While I was in the shower and in deep thought, an interesting hypothetical situation came to me. Would it be possible to learn Japanese without learning how to speak it? TO further explain, here's a situation:
Fred is an English man who can read, write, and speak in English. He wants to learn Japanese, but here's the catch: we don't give him any romaji whatsoever, and he never hears the language spoken. So, in essence, all he has are the kana and the kanji, with no romaji and no speakers. My question is, do you think he can successfully learn how to write and understand Japanese?
While I was mulling it over, I came up with a few points.
1) Because you don't know romaji and don't know pronunciation, the kana on their own would be somewhat worthless. They represent the syllables, but since you won't know the syllables, each individual character doesn't really mean that much when you read it. So in essence, reading is just being able to identify a group of symbols and figuring out what that means.
2) Because of that, the entire language becomes somewhat like RTK: with RTK, each Kanji has a corresponding keyword that is related to its meaning, but doesn't involve Japanese readings or pronunciation whatsoever. Without being able to speak or pronounce the entire language, all you can do is identify a group of words and figure out what the "keyword," so to speak, is.
3) Grammar might be a bit hard, since some kana act as particles or indicators of functions. I guess you'd be able to go through Tae Kim and core2K since those don't involve Romaji, but give some importance and meaning to the random characters.
So what do you guys think? I'm just bored since it's spring break, and I think it could be an interesting discussion.
Fred is an English man who can read, write, and speak in English. He wants to learn Japanese, but here's the catch: we don't give him any romaji whatsoever, and he never hears the language spoken. So, in essence, all he has are the kana and the kanji, with no romaji and no speakers. My question is, do you think he can successfully learn how to write and understand Japanese?
While I was mulling it over, I came up with a few points.
1) Because you don't know romaji and don't know pronunciation, the kana on their own would be somewhat worthless. They represent the syllables, but since you won't know the syllables, each individual character doesn't really mean that much when you read it. So in essence, reading is just being able to identify a group of symbols and figuring out what that means.
2) Because of that, the entire language becomes somewhat like RTK: with RTK, each Kanji has a corresponding keyword that is related to its meaning, but doesn't involve Japanese readings or pronunciation whatsoever. Without being able to speak or pronounce the entire language, all you can do is identify a group of words and figure out what the "keyword," so to speak, is.
3) Grammar might be a bit hard, since some kana act as particles or indicators of functions. I guess you'd be able to go through Tae Kim and core2K since those don't involve Romaji, but give some importance and meaning to the random characters.
So what do you guys think? I'm just bored since it's spring break, and I think it could be an interesting discussion.
)
No worries though, I'll understand next time
