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Translating Kanji directly to English?

#26
jmignot Wrote:Whether this is good or not for the learning process on the long term is not clear to me.
There's a very simple solution: you LISTEN and read: audio + transcript (+ translation /parallel texts/ + mouse-over pop-up). It works perfectly for any language. The more whimsical the script, the better it works.
I've always been puzzled why people don't do it. Damn it!
There's enough materials even for Japanese, not to mention Russian or Mandarin.
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#27
buonaparte Wrote:
jmignot Wrote:Whether this is good or not for the learning process on the long term is not clear to me.
There's a very simple solution: you LISTEN and read: audio + transcript (+ translation /parallel texts/ + mouse-over pop-up). It works perfectly for any language. The more whimsical the script, the better it works.
I've always been puzzled why people don't do it. Damn it!
There's enough materials even for Japanese, not to mention Russian or Mandarin.
That's L-R, right? Like a longer version of Assimil?
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#28
While for the reasons that have been stated above, I do think OP needs to learn the Japanese readings of the Kanji for a lot of good reasons. But, he doesn't have to put a whole lot of effort into it.
I mean, I come across a ton of kanji compounds where I might forget how the kanji is read, but I sort of know the meaning. And that's ok for the most part.
So, just being familiar with the readings is enough... he wouldn't necessarily have to make sure every word is memorized perfectly, at least no where near as well as he would need to memorize the meanings.
Heck, lots of Japanese people have been able to learn written chinese but have no idea how to speak it.
Edited: 2014-09-27, 11:08 am
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#29
Zarxrax Wrote:While for the reasons that have been stated above, I do think OP needs to learn the Japanese readings of the Kanji for a lot of good reasons. But, he doesn't have to put a whole lot of effort into it.
I mean, I come across a ton of kanji compounds where I might forget how the kanji is read, but I sort of know the meaning. And that's ok for the most part.
I don't think it is. My reading speed increased substantially when I forced myself to know the readings and built up my oral proficiency more.

Quote:Heck, lots of Japanese people have been able to learn written chinese but have no idea how to speak it.
I'm unaware of this; I've never met a Japanese person who did this or heard of it being done.
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#30
yudantaiteki Wrote:I'm unaware of this; I've never met a Japanese person who did this or heard of it being done.
This is just per one of my former Japanese teachers. I can't verify the validity of it. But it may be more of a historical thing from back in the days when normal people couldn't go traveling around the world to actually speak to people, but they had chinese materials imported.
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#31
RandomQuotes Wrote:That's L-R, right? Like a longer version of Assimil?
Not necessarily. You just read while listening until you've become comfortable. Then you can read without listening. You won't be puzzled time and again by unfamiliar pronunciations, stress and so on - depending on the language you're learning.


By the way, L-R and Assimil are different techniques.

L-R (LISTENING-reading) by aYa
http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/

ASSIMIL
Assimil: Foreign Language Learning Series Reviews (by Arguelles)



http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Assimil
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#32
Zarxrax Wrote:
yudantaiteki Wrote:I'm unaware of this; I've never met a Japanese person who did this or heard of it being done.
This is just per one of my former Japanese teachers. I can't verify the validity of it. But it may be more of a historical thing from back in the days when normal people couldn't go traveling around the world to actually speak to people, but they had chinese materials imported.
It's possible he was just spreading a common myth, but if not he probably just meant that people didn't have an active spoken fluency in Chinese. Not that they literally made no attempt whatsoever to pronounce the Chinese. In theory I suppose people could have tried to learn Chinese using the on-yomi of the characters rather than the Chinese pronunciations, but once again, I've never heard of anyone doing this.
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