yudantaiteki Wrote:

tokyostyle Wrote:Everyone can write the jyoyo kanji. If they can't then they are called idiots to their face.

That's nonsense. There's no way that "everyone" can write 2000 kanji. College graduates can't do that reliably.

I assume you mean there context. 2042 kanji and there contexts(which can be one or many). I think it all depends on the usefulness.
I doubt you need to know 2042-3007 context of kanjis. I'd say recognition and understanding would be needed. But to actually write all those different contexts of kanji. Then that will take some time.
It's the same in english everyone knows how to use different words in different contexts, but not every context. There are still words we don't use or see often. Same with kanji and there context.

activeaero Wrote:1. He went to school in America, not work.

2. Yes I'm sure we could find a native speaker living in Japan that would do worse. We can find a lot of things if we look.

3. I specifically mentioned "averaged EDUCATED native".

I never made the claim that everyone is like my friend but he is definitely not a Kanji master according to his girlfriend that makes fun of him for his lack of ability. I actually mentioned this several months ago in the video I made about this little experiment so this isn't just something I added in now. His girlfriend was another Japanese student a few years younger and thus she was able to notice how his Japanese ability had diminished with him being in the states for these past 4 years. Yet, I give this guy the 3kyu and he essentially passes it on his first try.

Does that mean every native is just like him? Of course not. Does it suggest that native Japanese might know quite a bit of Kanji? Possibly.

1. Though I quoted your text my message was directed at the OP.

2. I never said you made that claim. I was merely providing an alternative perspective.

3. Making arguments in list feels kinda douchey.

Putting education in caps doesn't change the fact that people start forgetting how to write kanji when they are no longer required to do so. This is why I suggested that the OP learn to write the kanji then naturally forget what he/she doesn't need to know.

Quote:4. The kanken testing organization themselves states that most natives can pass pre-2kyu with a slight amount of studying.

Yes, I'm sure they know the extent of most natives' knowledge on writing kanji. I mean they did spend time putting the test together based on information taken from most natives and all.

Yonosa Wrote:Sorry, it's just a bit pointless imo.

Hey Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

nest0r Wrote:Also: Japanese people are stressed because they can only read 500 Kanji. - Anyone who gets 'emotional' about such tangents is probably doing so based on videos like that. ;p

In that youtube guy's defence, that 500 number was published and had been circulating for years. He did indicate that he was just repeating what he had learned.

The source was a personal communication between John DeFrancis and Sato Hideo, head of a research unit in the Ministry of Education in 1980, who "estimated that while most Japanese probably retain recognition knowledge of the 1,945 kanji in general use, on the average they remember how to write only about five hundred". That tidbit was published in DeFrancis' "Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems."

So maybe the guy should have said " ability to write" rather than "know". Masaman (Japanese member) figured it out:

Quote:Actually, I'm really bad at writing Kanji and can't write most of 常用漢字... I can probably write several hundreds, possibly dozens, so I'd have agreed with him if he said a lot of people can only 'write' 500 properly.

Personal attacks on the video guy seemed a bit offside. (I mean, a reply video calling him a "retard"? c'mon)
[corrected name]

Ah yes, the glorious late 70s/early 80s, etc., when the English and Japanese phonocentrist cliques were clapping each other on the back because computers were going to destroy kanji. Fascinating reform-related politicking centered around weak empirical and heavily rhetorical foundations on pretty much all sides, methinks. Nanette Gottlieb has written some interesting overviews on such topics (as well as the skew in writing/reading and various educational/tech factors involved, which partly informed my previous comments alongside other texts/research in HBPK thread). And I thought that fellow was extensively douchy and was clearly not talking about 'writing' kanji, and deserved all the flack he caught.

Activeaero's (?) video was dead on, especially, from what I recall. I don't think the dinosaurs like DeFrance can defend that video, because he was clearly talking about personal experience/'knowing' kanji. And the ad hominem stuff, based on his persona, were also fair game. My thoughts on specific types of insults are trivial in this context but as you know I'm never fond of terms like 'retard'. Speaking of which: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...171508.htm

I think Masaman was talking about 'out of context' and 'with zero errors/the official stroke order' and likewise not writing 'properly' would mean 'minor errors but still obvious in context' and 'personal/made up stroke order since stroke order doesn't really matter' or something... when citing the 'several hundreds, possibly dozens' number. I doubt they took a serious inventory with a rigorous grading method and hardcore quantifications of their kanji-writing skills.

For conclusions on the typical skew/type of education/writing ability, I refer back to previous comments.

Thora Wrote:The source was a personal communication between John DeFrancis and Sato Hideo, head of a research unit in the Ministry of Education in 1980, who "estimated that while most Japanese probably retain recognition knowledge of the 1,945 kanji in general use, on the average they remember how to write only about five hundred". That tidbit was published in DeFrancis' "Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems."

And to emphasize the point, he's talking about "most Japanese" as in *all* Japanese people, regardless of education level, background, current job, etc. I have absolutely no trouble believing that the average Japanese person has an active writing knowledge of only 500 kanji. I would find it hard to believe that the average college-educated Japanese person has an active writing knowledge of only 500, though.

This 500 figure is not relevant to most learners because they want to aim higher than a truck driver who went to an agricultural high school and didn't go to college. But that doesn't mean it's totally wrong either.

Nestor, wow - you're poised to uncoil at the mere whiff of.....phonocentrism.

My point was not that 500 is accurate, but that some beginner learner was just repeating a number that he had heard (which happened to have been published and circulated). That he looked to his girlfriend for confirmation isn't likely to convince anyone of anything.

(I'm not a fan of extremists like DeFrancis* - which I think you know - and I thought "tidbit" might reveal what I think of publishing such a personal estimate rather than more objective results from whatever it was based on, if there were any.)

Similarly, I'm not so interested in exactly how many kanji Masaman thinks he can write or precisely how he came to that conclusion. lol The point was that he speculated that the number probably referred to writing kanji. (ie. maybe the video guy got his factoid slightly wrong - something which can be clarified and corrected.)

If someone is that passionate about proving some youtube guy wrong, why not dig up a study on kanji ability? I know they exist for students at different levels as part of an attempt to measure education effectiveness. Maybe someone has also tried to estimate kanji knowledge among different social groups. But calling him names and criticizing his personality and hair isn't particularly impressive, interesting or useful, imho.

*edit - I should have written "not a fan of his extreme views" bc I respect the man.

Why do you get the impression he was repeating DeFrancis? I'm pretty sure it's just some random # he got and integrated into his overall douchy persona. I think that's why he was made fun of, because there was little to concretely debunk. I made clear what I specifically didn't like about him and why I was harsh with him, and it wasn't kanji related.

At any rate, there's plenty of stuff out there acknowledging the kanji writing vs. reading skew and its causes and what to bother addressing about it. After reading different stuff such as Gottlieb et al. cited in HBPK, I came to previously mentioned conclusions and don't feel any need to look further at numbers because the points of such a task have already been addressed. My main goal is ensuring there's a non-biased metamodel guiding such arguments and more rigorous studies on multiliteracy and sundry comparative analyses. In other words, further studies I would attend to and encourage would need to serve those functions, and it wouldn't be a matter of proving some Youtube guy's subjective opinions and use of his late girlfriend to justify them 'wrong'...

I'll try to dig up some of the stuff I've read and internalized as related to this discussion, and perhaps while I'm at it, look to see if there's any studies I've missed to further develop my overall anti-phonocentrism argument. ;p

You know, I know people don't agree with DeFrancis on every point but he's not an "extremist". His positions are quite mainstream; I've given up arguing with nest0r because it's similar to arguing with anti-global warming or anti-evolution people, but it saddens me to see others picking up on that and criticizing someone who spend many decades researching Chinese.

So-called "phonocentrism" is more properly called "standard linguistics"; you're free to disagree with it if you want, and there are apparently scholars who do disagree with it, but it's simply defying reality to pretend that it's not the standard view of most linguists. (Being the standard view also doesn't make it automatically correct either, of course.)

I never tire of arguing with you, y_t, because you're so convinced that this is the standard view of linguistics. It might be mainstream (as in J. Doe might read pop science articles that misrepresent/presume a consensus, but surely you've read up on critiques of bad science journalism?), but it's not standard, and that's important to understand when discussing scientific matters. You hint that you understand this, but you clearly don't, because all of your 'this is impossible' and 'this is nonsense' statements indicate you've been indoctrinated with these presuppositions without ever researching the opposing views. It's reminiscent of those groups who call themselves 'The Mainstream Science on this-and-that' and seem to think that giving themselves such a name makes it so.

Notice I'm still keeping the kid gloves on, I haven't even mentioned that you compared phonocentrism to evolution.

Also, it's hard to say what you're on about when you talk about 'standard' linguistics and phonocentrism, especially as you do more hand-waving than source citing, but you should check out cognitive linguistics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_linguistics - I believe this is the dominant model...

Wait, are you saying I can't deny that since Saussure, the UG/LAD crowd (generative rather than cognitive linguistics) has focused on the primacy of speech? Duh, pretty much all of my comments cite this as a pretext for my frustration (especially as the speech as primary aspect is more of a rhetorical device based on spurious correlations than a sound scientific theory--it's certainly not comparable to evolution [Looking again at all the fields of linguistics such as Applied and Corpus and Integrational, etc., all I see are people who see speech and writing as simply 'different' and interacting.]), before citing tonnes of research and theories in recent times that disagree, all while arguing for a balanced, integrated view. Emergentism is the dominant view in every field of science, in my estimation.

nest0r Wrote:Why do you get the impression he was repeating DeFrancis?

Not that he was directly quoting DeFrancis, just that the "Japanese can only write 500 kanji" debate isn't a new one, so it isn't surprising that this tidbit of "knowledge" reached his ears. He responded in his comments, iirc, that he had heard the number was 500. [...]

Trust me, Nest0r, I wasn't suggesting you ought to read more studies! You weren't the passionate one I had in mind. Besides, it was more a general statement about the possibility of correcting misinformation without getting nasty. Can we drop this tangent now?

@ydtt:
DeFrancis' views on romanization, his narrow focus on the "ideogram" issue, and his stance on early language were and are considered controversial and extreme. (There's probably other stuff I'm not familar with.) This doesn't detract, however, from his considerable contributions as a China scholar and educator.

Only certain aspects of his work relate to our discussions here on the Japanese side. More recent scholarship suggests that several of his ideas about kanji reading don't hold up. Some of his writing in this area doesn't have the objective air of an academic, imo, and it's easy to poke holes in some of his "ideogram" diatribes. (It's almost as if he's debating an imaginary foe - constructing arguments to strike down...like it really became his pet project.) [I tend to agree with those who think his political views (however admirable) coloured his assessment of Chinese characters.]

I read that DeFrancis refused to return to China for 45 years when the Communist party didn't [adopt an alphabetized written language.] I don't take this as representative of mainstream views. [Incidentally, DeFrancis, et.al. are taught in university - I didn't 'pick it up from Nest0r'] :-) [edits]

Sorry to be completely off topic.

hereticalrants Wrote:Mostly I just got rid of kanji like "chrysanthemum."

The rest have been fairly useful, and I still remember how to write crysanthemum as it remains the herald of uselessness in my list of reasons why Heisig is dumb.

You know, if the city that I live wasn't called 菊川 I'd probably agree with you. These type of kanji seems stupid and useless but I guess most part of them are just used in city names like that. I smiled when I got to that kanji because I was seeing it for years without know how to properly write it down. So, yeah, I doubt Heisig picked up random kanji just for the heck of it.

菊 is actually a pretty common kanji as far as plant names go. Crysanthemums are a pretty culturally significant flower in Japan, being the symbol of the imperial throne and the main object in a fairly famous story. It's also used in the name of a fairly common vegetable used in nabemono (春菊).

In other words, don't skip it.

Re: abandoning kanji

There is no scientifically sound reason for doing it. China's simplification efforts were found to be pointless in hindsight and natives of kanji-using countries have just as high literacy rates as other advanced countries. Cries for romanization just come from western cultural imperialists (external pressure) or people with gaikoku akogare (internal pressure, more evident during the Meiji era). Basically it's just a more specific example of the same kind of thought process that gets idiots on youtube screaming in anger about the presence of foreign language content without English dubbing/subbing.

Kanji may pose a barrier (more mental than actual) for foreigners from non-kanji using countries, but that will become increasingly insignificant with the rise of China and the continued decline of America. Personally I think kanji makes Japanese and especially Chinese easier to learn because of the way it simplifies vocabulary acquisition. Effort upfront for ease after.

Really, with Heisig and the SRS kanji isn't a barrier at all, just part of the process. It sounds intimidating but any part of language acquisition you can knock out in a month or three just can't be considered that difficult. A pain in the ass, yes. Difficult, not really. Just have to use the right methods.

kendo99 Wrote:Really, with Heisig and the SRS kanji isn't a barrier at all, just part of the process. It sounds intimidating but any part of language acquisition you can knock out in a month or three just can't be considered that difficult.

Surely the main issue with kanji it not learning to write them, but learning to pronounce them?

Not knowing how a word sounds just by looking at it is the big disadvantage with pictographic writing systems.

Being able to know the meaning of a word without having seen it before is a benefit that balances it though. Also, you can guess the reading with a pretty decent chance of success since you will know the readings of the kanji (known kanji) or can identify the phonetic element in the kanji (many unknown kanji).

Note that you cannot tell how a word is pronounced in English either unless you already know.

Personally, I think Korean would be a whole lot easier to learn if they just used Chinese characters on a larger scale again. Alphabets are overrated.

aphasiac Wrote:Not knowing how a word sounds just by looking at it is the big disadvantage with pictographic writing systems.

And which writing system would that be? Chinese characters are logographic, not pictographic.

Plus, there is a significant amount of phonetic information in the characters. Take a look through zhongwen.com. I'm sure you'll notice that many, if not most, of the characters have a phonetic element in them. Some (very few) are pictographic in origin, but are not so today. For instance, 目 doesn't look much like an eye, but it did over 3000 years ago. But that's kind of like saying the letter A is pictographic because it evolved from the Egyptian hieroglyph depicting an eagle.

aphasiac: Once you've learned how to write the kanji, they make learning vocabulary so much easier because of having a mental sticking point already in place, that I really don't think it is that big of an issue. And as Jarvik pointed out, in English it is also necessary to know a word before you can figure out its pronunciation from its spelling. Literacy and vocabulary acquisition go hand in hand in any language.

As I've said before, I have been studying Japanese for almost 12 years now and I'm working on a PhD in classical literature, and I still regularly run into characters that I don't know how to read, especially names (I'm not talking about classical literature here but even modern scholarly articles). You may not know how to accurately pronounce something when you see it in English, but at least you can look it up without a two-step (or more) process. The profusion of readings that the characters have is a problem as well.

Being able to guess the meaning of a word based on the kanji is unreliable, and if you need precision you are going to have to look it up to verify the meaning anyway. It's especially annoying when writers make up terms that can't be verified in any standard resources, leaving the reader uncertain as to what they are actually intending to say.

The idea that kanji presents no special difficulty to learners or natives is very hard to accept. I doubt that any Europeans are still learning to deal with their writing system in middle school (we do, of course, but English spelling is far from perfect as well).

I used to believe that kanji really didn't make that much of a difference in learning, but based on my 5 years of teaching Japanese to hundreds of students, and looking at my own experience (and the experience of many people I've seen on the Internet), I no longer think this is true. Kanji pose a serious barrier to many people wanting to learn to read Japanese, both foreigners and natives.

This again?

Having to memorize lengthy spellings filtered solely through the auditory channel's too much work, especially since most of our new vocabulary is encountered through print, and our primary mode of communication is print. Even our spoken words and grammar are learned in print or read from scripts and prompters. Even the limited stuff we learn before we become literate in the first few years of our life onward is basic, but still learned from spoken language used by literate people whose language is shaped by print.

After my advanced learning in English, spanning many years, I can tell you that the alphabet as the only script in a language is a significant barrier to literacy, placing too much emphasis on the more limited usage of speech and phonological awareness as a key to reading. People end up spending their lives puzzling out meaningless strings of letters, misspelling them, not knowing how to pronounce them, having to trigger the meaning mostly through how they think it sounds and reflects their limited spoken vocabulary or repository of heard words, or these lengthy configurations of tiny abstract symbols.

Better to take advantage of the how the brain processes language amodally/multimodally and work in visual/motor skills with kanji representing morphemes, triggering meanings visually and directly, complemented by the sounds. Between having kana as the glue and having the kanji for meaning, multiliteracy skill development becomes a gradient rather than a threshold, allowing for much more nuanced definitions of reading/literacy as one picks up kanji/vocabulary, post-kana.

Especially with the advent of computers making it all so much easier.

I feel so sorry for countries with only the alphabet, their literacy levels must be awful. I know in my country this is the case. Of course, I'm not being fair, I guess social/economic/etc. processes might play a part.

But alphabet-using people are also too analytical and uncreative, they're like robots. Their literature is impoverished as well, sigh. ;p

kendo99 Wrote:Really, with Heisig and the SRS kanji isn't a barrier at all, just part of the process. It sounds intimidating but any part of language acquisition you can knock out in a month or three just can't be considered that difficult. A pain in the ass, yes. Difficult, not really. Just have to use the right methods.

This is all true and I agree with you wholeheartedly, but to your average person, "kanjee r still impossible to lern." It's really a shame because the common belief that "The Asian Languages" being impossible to learn is so prevalent and widespread most people discount any sound methods for learning as hoaxes. Also, many people would look at that and say "3 months to learn just how to write the characters?? And not even be able to read them? I wouldn't have to do that if I was learning Spanish or French..."

tl;dr
Most people are lazy, and would rather be content telling themselves something can't be done than actually try and succeed at it.

I'm pretty sure I don't know how to read, write, hear, and say six thousand words in English and I've been immersed in that language since birth. D: