[Zgarbas]

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Zgarbas Wrote:Possible? Yep; just look at Chinese learners.

They still know readings for the kanji, just not the Japanese ones. (I'm not just nitpicking; having any semantic value to associate with each character makes it very different from trying to use an abstract meaning.)

Japanese has *a lot* of kanjis with no direct equivalents, so sometimes they guess, and sometimes they just ignore the sound... though yes, the starting points are most definitely different. And it's still an abstract meaning, it's just that it has more value for them when they assign it.

I'm doing that now with Mandarin (long story short: I need to be able to get meaning from Chinese texts, but actually learning it is not something I'm willing to dedicate myself to yet), and it works, surprisingly, although it definitely gives you a certain sense of why am I doing this. Basically you replace the actual Japanese/Chinese with the English word (or in my case, the Japanese one where compounds are available) in your head, and it does allow you to get the meaning for the most part, but of course it's not what would count as learning a language by anyone's books.

e.g. "中央图书馆 二楼 的 要不你在门口等一下 我一会儿到"
in my head I'd read it "中央図書館 2F How about you wait at the door すぐ到着する"