had a conversation with a friend a few days ago and one question was whether it is possible to set a learner’s expectations appropriately for a given article or book.

For example, some things I read are filled with Kanji I don’t know. When I try to understand everything that’s going on, I get frustrated. But when I lower my expectations to just figuring out where this scene is, or who is talking to whom, or what the basic topic is, I’m still able to enjoy it.

It’s kind of like turning an adult’s story into a children’s story. Instead of a rich complex narrative, it’s reduced to a simple description of what’s happening. And looking up the occasional word or fully analyzing the occasional sentence just adds to the story.

It means letting go of understanding every word right now and enjoying what you can of the story…Just something I’ve been pondering.

At the end of the day, any interaction with your target language that doesn’t bring feelings of fatigue and burnout is time well spent.

I’m learning chinese right now, not japanese, but what i find really frustrating when reading is probably the same for japanese…when i’m reading a book and i come to a bunch of characters i don’t know, it takes forever to look them all up. This consumes tons of my available reading time when i just want to sit and read a really interesting book. So, in this case, i find it tremendously helpful when i at least know the pronunciation and a generalized meaning or possible meaning for that character. Then i can either a) guess the word in context without looking it up, or b) look it up really quickly because i know the pronunciation.

This is basically the only reason i persist with single-character flashcards in Anki. The extra mental effort of learning chars out of context is less (at least in my perception) than always hitting constant roadblocks while reading. When i know all of the hanzi in a book i’m reading, it becomes much more like when i read spanish…a lot of new words that are easily guessable because i know the roots already.

I think that’s an excellent way to look at it. Because without the use, the reading and writing for some *purpose*, what’s the point?

It’s so common to try to equate learning a language with claiming X words or characters. But which is more valuable, the count or the understanding?

I wasted about half a year after- somewhat spontaneously- deciding to learn a second language (Japanese looked fun). I learned virtually nothing at all of any use in those first months, and have since forgotten all of that information- and I’m pleased I did. Learning kanji by wrote was one of my mistakes.

I was lucky enough, before I wasted too much time, to stumble upon Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese and his associated blog- at that time hosted at 3yen; I owe that man a debt of gratitude.

I haven’t so much as tried learning a list since, and don’t remember one single kanji I learned in this way, and I’m glad of that.

You might say that “I only know the kanji I can use”, but I prefer the more positive outlook on that;

“I can use all of the kanji I know.”

I actually got it in my head that I needed to know 2000 kanji to read a Japanese newspaper. I think the reality is that without reading a newspaper, learning 2000 kanji is harder.