When looking up a term on ALC I found a *headdesk*-inducing article from the Hiragana Times (which includes both English and Japanese.)

The writer of the article claims that students of Japanese (who want to learn quickly) shouldn't bother with learning kanji because it's, quote, "a waste of time," and they are able to get by with just kana and romaji in Japan. Blasphemy, right? Especially the following quote:

It'd be hell, and only 1 in 100 people would end up being able to read and write them sufficiently well.（まさに地獄の苦しみであり、100人に1人も充分には漢字の読み書きができないまま終わるだろう。）

I can't even tell you how strange of a feeling it was to read -that- sentence in Japanese and understand it fairly well, without even having read the English sentence beforehand. I highly doubt I'm some miracle 1 in 100 over-achiever. Anyone have that same experience while reading?

Anyway, if this article didn't include the Japanese version it wouldn't be worth any recognition. I just thought I'd let you guys know about it for the ironic feeling of reading a text in Japanese, which claims itself that this task should be nearly impossible for you. And it's some good reading practice too -- every once in awhile it's fun to read someone's argument that's dumb to the point of being hilarious, enjoy~

Whenever reading an opinion, I always consider the source and their particular "angle." Note that the article was published in the "hiragana" times. Pretty obvious that they would stand to benefit from more people only being able to read hiragana. A similar article in the imaginary "kanji" times would obviously take the opposite point of view. Not really an unbiased opinion and no evidence or data is provided to support their position. In any case, I am learning for fun and learning kanji is more fun than just learning words in hiragana. I think the article is useless.

Don't let khatzumoto see that. He'll blow a gasket. The idea that people should come to a country and deliberate stay illiterate is just appalling, when as we all know it is NOT hard (a lot of work, but not difficult) to bring yourself up to speed.

jbudding Wrote:Whenever reading an opinion, I always consider the source and their particular "angle." Note that the article was published in the "hiragana" times. Pretty obvious that they would stand to benefit from more people only being able to read hiragana. A similar article in the imaginary "kanji" times would obviously take the opposite point of view. Not really an unbiased opinion and no evidence or data is provided to support their position. In any case, I am learning for fun and learning kanji is more fun than just learning words in hiragana. I think the article is useless.

When reading this article I was thinking, "This isn't really what the Hiragana Times is about, is it?!" Not knowing kanji is a pretty big hurdle if you ask me, and a widely known publication is encouraging people to include this hurdle in their studies/life in Japan. I agree the idea of the article is pretty useless. It was enjoyable reading practice though, for the laughs.

If they're convinced that we're too stupid to learn kanji, why isn't the Japanese version written in kana? ò_o

Was this really published in Hiragana Times? The English text seems rather badly written and not up to their standards.

I must be wrong, but it seems to me that the English and the Japanese versions of the sentence have a slightly different meaning. Gotta study more...

A written article endorsing illiteracy? Now I've seen everything.

hknamida Wrote:If they're convinced that we're too stupid to learn kanji, why isn't the Japanese version written in kana? ò_o

I know, right! Hiragana Times does use furigana so they are still including kana. I'd hate to read a just-kana article

Well, near the end he does have a point.
If you are in Japan doing the same work as a Japanese person, then that's one thing.
If you're in Japan using your "foreignness" as your selling point, then there really isn't a point to learning kanji. Japanese people WILL understand 99% of what you write if you write it in kana.

Different people, different goals. We here at RevTK obviously enjoy kanji. Other people might want to focus more on their speaking.
It's about specialization. If I'm in college studying Computer Science, why do I have to have 6 credits of Biology in order to graduate? It's similar.

I prefer things to be written in kanji now because you can sometimes guess the meaning and pronunciation.

Asriel Wrote:If you're in Japan using your "foreignness" as your selling point, then there really isn't a point to learning kanji. Japanese people WILL understand 99% of what you write if you write it in kana.

Japanese people will understand you, sure, but production isn't why you learn Kanji (how often will you be writing hand-written notes to people, after all). You learn Kanji primarily for recognition, so you can read & become literate, therefore allowing you to function as an adult. Imagine walking down the street and not being able to understand anything around you, or seeing a newspaper and not being able to read the headline, or going to a restaurant and not being able to read a menu. This would cause me to go insane fairly quickly.

Yeah no, I definitely agree with you. I'm learning kanji myself, aren't I?
And he does say that if you learn to know the meaning of the kanji you'll be OK. I find myself in that situation all the time -- I know what the word is, but I just don't know how to say it.

I think he's writing to a specific type of person which specific goals...and we definitely don't fit that type of person. This is for people who care more about the spoken language -- and since kana is phonetic, if you just focus on speaking, then no, you won't need the kanji. But that can be said for any language

Nuriko Wrote:I can't even tell you how strange of a feeling it was to read -that- sentence in Japanese and understand it fully, without even having read the English sentence beforehand. I highly doubt I'm some miracle 1 in 100 over-achiever.

Maybe you and many others on this forum actually are. Native - or near native - level reading (writing) competency is probably a pretty rare skill. I personally would not be surprised if for every Pakkun, there were at least 99 people who can read 200 Kanji tops. You can survive without Kanji, but I would most definately not recommend it. Being able to just pick up a random manga or book and enjoy it is mooooch better.

Honestly, articles and attitudes like this make me worry about Chinese and Japanese one day getting rid of hanzi/kanji. That would be so incredibly sad to me, but as long as people see it as an unnecessarily difficult stumbling block, then people are going to *want* to eliminate it. So sad.

Evil_Dragon Wrote:I personally would not be surprised if for every Pakkun, there were at least 99 people who can read 200 Kanji tops. You can survive without Kanji, but I would most definately not recommend it. Being able to just pick up a random manga or book and enjoy it is mooooch better.

Now that I think about it, I heard from a Japanese friend once that the percentage of people learning Japanese who become literate with kanji is at around 20% (kinda far from the 1% the author of that article said). It's hard to trust statistics, especially ones that people throw at you in a conversation, but considering the amount of people who don't yet know about RTK/people who go about it with a negative mindset... it's probably not a very inaccurate statistic.

Really, if you don't know kanji, how can one even hope to read Mishima?! I wanna cry just thinking about it (he's the main reason I wanted to learn Japanese). 夢：実現されました！

Nuriko Wrote:Really, without knowing kanji, how can one even hope to read Mishima?! I wanna cry just thinking about it (he's the main reason I wanted to learn Japanese). 夢：実現させました！

Recently, through Exploring Japanese Literature, I had the opportunity to read Mishima. Where it not for the enthralling style I'd say, "Mishima is something the majority of us could live without." LOL.

kazelee Wrote:

Nuriko Wrote:Really, without knowing kanji, how can one even hope to read Mishima?! I wanna cry just thinking about it (he's the main reason I wanted to learn Japanese). 夢：実現させました！

Recently, through Exploring Japanese Literature, I had the opportunity to read Mishima. Where it not for the enthralling style I'd say, "Mishima is something the majority of us could live without." LOL.

Enthralling style indeed!　*わくわく*

Oh yeah, thanks for correcting my crappy grammar :B

I would agree with the 1% figure quoted in the article. I know very few people who know kanji to a sufficient level, and I personally know hundreds of students of Japanese. This isn't due to the inherent hardness of kanji, just the low quality of most English language Japanese learning material and the poor study habits of most students.

@Asriel
To code protein folding! AHAHA.

@Nuriko
Way to go, girl. That's it. Now it is down hill. Just keep reading everything you have ahead you and you'll be reading everything in no time.

I remember how it was for me. It started with they joy of recognizing 1 kanji or two.
Then I could recognize all of them. Then I could read some compounds. Then I could sometimes read full sentences. Then sometimes I could read a full text.
Now it is getting to the oposite. I'm started to get pissed when I can't read something XD.

I also agree that the number of foreigners who can read (let alone write) kanji to a high level of proficiency is probably extremely low, and that people who actually work their way through RTK like the people on this forum are likely to be highly motivated overachievers. 1% would not be far from the mark, IMO.

sheetz Wrote:I also agree that the number of foreigners who can read (let alone write) kanji to a high level of proficiency is probably extremely low, and that people who actually work their way through RTK like the people on this forum are likely to be highly motivated overachievers. 1% would not be far from the mark, IMO.

That may be true, but isn't it silly to give up beforehand because of that?

nac_est Wrote:

sheetz Wrote:I also agree that the number of foreigners who can read (let alone write) kanji to a high level of proficiency is probably extremely low, and that people who actually work their way through RTK like the people on this forum are likely to be highly motivated overachievers. 1% would not be far from the mark, IMO.

That may be true, but isn't it silly to give up beforehand because of that?

Of course it is. But people on this forum have a different mentality than the vast majority of others do. Whereas most of us see conquering a foreign language as a fun challenge, others may feel intimidated, or that it's completely unnecessary. Obviously I don't agree but that's the attitude I see with most people, not just with learning but with many other aspects of life.

sheetz Wrote:people who actually work their way through RTK like the people on this forum are likely to be highly motivated overachievers.

That's the first time I've ever been referred to as a "highly motivated overachiever"...

Nuriko Wrote:

kazelee Wrote:

Nuriko Wrote:Really, without knowing kanji, how can one even hope to read Mishima?! I wanna cry just thinking about it (he's the main reason I wanted to learn Japanese). 夢：実現させました！

Recently, through Exploring Japanese Literature, I had the opportunity to read Mishima. Were it not for the enthralling style, I'd say, "Mishima is something the majority of us could live without." LOL.

Enthralling style indeed!　*わくわく*

Oh yeah, thanks for correcting my crappy grammar :B

The hilarity.