vosmiura Wrote:ruiner Wrote:vosmiura Wrote:"...and I actually think it's easier to become literate in. "
Err... bull s. 
The alphabet by itself is very easy to become literate in... just not in English.
No, it sounds counter-intuitive, but (especially in a society where speech/writing are intertwined) having logographs and phonographs is better than memorizing phonetic spellings in a single alphabet, as it allows one to take advantage of how the brain works best with multimodal learning, and communication isn't channeled purely through a single sense.
Even as that may be, Japanese still has one of the hardest writing systems in the world - because of all of the exceptions in kanji use and readings.
Kanji do have good points such as helping to learn new vocab, but at the same time there are weak points. In a language like say Italian, the spelling is simple and you can start reading right away, and that is a great benefit for acquiring the language and literacy. Japanese has a high barrier before you can get to that point.
During and after doing RTK its easy to be enamored with the kanji; I know I was too, but I think that in the months and years after doing RTK, as you develop your reading, you'll think less and less of the kanji as being so helpful.
You'll note I specified writing system, rather than Japanese itself. Mostly it was to note that over the past couple years of studying Japanese, what held me back was my conception of the writing systems, some staticized illusions that I hadn't gotten around to discarding, for my own reasons...
That said...
In my opinion, having to memorize spellings and process the language phonetically is too cognitively and communicatively limited. The brain's evolved for integrating senses, best to use those for learning and communication, no matter the language, I feel, because you can not only optimize what you do learn, but you can understand and express ideas in a broader range.
*This was intuitive before, but now I know there's a model for it as cognitive research has developed over the past 20+ years--getting beyond the old phonological recoding/mediation claims, it's called dual-coding (or triple), where the ventral processing of the kanji (its iconic nature not forcing you to process it letter by letter before lexical/phonological access as with an alphabet--see Pelli/Farell/Moore or Dehaene) has a direct lexical-semantic access route that works in tandem with the phonological routes in a kind of interactive yet independent processing, and if used correctly this ties into the 'levels of processing' effect as well as 'multisensory integration' in my opinion, thus the increased complexity actually has a synergistic effect that enhances learning and is more balanced. As long as you use the proper strategies--I think too much alphabet based research and native conservatism has limited the pedagogical theories too much, though they still make it work. I've bookmarked like 100 articles on this topic recently, hehe. It's fascinating to see how the still limited research into kana/kanji has evolved beyond 'Occidental' perspectives of the primacy of speech/the alphabet. I'll probably create a new thread sometime once I've organized everything and fill it with links on the cognitive science of kanji.
At any rate, this is all personal experience plus research I've been obsessing over, most of the cognitive science I've referred to has just as many opponents as proponents (esp. as regards methodology and interpretation of results, so much politics involved behind the scenes), and obviously 'in the real world' it's mostly a matter of preference (with everyone claiming to be the most practical/democratic or whatever). But for me personally, I found it to be a milestone realization. *Correction, there's actually only a minority of people still clinging to the obsolete models.
Ideally, I'd like to see some streamlined logographic/phonographic writing system get created, but I doubt it'll ever happen, so I'll stick with Japanese being the best till then. ;p
Edited: 2009-12-09, 10:12 pm
It's my 2nd but i feel it's my first since the first one was 1 litre of tears which is like reading a blog which makes me feel like I'm not readinga bunko. that one was really boring and honestly i don't recommend it. I thought it was going x times better than the drama.... but honetsly there's something wrong with it... like she never even says what disease she has in the diary. the reader just finds out in the back where the doctor writes a forward or whatever you call it, who is a woman...
I've come a longgg way since then I realize.