Learning vocabulary after finishing RtK, I find it tempting to write in the most kanji-heavy manner possible, even when it comes to words for which the norm has shifted to kana (e.g. 只今, 綺麗, 兎に角, and my personal favorite, 御). I am, however, unsure of whether this is a good idea. While it does result in some extra practice and the ability to read said words in the event that I ever come across them in their kanji form, I'm afraid I may end up writing them in kanji even when inappropriate. Hopefully, a good amount of input written in "normal" Japanese should help me avoid this terrible fate, but that remains to be seen.

What are your thoughts on this? Does anyone else have the same unhealthy obsession with kanji? Suggestions, perhaps, or warnings? Discuss. \o_o/

Edit: Maybe I'll start using 為る and see what my Japanese techer says. <<

Words usually written in kana when they have a perfectly good kanji equivalent irritate me to no end. Kanji are awesome. They give excellent word separation and remove the confusion in an otherwise confusing language. I can read a string of kanji, but I can't read a string of kana.

While it's certainly a good test of knowledge, writing commonly kana written words with kanji will make your japanese look unnatural and many japanese won't even be able to read it. So yeah, I think you should keep doing it if you want, but be certain you don't forget which words are supposed to be written with kana.

Try not to do it. It's the equivalent of talking in extremely strange, posh language (or something like that).

If you're using an SRS or something similar, make sure you note down which is wrote with kanji and which isn't. You could always write down two answers-- one with the general use kana and one with the kanji.

Don't do it. Your goal is to learn Japanese, not kanji. There are reasons for some of the hiraganisation too. うち　and　家　（いえ） come to mind. They both have the same kanji but uchi is written in kana, ie is written with the kanji.

I use Anki, so maybe I could color-code or underline any words that come off as awkward in kanji. That, or I could actually use the "Notes" field (I renamed the "Meaning" field in Anki's default Japanese model, since I don't use translations).

The main reason why I bother with kanji for these words at all, apart from simply liking kanji, is that I find it a lot easier to memorize vocabulary if I can connect it to kanji (and by extension, stories) I already know.

「御目出度う御座います」 never really did it for me, though.

hknamida Wrote:I use Anki, so maybe I could color-code or underline any words that come off as awkward in kanji. That, or I could actually use the "Notes" field (I renamed the "Meaning" field in Anki's default Japanese model, since I don't use translations).

The main reason why I bother with kanji for these words at all, apart from simply liking kanji, is that I find it a lot easier to memorize vocabulary if I can connect it to kanji (and by extension, stories) I already know.

「御目出度う御座います」 never really did it for me, though.

Well, おめでとう is ateji anyway though, right? So it won't have much of an effect on ease of memorization [although pretty much everybody knows the word anyway]

playadom Wrote:Well, おめでとう is ateji anyway though, right? So it won't have much of an effect on ease of memorization [although pretty much everybody knows the word anyway]

True. That may not have been the best example.

Edit: As a side note, I had to look up ｢あてじ｣. I knew that kanji were occasionally used in that way, but I didn't know the word for it. 有り難う。

Haha, I wrote 有り難う in a letter to one of my Japanese teachers once, just to be weird/funny, and the next time I saw her, she talk to me for 5 minutes about why I shouldn't use that, and essentially, in that round-about Japanese way, called me stupid for doing so.

笑 ;-)

Words that are usualy written in kana can be written in kanji for a special meaning.
I'm playing persona 4 and どこ when is used for an alternate dimension is written as 何処.

There are a couple of reasons why certain words aren't written in kanji. The first is that the kanji may just be really hard to write. For example, 綺麗. With computers this isn't really a problem and so using kanji for these words seems to be making a comeback. Alternatively, there are cases where the kanji are not really appropriate for the word. Words where the kanji was just ateji are one example of this. Also, there are more grammatical uses of words, for example things like 〜てみる where みる doesn't really have the meaning of the 見. Lastly, there are other verbs being used normally but whose kanji isn't really appropriate, and the tendency seems to be to write these in kana as well since using the kanji doesn't really add anything. Overall, having a mixture of kanji and kana is probably the best; neither pure kana nor 万葉仮名 are easy to read. Also, reserving kanji for meaningful parts makes it much easier to skim.

For those of us just starting out could you any of you kind people suggest ways to look-up if something is normally written in Kanji and/or kana as per the discussion above?

I've noticed that Denshi Jisho at http://www.jisho.org/ sometimes marks things as 'normally written in kana' which is presumably info from EDICT. Are there alternative and or better ways?

I understand that over time I'll develop a sense for what is common usage in particular cases but I'm not able to 'graze' just yet!

epangelia2k2 Wrote:For those of us just starting out could you any of you kind people suggest ways to look-up if something is normally written in Kanji and/or kana as per the discussion above?

I've noticed that Denshi Jisho at http://www.jisho.org/ sometimes marks things as 'normally written in kana' which is presumably info from EDICT. Are there alternative and or better ways?

I understand that over time I'll develop a sense for what is common usage in particular cases but I'm not able to 'graze' just yet!

That information (indeed taken from edict) is usually good overall. In reality the usage varies a bit, so in some cases (depending on the intended audience, I guess) you will see words not listed as "uk" written in kana, but on the other hand you will also find them commonly written in kanji so it is probably best to learn them that way. If you want a comparison, you could look in something like kenkyusha's dictionary where the example sentences exhibit kanji usage that is toward the lower end of the spectrum of kanji usage.

In literary works, more "usually kana" words are commonly written with kanji but nowadays they are given furigana as well.

I've found that the EDICT "uk" marker is a little arbitrary; in most cases it's a pretty good indication that it would be weird to use kanji for that word, but in some cases it seems misplaced. If the dictionary has example sentences, you can see how the dictionary writers chose to render it, but of course that might not always be a reliable indicator of common usage.
御 isn't too rare, but obviously not many people use it when writing by hand.
Any word with a choice between katakana and ateji (ie foreign loanwords) normally uses the katakana these days. Actually, plants & animals in general tend to be written in katakana these days, although it depends a bit on context. Japanese people love telling foreigners about 百足 when the topic comes up, though.

Hmm, I have noticed that sometimes (stress on the word "sometimes"), in official documents, words that are supposed to be usually written in Kana are in Kanji. Examples I have come across so far - に於いて、and 等.

ください/下さい is really getting to my head T_T.

Squintox Wrote:ください/下さい is really getting to my head T_T.

When I first came across this I stopped for a bit. I was able to figure it out in context, but managed to forget it the next time I saw it.

はははははのかみがはっきりはくはつだね

ロルズ

I recommend caution with just 御. While it is indeed quite often used in Japanese so it's okay to use it, you might make it easy for yourself by using it. As some of you know, 御 is put infront of nouns to make them honorific, but it can be pronounced in two different ways, o and go.
Example:
御皿 - osara (plate)
御家族 - gokazoku (family)

If you come across a word and you don't know wether it should be o or go, you can simply write the kanji and you'll be fine, but you're also "cheating" by not learning wether it should be o or go.

But yeah, that kanji is quite common, so it's not wrong to use it.