Hello to everyone in this forum,

I am new here and this is my first post so far. Apologies for anything wrong I do about the forum or the English itself. English is my 2nd language.

I decided to learn Japanese because I wanted do something actually useful in my life.And I decided to learn Japanese.I've learned Hiragana and half of the Katakana. And I know i need to learn Kanji to fully learn this. I did some stuff for learning it. But I need answers for some questions.

-About Rikaichan , when you move the cursor to a Kanji , it shows up several meanings. Are these On-yomi or Kun-yomi?

-Which reading should I study?On or Kun?

-Which RTK book should I buy?

-What are the uses of On-yomi and Kun-yomi?


Any help would be apperciated.

Congratulations on your decision to study Japanese. It takes a lot of time and energy but stick with it and you will be rewarded.

Your Questions:
Q -About Rikaichan , when you move the cursor to a Kanji , it shows up several meanings. Are these On-yomi or Kun-yomi?
A: They are usually both. It depends on the word you are looking up. Kun-yomi is used mainly for single kanji and the on-yomi for compound kanji words, although this is far from consistent. I wouldn't worry right now about which is which, just learn the words as they are defined for you in the context of the piece you are reading.

Q -Which reading should I study?On or Kun?
A: You need to learn both in order to read fluently. There is some controversy about how best to learn the readings but I believe you should learn the readings of the kanji as you encounter them.

Q -Which RTK book should I buy?
A: Remembering the Kanji Book 1.

Q -What are the uses of On-yomi and Kun-yomi?
A: Simply put, the kun-yomi are the native Japanese words that the kanji were borrowed to represent. On-yomi are the original Chinese readings of the kanji adapted to Japanese pronunciation. As I wrote above, you typically use on-yomi in pronouncing words that combine two or more kanji, and kun-yomi in pronouncing single-kanji words. Still, you should learn words as they appear, along with their pronunciations, without worrying right now whether they are on-yomi or kun-yomi.

Does rikaichan generally display the list of pronunciations and meanings in order of frequency or common usage? Does that mean there's a Japanese corpus online somewhere!?!?!?!

tashippy Wrote:Does rikaichan generally display the list of pronunciations and meanings in order of frequency or common usage? Does that mean there's a Japanese corpus online somewhere!?!?!?!

I think it's only in Rikaisama. "Frequencies are based on analysis of 5000+ novels."

Vempele Wrote:

tashippy Wrote:Does rikaichan generally display the list of pronunciations and meanings in order of frequency or common usage? Does that mean there's a Japanese corpus online somewhere!?!?!?!

I think it's only in Rikaisama. "Frequencies are based on analysis of 5000+ novels."

In comparison to, say, Core2k/6k the frequency is based on analysis of news media? I've noticed a lot of differences between the two so far.

Quote:I decided to learn Japanese because I wanted do something actually useful in my life.

You have probably made a mistake then.

Quote:-About Rikaichan , when you move the cursor to a Kanji , it shows up several meanings. Are these On-yomi or Kun-yomi?

Meanings are meanings, words are words - whether they're read with onyomi or kunyomi is irrelevant.

Quote:-Which reading should I study?On or Kun?

Neither. Learn words.

Quote:-Which RTK book should I buy?

The first one.

Quote:-What are the uses of On-yomi and Kun-yomi?

None. Seriously, just forget about them.

I wouldn't expend any time or effort to learning on- and kun-yomi in isolation at this stage. Focus on whole words (after RTK1).

Once you have a couple thousand words in your head, the patterns of readings will come to you auto-magically. RTK2 tries to teach you this, but really you will pick up on it yourself with no effort if you just start learning words.

Thank you guys for your answers.So if I am not wrong I should learn the meanings of the Kanji first , and then the on-yomi later?

Also,

Thank you for the motivation you gave , Aikynaro.

patates Wrote:Thank you guys for your answers.So if I am not wrong I should learn the meanings of the Kanji first , and then the on-yomi later?

Based on my personal experience being just past 4500 in Core...there is no way I could have come this far in anywhere near the same amount of time, if at all, had I not done RTK first.

Also, having put forth the time and effort into RTK first kept me motivated early on, as I was unwilling to throw all that time spent away.

patates Wrote:Thank you for the motivation you gave , Aikynaro.

Patates, for me you have done the right choice, whatever you enjoy is ultimately useful for you. If you end up with the choice of japanese clearly there is something behind this choice. Even if the only reason is you want to consume japanese music, leterature, movies etc... by itself it means you're doing something useful to your life.

If Natve Aikynaro was talking about working environment, but still we are living in a time where nothing gives working guarantees. Moreover, work is not the utmost aim of life, on the contrary it is only a mean, so you must not discard everything that is not useful in terms of working possibilities. Think of music, art, but also medical research or other things one does because it is passionate in them.

Furthermore I do think if you are smart everything can be useful and give you the possibility to find a work. Look at how many people studies english, but it doesn't mean if you know it you will find automatically a good work. Or architecture, medicine etc.. years and years of studies, specializations, apprenticeship and still there are masses of unemployeds.

Here in Italy I know a man who know japanese and because of this he found works here at an italian brantch of a famous japanese company. Another girl I know on youtube gives lessons on webcam, another does tour guide here in Italy where there are a lot of japanese tourists.

Also I myself have found a bunch of people interested in lessons from me, unfortunately I'm still a super beginner but I know when I'll be a little advanced in japanese, they will pay me to help them study the language. Nothing big, just to say it's not worst or better than any other branch of study. Another thing I remember now it's I've found a hotel interested in assuming people who speaks japanese and I have a uncle who sells cork for wine bottles in the asian market, he still is not in the japanese market but maybe in future who knows? xD

Sorry for the lenght! I hope I've helped you to maintain motivation!

Aikynaro Wrote:

Quote:I decided to learn Japanese because I wanted do something actually useful in my life.

You have probably made a mistake then.

Surely the 3rd largest economy in the world is a mistake. You sound more like you're projecting your own personal cynicism and failure.

Pretty sure he meant that in a funny way. No reason to get all ムキ.

When I was a few lessons into RTK, I started a traditional kanji book (I use Basic Kanji Book - in my opinion it's a great book because of the extra stuff every lesson carries!). I do a lesson a week and don't pay too much attention to the readings: I do the exercises, try to replicate the handwritten style kanji and then load any new vocabulary, plus any useful sentences from the exercises, into Anki. The front of the card is in my native language, and I write the Japanese word down in kanji, then flip the card to see whether I've done it right. So far it's been working well and it's pretty painless (I'm finding RTK takes more work than Basic Kanji Book), but I've still got a long way to go!

Anyway, if this sounds good to you you might give it a try : )

ryuudou Wrote:

Aikynaro Wrote:

Quote:I decided to learn Japanese because I wanted do something actually useful in my life.

You have probably made a mistake then.

Surely the 3rd largest economy in the world is a mistake. You sound more like you're projecting your own personal cynicism and failure.

I have spent a lot of time on Japanese over the years, and if somebody told me it isn't very useful I would be inclined to agree with them. When it comes to people adjusting to Japan I find it goes a bit like this...

1. Enthusiasm with learning/visiting
2. Frustration/cynicism from language learning burn out/culture shcock
3. Language success/enthusiasm about life/potential life in Japan
4. A more relaxed cynicism/resignation

#4's aren't necessarily so negative as people still undergoing "culture shock", and may even be generally optimistic friendly types who don't grumble, and get by just fine, but scratch the surface and they are definitely cynics. Maybe there is something after #4, but I'm not seeing it much out there. Note also that I'm not saying that #4's are better at Japanese than #3's, but they might be a bit older, or have spent more time dealing with the grind of daily life. I think RuleOf7 is a good example, and he is far from unusual. People can come here and have a blast for a few years, and then think "man, if I knew some Japanese it would be even -more- of a blast". Then they do it, and find out that its not all rainbows and lollipops. Maybe for some. But company life here tends to wear people out big time, and few want to be English teachers forever. I know several people, including my partner, who have gone to huge amounts of effort in learning the language, getting into a school here, going through the job hunting process, landing a job at a good company.... and they would like to leave. No sleep. No family time. Difficulty with human relations. All of these issues go beyond "cultural differences" and point more to just the generally tough environment that everybody has to deal with here, compounded by difficulties in "fitting in" as a foreigner. You don't need to be a failure to be cynical.

"The 3rd largest economy" is about to change drastically. Surely, Japan will stay as a major player in the global economy, but the third place will be lost soon enough. Even staying in the top ten would be optimistic.

If you think about a language's usefulness, there's much better options out there. Then again, there's much worse options too.

You don't have to move to Japan to make use of the language. That is probably a dumb idea anyway, because the symptoms of the problems in Japan can be very evident to someone living there. By not moving there you can avoid the cynicism and instead you can keep being proud of your giant achievement. Being able to speak and understand Japanese is not something to be taken for granted, even though I have seen such comments on this forum a lot (usually from people living in Japan).

There IS value to knowing about on-yomi and kun-yomi ahead of time. There are some patterns where Kanji with certain primitives in them all (or almost all), have the same on-reading. For instance, Kanji that have 中 (like 中, 忠, 沖, 仲) in them all have an on-reading of "chuu". Useful to know, no? Even if you don't learn them separately, just knowing about them is helpful. For details on this, read the introduction to RtK 2, here: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&...VmUgt_cP2Q (it's a free pdf of the first couple of chapters; shouldn't take more than 30 mins to read the introduction)

Also, knowing not to try and read compounds with kun-readings, or verbs with on-readings, is useful knowledge to have from the get-go.

In general, it's useful to read up on the writing system in English, rather than wait for some of these basic patterns to become clear by going through hundreds of words. It speeds up the process. Here's a resource that will give you the basic principles: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/complete/writing (it's normally referred to as Tae Kim's guide around here)

You should read the articles about the writing system. The site also has a good grammar guide, for later on. Although, lately, I'm leaning towards "Japanese the Manga Way" as an introductory resource for grammar. But that's a book (costs money), Tae Kim's is a free, yet still high quality, resource.

Everything they say is true, but what does it mean "useful"? There are people which study ancient hebrew, so... xD

I'm a beginner so the only thing I can suggest you is to do one thing at a time... Otherwise it's easy to be overwhelmed if you start to think about multiple things... About on and kun they already answered you thoroughly, I too suggest you to read Tae Kim guide, it's free and it explain well how readings work and many other things But for now I suggest you to stick with RtK 1, maybe RtK 1 Lite that's what I'm doing... I'm following Nukemarine guide, take a look at it if you haven't already done this

muteki99 Wrote:

patates Wrote:Thank you guys for your answers.So if I am not wrong I should learn the meanings of the Kanji first , and then the on-yomi later?

Based on my personal experience being just past 4500 in Core...there is no way I could have come this far in anywhere near the same amount of time, if at all, had I not done RTK first.

Also, having put forth the time and effort into RTK first kept me motivated early on, as I was unwilling to throw all that time spent away.

I agree about the point of RTK first. I'm only half way through due to university assignments/exams (I started, stopped then had to relearn multiple times) but I notice if I know the kanji meaning then I can guess what the core word is even if I don't know it and get it right more times than if I don't know the kanji meaning. Surprisingly I know more meanings than I thought. It was a real confidence booster to say "Oh, that is the kanji for such and such so it must have something to with X".

What ever you do, don't miss a review day. I was on the beverages of an alcoholic nature on Friday night and I was n't able to even make some cereal the next day never mind review core/kanji/grammar and my reviews just shot up.

Just remember it's better to start now than look back and say "Damn! If only I started on X then I would be at Y instead of being only half way to Y". Any progress you make even if it's remembering 20 kanji or reading a novel it is still building up to whatever your goal is!

patates Wrote:Also, thank you for the motivation you gave , Aikynaro.

It's easy to see that the warning which Aikynaro gave is probably not what you want to hear. However, I still think that it is good advice to rethink your motivation. Acquiring a reasonable command of Japanese requires a huge time investment. Maybe that doesn't bother you at all and instead of playing video games you choose to learn Japanese. In that case one might say Japanese is useful. However, the payback is quite uncertain, so I still think that it's valuable to question your motive. As somebody once nicely formulated, learning English gives you access to a big part of the world. Japanese on the other hand is mostly restricted to Japan. So I think that Aikynaro raised a good point.

Of course you don't really need to address the point immediately, as it will most probably just sort itself out over time.

Well, yeah, I wasn't being entirely serious, but seeing it's gotten to this:
I think if you're learning Japanese because you think it will be useful, you're probably making a mistake. With the time and effort you need to invest into Japanese for it to be 'useful' you could probably learn a whole lot of other actually broadly useful skills. If I was learning it only because of how useful it is, I would probably have given up by now.
I don't think learning Japanese has been a particularly good investment of my time. In the future perhaps it will become conventionally 'useful', but I doubt it will have been worth the effort. Which is okay because I was never studying Japanese because I wanted something useful from it.

Quote:So if I am not wrong I should learn the meanings of the Kanji first , and then the on-yomi later?

On-yomi and kun-yomi are red-herrings. You don't need to sit down and specifically study either one of them. Ignore the whole idea of them completely - they are entirely irrelevant to (most) decent Japanese learning strategies. It would be like sitting down to learn English worrying about whether a word is of Latin or Greek root - who cares? You just need to know the words themselves.

Thank you guys for your answers. And I completely agree about the fact that learning Japanese doesn't mean a job in Japan. In my city , I know a security guard who has second language as Japanese instead of English. And I am pretty sure that he learnt it with the difficult way.

ryuudou Wrote:Surely the 3rd largest economy in the world is a mistake. You sound more like you're projecting your own personal cynicism and failure.

Sounds like a typical expat.

Danchan Wrote:People can come here and have a blast for a few years, and then think "man, if I knew some Japanese it would be even -more- of a blast". Then they do it, and find out that its not all rainbows and lollipops.

Who really believes that though? (That Japan is a perfect country full of rainbows and lollipops).

This is the Internet. There are more than enough people from many countries to speak ill of Japan (even this thread). If someone learns Japanese, lives in Japan, then find out it wasn't the perfect heaven they thought it was, they only have themselves to blame. This goes for any language and any country. I would grant exceptions to poor citizens from poor countries who don't have Internet so knowledge about reality is harder to obtain. First world countries? Your fault if your conceptions are wrong.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:"The 3rd largest economy" is about to change drastically. Surely, Japan will stay as a major player in the global economy, but the third place will be lost soon enough. Even staying in the top ten would be optimistic.
If you think about a language's usefulness, there's much better options out there. Then again, there's much worse options too.

If you're learning a language for money (as implied by learning a language due to how big the economy is), there much better things to learn. A simple personal finance or investment course for most people would probably be better.

If Japanese is a useless language or becoming one, I wonder how truly insignificant countries feel about nobody wanting to learn their truly useless languages (like for example, whatever they speak in Kazakhstan).

Speaking of India overtaking Japan as the 3rd largest economy, I'm thinking of giving up Japanese and learning Indian. I need native material though so can anyone recommend good Indian anime, comic books, video games or movies (no Bollywood)?

qwertyytrewq Wrote:

Betelgeuzah Wrote:"The 3rd largest economy" is about to change drastically. Surely, Japan will stay as a major player in the global economy, but the third place will be lost soon enough. Even staying in the top ten would be optimistic.
If you think about a language's usefulness, there's much better options out there. Then again, there's much worse options too.

If you're learning a language for money (as implied by learning a language due to how big the economy is), there much better things to learn. A simple personal finance or investment course for most people would probably be better.

If Japanese is a useless language or becoming one, I wonder how truly insignificant countries feel about nobody wanting to learn their truly useless languages (like for example, whatever they speak in Kazakhstan).

Speaking of India overtaking Japan as the 3rd largest economy, I'm thinking of giving up Japanese and learning Indian. I need native material though so can anyone recommend good Indian anime, comic books, video games or movies (no Bollywood)?

How big of a player a country is in an economic sense affects much more than just how much money you can make with it. You could say that one's overall exposure to the country is largely affected by it's position in the world economy. A rich country has more opportunities to become known internationally, through quality products and services, technological advancement and research, or by its citizens travelling abroad (among others). One could go as far as to say that the bigger the economy the more chances are there to be exposed to the language.

Now, Japanese is not becoming a useless language, that's a ridiculous idea. The Japanese continue to speak bad English and continue to be a major player internationally, which is a good thing for those wanting to learn the language. They just won't be as big of a deal as they were in the past.

I can tell you how a comparatively useful country feels about nobody wanting to learn its truly useless language (Finnish). Complete indifference. Our language doesn't cease to exist nor does it become in any way "inferior" just because there is no global interest for learning it. In comparison we will look at you funny if you say you want to/are learning Finnish. It doesn't make any sense nor do we expect you to do it (unless you've decided to live here).

By the way, you don't want to learn Indian; you want to learn Hindi. It makes zero sense though because unless you think communicating with the farmers of rural villages in Hindi would be useful to you, everyone else speaks English...

Betelgeuzah Wrote:I can tell you how a comparatively useful country feels about nobody wanting to learn its truly useless language (Finnish). Complete indifference.

JRR Tolkien was a huge admirer of Finnish and his Elvish languages are influenced by Finnish.

(Of course that doesn't mean anything as far as people wanting to learn it, but at least a famous person liked it...)