A couple of thoughts on Kanji:
From the Reviewing the Kanji Forums:
I’m not quite finished [with Hesig's Remembering the Kanji], I need about a month to finish, but it bugs me when I see kanji like 俺 not in the first book. This kanji is extremely popular and should have been taught a lot earlier. This makes me wonder, is 2042 not enough? Are there tons more out there like 俺? I wanted to quit once I finished but it looks like I may have to continue.
Learning a language is about communication - Not memorizing lists of words and Kanji. You learn to read Kanji to receive what others have written and how to write them to accomplish the opposite.
That Hesig has developed a technique to help memorize kanji writings doesn’t mean you have to limit yourself. It also doesn’t mean he’s an authority on what you need or want to know.
If you want to learn a character now, learn it.
Another from Reviewing the Kanji:
Does anyone have/know of a list of the everyday kanji that the average Japanese person would know which are not included in RTK1 (ie not joyo kanji)?
Do native Japanese speakers keep lists like this? Do Japanese learners who’ve attained fluency keep lists like this?
The only way to really answer the question of what non-Joyo Kanji you need to know is to read and read and read. The non-Joyo Kanji you run into repeatedly are the ones you need to know - Assuming you even bother to look up whether they are Joyo or not.
I realize that I sound cynical here but my underlying point, I think, is quite reasonable: If you listen to and read enough Japanese, most questions about how much and what order become irrelevant.
Reading thousands of pages of Japanese and learning those Kanji as you go, you can’t help but build a feel for which are more common and you’ll inevitably see all the Joyo Kanji and whatever extra ones you need to know.
The real question is not, How much? or What order?, it’s: How can I find enough to read and listen to that captures my interest and furthers my desire to learn Japanese?
4 Comments
Great post as usual and in fact, this was bugging me for a while after I finished up with RTK Vol1. Almost immediately after doing so, I kept running into 頃、俺 and 諦 from 諦める（not to mention words like 彷徨う, etc. from songs).
I think the main reason such questions get asked (and answered) repeatedly is because people expect that finishing off RTK will magically enable them to breeze over words (which consist of kanji) and sentences in books, magazines, websites, etc. without actually not having read even a single line of Japanese (isn’t that the same reason why people take classes?). You were absolutely right when you said that people would do anything in their power NOT to read Japanese. Strange isn’t it?
And yes, I still don’t get the point of Joyo kanji (other than behaving as radicals for component kanji). I still haven’t come across more than a quarter of the kanji that I learnt through RTK (which may be due to insufficient reading though)
I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now - what do you do about your listening comprehension? As in, do you just run the DVD and let it loop endlessly? Or do you pause, pick out words and look them up in a dictionary? And do you use subs (occasionally if not always)?
It is strange that avoiding reading Japanese is common with learning Japanese. I look back at my previous forays with the language and am stunned that it never occurred to me, and was never recommended, that I just get out there and read and listen.
Part of it is our desire for quantifiable progress. We love to measure what we do. Counting Kanji and Vocab is easy, but how do you quantify reading comprehension and real understanding? And when we read or listen and understand virtually nothing, we assume that we wasted our time! If that’s the case, then any child learning any first language is doomed.
As for listening, I’ve been doing a lot of experimentation with different sources. In general, I’ve found any recordings for “learning Japanese” to be painful. So I’ve only been listening to material produced for Japanese people.
News, humor and talk podcasts - both audio and video. Dramas like モップガッル and Cutie Honey(I know, I should be ashamed). JTV like Downtown DX and Pussuma(This show is hilarious). And Anime TV and Movies I’ve collected like もののけ姫, Akira, Paprika, Laputa, Steamboy, Cowboy Bebop etc.
Occasionally, I’ll save a sentence that I recognize or look up one of the many, many sentences I have no clue on. But for the most part I just listen - there is no substitute for the feeling when a word, phrase or sentence just jumps out at you and you understand
For most of these programs I’ve started ripping the audio out separately and just listening to them. This way, whatever I’m doing, I can just listen to the movie in the background. Interestingly, when I wasn’t learning Japanese, I used to put movies on repeat in my dvd player and let them go for days. It was good background noise for work - and death for that dvd player.
I try to avoid subtitles, they can help you figure out what word is what but eventually I just fall into reading the English. I’m hardwired - if I see anything in English I read it whether I want to or not. I did watch a Japanese drama that had Japanese subtitles once - it was cool but I still found myself reading when I really wanted to be listening.
Finaly, what I’m wondering about with listening right now is the difference between listening to the same program repeatedly versus listening to something new. Because eventually, I memorize parts of the program. I know what’s coming so it’s not so much listening comprehension as memory recall.
But when I listen to something I’ve never heard before and that same phrase that I memorized jumps out at me when I’m not expecting it and I instantly understand, that’s fun.
So the podcasts, I listen to them once and move on. Movies and TV, If I still enjoy the program, I’ll play it again and again.
My theory on learning is that learning is achieved by repetition in *different* contexts. Which is why reading the same textbook over and over results in poor learning. So while a few repetitions is OK I think that listening to the same things again and again isn’t very effective.
And to stay on the topic of your post, I think that people are just disappointed because they were told that 2000 kanji was what they needed and they find out that isn’t really the case. There seem to be a lot of misinformation on that subject. But once we have learned how to learn the kanji, learning more isn’t a problem.
That’s a great point about repetition through different contexts. Context that can only be had though more reading and listening.
Part of the reason that I enjoy listening to or watching the same movie over and over is that, after I’ve seen it several times, I begin to understand *how* the movie was made.
How they advance the story, develop the characters, foreshadow, staging, editing, pacing etc, etc. I enjoy doing that for movies in English - and doing it with Miyazaki films from which many American animators have drawn inspiration is just fun.
And that’s ultimately what it’s about: fun. Communicating with other human beings isn’t work, it’s a natural part of *being* human. If learning to communicate is boring study, then the learning process can be vastly improved.
In the case of Kanji, I think it’s a case of misinformation *and* misdirection. A lot of resources out there are teaching people that chasing after a number is the way to fluency.
It’s taking all the excitement of someone new to learning Japanese and snuffing it out with memorization goals.
But if that excitement is directed towards consuming Japanese TV, short stories, Movies and books - whatever it takes to carry that excitement forward - the memorization is much simpler. How could it not be with that much context to draw upon?
Post a Comment