I can tell right away the kanji(s?) used in Japanese are traditionally Chinese, which I'm familiar with.

I'm just wondering, a Taiwanese guy just beginning to learn Japanese is best to learn it from the RTK series?

And if possible, does the RTK and Chinese have something in common?

Thanks in advance.

(s?) = plural or singular?

If you already recognize the kanji and are able to write them, then I think RTK won't be very helpful for you, as those are pretty much the things you will learn from RTK.

If you already know all the traditional characters, then the main thing you need to focus on is learning the differences, as many kanji have been simplified, and then the readings. I'd learn the readings alongside vocabulary though, because exposure to Japanese vocabulary is going to teach you the differences in meanings between the kanji. Even though Taiwan and Japan might be using the same character, very often the meaning will be completely different.

As for plural, it's debtable. My stance is that when a word is imported into English from a foreign language, it could try to stick to its original form. This means that if the word is from a language without plural forms, it shouldn't take a plural form in English. Likewise, if it does have a plural form, it should take the original form rather than some nonsense English one.

For example: I think "concerti" is the preferrable form of "concerto" rather than "concertos" and that things like "kanjis" and "samurais" should never be written, because it sort of stains the original language it comes from, if that makes sense. But you will see people doing these things, mostly due to ignorance of how the source language functions.

"kanji" is the normal plural because that's what's most often used. I don't agree with the idea that words imported from other languages should match the plurals from those languages -- why? Should we also not use any articles with Japanese words because Japanese doesn't have articles? Should a verb borrowed from French conjugate like the French verb? There's nothing "nonsense" about "concertos" -- adding an "s" is the normal way to form plurals in English.

I agree with yudan, though I do wish that people would at least not use plural words as singular words, as in:

I'd like one panini please.

or worse:

I'd like two paninis please.

[ファブリス]

Of course, where did you get schooling?

It's: "I'd like one panina please". and "two panini".

Wooot 1960 posts! I can't wait the seventies already.

@tom : a great number of Japanese characters have the same writing than chinese traditional I believe. But there are also many Japanese only characters, or to be more precise, japanese simplifications that differed historically from the chinese simplifications.

I think perhaps the fact that we're all Japanese leaners, seeing "kanjis" just doesn't sound right, and Aijin being Japanese, seeing Kanjis must hit an emotional linguistic grammar neuron saying "TAKE THE ***** S OFF PLEASE ITS WRONG", though I do agree with yudanttaiteki. Concertos has been long accepted into the English language, unless you're talking to pretentious professors who grew up in brainwashed style academia

What the hell is a panini?

It's like a sandwich, but it costs twice as much.

ファブリス Wrote:Of course, where did you get schooling?

It's: "I'd like one panina please". and "two panini".

Wooot 1960 posts! I can't wait the seventies already.

I have no idea what your first line means there, so maybe you were being sarcastic, but the singular of panini is panino.

Delina Wrote:It's like a sandwich, but it costs twice as much.

Hahaha... classic.

Aijin Wrote:If you already know all the traditional characters, then the main thing you need to focus on is learning the differences, as many kanji have been simplified, and then the readings. I'd learn the readings alongside vocabulary though, because exposure to Japanese vocabulary is going to teach you the differences in meanings between the kanji. Even though Taiwan and Japan might be using the same character, very often the meaning will be completely different.

I see.

In Japanese, Chinese Simplified, and Chinese Traditional, there are some characters that are the same, so it's easy to memorize what that character looks like.

The meaning is a bit out of the question, as I'm that not skilled. I was hoping the RTK series can help me memorize the meanings of each kanji, instead of memorizing the strokes of them. It wouldn't be called "Remembering the Kanji" that way...in literal terms.

新 is "new" in Chinese. 新しい is "new" in Japanese. To convince myself that they are the same, All I need to do is to memorize the first character, then the latter two hiragana characters. Common vocabularys are that way. Easy to read, hard to get the meaning out. Isn't this what we should be calling it: "Remembering the Kanji" or "Remembering what that kanji means to you both in strokes and expressions"?

Other than that, I don't know where I'm suppose to learn kanji at. I'm totally lost in the dark.