(2016-02-21, 7:54 pm)ryuudou Wrote: (2016-02-21, 5:11 pm)sholum Wrote: Learning kanji (squiggles) without context (language) does not impart the agreed meaning and use of the squiggle to the learner, thus learning characters on their own isn't learning language.
RTK is context because it's a book aimed at acquiring the Japanese script as it's used in Japan (jouyou kanji). Learning the kanji is context, because the kanji is the Japanese script.
(2016-02-21, 5:11 pm)sholum Wrote: It is impossible to read things unless you understand them
Incorrect. If you know the readings of kanji you can read them without knowing what they mean.
(2016-02-21, 5:11 pm)sholum Wrote: this is even a popular example of why knowing characters doesn't mean knowing language
Moving the goalposts. I simply said that RTKanji is studying Japanese.
(2016-02-21, 5:11 pm)sholum Wrote: If characters have the attribute of 'language', and weren't simply arbitrary tools of language
The characters are just as much the language as the sounds are. The jouyou kanji are a unique group of characters with a unique usage (including Japan-invented kanji) that only exist that way within the Japanese usage.
(2016-02-21, 5:11 pm)sholum Wrote: As for you changing your point, you didn't do it very well
I didn't change my point at all. You misunderstood.
(2016-02-21, 5:11 pm)sholum Wrote: I was a bit... (crass? blunt?) with my initial sentence, but it does seem that all my conversations with you have been arguments over stupid things that ultimately have no value for improving language studies.
I have no idea who you are. Perhaps you're often find yourself in these kind of discussions because you're guilty of the behavior you're talking about.
A character set is a set of scribbles that are meaningless out of context. Sound patterns are sounds that are meaningless out of context. You can work on your pronunciation of Japanese sounds all you like, but unless you're speaking Japanese
words when you do so, you're just making sounds. In the same way, if you learn to write the kanji outside the context of actual Japanese language, you're learning to replicate scribbles, not learning Japanese.
These characters aren't in context in RTK, they're by themselves, with English keywords assigned to them that sometimes loosely correlate to their basic theme or meaning in Japanese. That connection to Japanese is about as solid as air...
You can not read something (understand written language, since you're going to split hairs) unless you understand it; that's such a basic fact that there's no better way to say it, you understand because you understand, going any further is philosophical babble.
I moved no goal posts, I used the example of the letter 'p' from the beginning and mentioned that, since many kanji overlap (are the same as) traditional Chinese characters, it's perfectly reasonable, by your logic, to say that learning kanji means you're learning Chinese writing.
I misinterpreted your sentence, because it made no sense to me when I first read it...
ryuudou Wrote:You also seem to conflate misrepresentation with me changing my point.
I never said you changed your point, I said you nitpick statements like 'learning kanji in isolation isn't learning Japanese' until they have nothing to do with their original form; we're now having an argument that might as well be saying that if I copied the Hebrew alphabet into a book right now without any idea of what sounds those letters make or what clusters of them actually mean, I'd still be studying Hebrew. This is either completely false, or a semantics game. Squiggles aren't written language until they have context, such as what words they represent. The fact that I title my attempt to copy scribbles that I don't understand as 'attempt to copy Hebrew characters' doesn't magically make it not an attempt to almost blindly learn scribbles.
(Why Hebrew? Because it's a language I know next to nothing about, and it's the first thing that came to my mind; replace with Farsi or something else, if it so pleases you).
I could learn every single character in the Hebrew script and assign each one a tag word with which I remembered it by, just like in RTK, and practice recalling them from memory with those words; would you say I know any Hebrew then, or did I learn, completely out of context, the script that is used to write Hebrew?
Maybe a better example would be the Latin or Greek scripts we use every day. Sure, I can produce those characters, and I even know most of their names (at least the Greek ones), but that doesn't mean I know one lick of Greek or Latin by learning those scripts; I merely know the script used to represent those languages.
Being literate is important in our world, so I'm not trying to downplay the importance of it in helping one to improve their language abilities at a greatly increased rate.
For my (hopefully) final attempt to convey why characters aren't language, let's go back to spoken language. What makes sounds language? Those sounds are organized in a manner that has been agreed to have some meaning. Is a babbling baby speaking a language? In all likelihood, no; they are imitating the fact that, when adults want something, they make noises (not crying, that's biological); the baby has no idea what those noises mean at first, but they try to replicate them to achieve some result; until they figure out that it requires certain sounds in certain patterns to convey their desires, there is no language being spoken.
In the same way, written language is language not by virtue of its scribbles, but by virtue of its
organized scribbles. Until it actually means something, it's not language, just scribbles.
However, in both cases, it's easily agreed that neither speech nor literacy would develop without learning those basic bits that make the language, but which I claim aren't language until they are organized with meanings.
This is my final argument, we agree to disagree if there's still no understanding; like I said, we've never argued something useful. And yes, we've argued about stupid shit before; it's why I always sigh in resignation when I see you arguing against something I've written; I don't remember names that well, so the fact that I remember you as 'that guy that always gets in dumb arguments with me' shows that I've typed too many posts directed at you.
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