Here's a post from the tofugu.com site titled "Kanji Amnesia and Why It's Okay to forget the kanji"http://www.tofugu.com/2010/08/27/kanji-amnesia-and-why-its-okay-to-forget-kanji/

Basically it says that it's O.K. (he actually says "awesome") that people are forgetting the skill of writing the kanji because they text or e-mail so much. I don't want to misquote him so please read the article if you're interested. Anyway, I posted at the end that I just got done with RTK and now am basically second guessing myself. I was thinking of starting the sentence method by just typing out the sentences instead of hand writing them. My thinking is that I can get through a lot more sentences in a day by this method. Sure I won't get the skill of writing but I'm not so sure it's that important at this stage. Anyway, feel free to say I'm a lazy slob or something but I'd appreciate any of your thoughts on this.

Maybe in general People forget kanji but i bet you anything they know at least 1000-1500 Kanji down pat. Think of all the essays you had to write throughout your schooling and then think about how many kanji would appear in almost every essay. Also multiple words with the same Kanji but different combinations. Those they will not forget to write pretty much ever unless they left Japan and never came back.

Now think of your experience with Kanji so far. How many can you write no problem whatsover if you were to stop writing them for about 2 years heck 1 year from now. My guess is it would be low because from classes a lot of those Kanji i learned really well i forgot over summer etc.

Also do you really want to end up like tofugu and have to type out something in your phone everytime you want to write something? like a grocery list. or to do list. Things that you may or should write at least once a week.

Being able to write Kanji IMO is an essential everyday tool. Maybe forgetting some of the less common Kanji would be fine to me but the most common basic Kanji need to be strong in my head. I don't aspire to be as good as Tofugu I want to be the best I can be and that involves being able to write Kanji at a decent level.

Because I know there will be a time i need to write something down and if I forget the Kanji in front of someone they will excuse it because I'm a foreigner. I don't want to be excused because I'm a foreigner I want them to not even notice that my ability might be worst than their own.

This is an article talking about the phenomena that Japanese, or Asian people in general tend to forget, how to write kanji. It is easier to remember some sounds, or 200+ radicals of which a kanji is based on, than complex shapes, and thousands upon thousands of them. Because in the advent of computers there is no more need to hand write anything, which poses no problem with our ABC, but kanji are different story. Being surrounded by kanji doesn't guarantee anyone to be able to write them from memory if it has to be.

So, as encouraging this might be, that even Japanese forget their "words," and not single kanji as such, this does not mean that you let that happen. It's a use it or loose it thing. And it is your choice if you want to be able to write whole "words," or just being able to read "words."

Don't listen to Tofugu on this one. Writing it an important function that your brain uses to memorize and retain information. By cutting out writing, you're effectively crippling your effective ability to remember kanji or various other things you could learn by writing them out. Of course, even scribbling can help you remember stuff, even what you write is just drawings of basically junk. It's just how our brains help process memories and why people who don't write forget to write and/or forget other things.

Muscle memory aids recall and recognition of kanji, handwritten or typed. All it takes is a finger in the air, pencil and paper, a stylus and a touchscreen, etc., mixed in, even in a minimal fashion, with SRS reviews as part of multisensory integration, which the brain loves. Even if you don't care about having the handwriting ability of the average Japanese person, use muscle memory during reviews.

Being able to write is really useful and fun and rtk only takes 1-3 months done on the side with your other studies. It makes it much easier to note down new words you encounter, look up words in dictionaries, learn new words, learn chinese languages etc. Tofugu's advice is really bad. Actually I just find Tofugu annoying in general.

While there are articles like this, stating that Japanese people are forgetting kanji, it's the same thing with English speaking countries forgetting how to spell, due to spell checkers, isn't it? They may forget rarer kanji, but probably won't forget basic ones. And while Tofugu may be OK with being a so-called wa-puro baka, I think that writing kanji can help one remember them better, if nothing else (as others have said).

don't worry you don't have to follow his post.
i used to like believe/follow him but now i don't since I passed hiim in Japanese (as far as i can tell)> Like because of him I was never going to do RTK. He didn't say DON'T DO IT but he was like oh it didn't work out for me but you can try it but still what I got was oh he's not approving of it, I won't do it. well at this point i finished rtk but I would've finished earlier if i didn't listen to him since i would've started earlier.

and like a couple weeks ago he did a post on yoroshiku and i guess he doesn't know this b.c. he doesn't read japanese that much or like diddn't RTK but he thought the kanji for よろしく　Ｗａｓ　　夜露死苦... like that was the actual kanji when it's just 宜しく
and i've actually seen both b.c. before reaidng that post I recently watched some akbingo episode and they used the yoroshiku with the yoru/tsuyu/shinu/kurushii kanji and i looked it up b.c. i was curious what the significance was. I think he's stuck at some level at japanese and honestly it just becomes more obvious the more i get better at japanese

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:don't worry you don't have to follow his post.
i used to like believe/follow him but now i don't since I passed hiim in Japanese (as far as i can tell)> Like because of him I was never going to do RTK. He didn't say DON'T DO IT but he was like oh it didn't work out for me but you can try it but still what I got was oh he's not approving of it, I won't do it. well at this point i finished rtk but I would've finished earlier if i didn't listen to him since i would've started earlier.

and like a couple weeks ago he did a post on yoroshiku and i guess he doesn't know this b.c. he doesn't read japanese that much or like diddn't RTK but he thought the kanji for よろしく　Ｗａｓ　　夜露死苦... like that was the actual kanji when it's just 宜しく
and i've actually seen both b.c. before reaidng that post I recently watched some akbingo episode and they used the yoroshiku with the yoru/tsuyu/shinu/kurushii kanji and i looked it up b.c. i was curious what the significance was. I think he's stuck at some level at japanese and honestly it just becomes more obvious the more i get better at japanese

Both of those kanji can be read as Yoroshiku, so...

Anyways. I can't write the kanji right now, but I'm fine with it since it's not my goal at the moment. My best friend is a native speaker - she was born in Hiroshima, moved over here with her mom when she was 5. Went to Japanese school every weekend + extra during the summer from elementary school to high school (it was a special program that basically kept the students up with what the students in Japan were doing. They did a week's worth of material in a day).

However, when we were chatting and she was writing stuff out, she'd not know how to write some of the more complex kanji. If you don't see the skill or use it very often (she reads a lot of Japanese, talks with her Mom in the language, but she's been out of Japanese school for over a year), you're going to lose it, native speaker or no.

Isn't 夜露死苦 just a ヤクザ or ヤンキー sort of 当て字 for 宜しく？

I mean, it was originally 宜しい...

sethg Wrote:Isn't 夜露死苦 just a ヤクザ or ヤンキー sort of 当て字 for 宜しく？

Looks like it. Reminds me of 吐露非狩古鬱

Once you've been SRSing RTK1 for a few months I think it's safe to say you can give it a rest.

If there ever comes a time when you're working for a Japanese company or whatever and the need arises you can pick it up again in a week or two. Remembering what kanji to use in compounds is the hard part, but you can pick that up as you go along.

As a previous poster said, even people fluent in the language forget it overseas.... there are more important things to worry about.

You should continue using muscle memory in some form during reviews for as long as you review, when you feel ‘fuzzy’ on cards. The same as you'd subvocalize, scrutinize the text, or listen to and repeat the native audio recording, etc., to solidify an element in your mind, but on a gestural level.

As for RTK itself, there's no reason to quit per se due to the nature of the SRS if you're using the method(s) properly, but I recommend (since I don't like fussing with decks and keywords if they don't fulfill a unique and irreplaceable function) switching over and just focusing on the kanji in word/sentence cards once your RTK cards have reached maturity, in a multimodal fashion (e.g. muscle memory plays a part in this, as above). No reason to let yourself forget them when you could've spent seconds on them, especially since naturally you'll encounter some kanji more or less and will end up spending seconds to relearn them (seconds if you did RTK properly and maintained it in some fashion through continued RTK or multimodal sentence/word reviews).

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:Maybe in general People forget kanji but i bet you anything they know at least 1000-1500 Kanji down pat.

Unfortunately the writing ability probably isn't that high -- I think your average college graduate who has been out of school for a while and doesn't have a job where they have to frequently handwrite large documents would be able to write in the 500-1000 range and read a few thousand in context. Average Japanese person, including non-college graduates and even non-high school graduates, is probably much lower.

Now, this doesn't necessarily have much to do with what or how you should study, for a lot of reasons.

But once you reach a high level and are using Japanese, how much time you need to devote to keeping up handwriting ability is up to your personal circumstances. I don't practice it because I hardly ever have to handwrite Japanese except for when I'm copying things, but others may have a greater need for it.

Bokusenou Wrote:While there are articles like this, stating that Japanese people are forgetting kanji, it's the same thing with English speaking countries forgetting how to spell, due to spell checkers, isn't it? They may forget rarer kanji, but probably won't forget basic ones. And while Tofugu may be OK with being a so-called wa-puro baka, I think that writing kanji can help one remember them better, if nothing else (as others have said).

No, it's more akin to people forgetting how to have neat handwriting. The Japanese can use kanji just fine, but they're forgetting how to physically write them in a neat way.

I personally like handwriting, but I'd say it's perfectly okay if it's not something you want to worry about.

No, it's not just about neat handwriting. Japanese people forget not just how to write kanji neatly, but how to write the kanji at all. It's not a matter of literally being unable to draw the strokes, it's just remembering which kanji to use for a word (or not remembering the kanji at all for rarer words).

Really just a matter of if "you" think it's a waste of your time imo. Not everyone needs to be able to write Japanese, handwritten or just normally.

I write out all my vocab reviews not because I ever expect to make any use out of it, but mostly just because I enjoy writing the characters (and some of my friends think I'm crazy for being able to write them).

@yudantaiteki
I'd say it's pretty much analogous to Englsih speakers forgetting how to spell. Sure we all forget how to spell some words but the majority we remember. I think part of this comes from just reading alot. As long as you learnt the alphabet, practiced writing once upon a time, and keep reading plenty, you're reminded of spellling all the time. The mechanical act of writing is like riding a bike, you will never forget.Yeah native speakers may forget the odd radical here and there for high stroke count characters but unless they never learned how to write in the first place or completely stop using japanese at all for a significant legth of time (say 5 years + or more) they'll still remember how to write most words no problem.

Here's a link Sebastian posted a while ago that I wish was around when I first posted various comments and link lists about the importance of sensorimotor/multimodal integration of writing with reviews for improved recall of orthography and target content.

How Handwriting Trains the Brain

Language, space, and movement are closely interwoven in humans, especially so with logographic systems.

Edit: Here's my followup to one of the pieces of research cited in that article: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid116784

I noted a familiarity with the name Longcamp in that comment, and a quick Google search turns up the name in many papers I've linked here in the past.

yudantaiteki Wrote:No, it's not just about neat handwriting. Japanese people forget not just how to write kanji neatly, but how to write the kanji at all. It's not a matter of literally being unable to draw the strokes, it's just remembering which kanji to use for a word (or not remembering the kanji at all for rarer words).

I seriously doubt this. Everything I've read has told me that while the Japanese have forgotten how to handwrite kanji, they're using more kanji then before. Computers make it easy to input kanji; it makes people lose skill in writing things by hand. However, it also makes it easier to use more kanji; all you need to do is to know the pronunciation and select it in your IME.

I also think that computers make usage and thus recognition of kanji through exposure increase, or at least that it's a possibility (has anyone done studies on the amount of kanji used? I could see it sort of stabilizing in a sense in terms of the way common pools of character instances emerge). At the same time, motor memory has always been important for general recall and recognition, so I can see that in general as people incorporate it less and less because they generate text primarily by typing, there will be an adverse impact on general production and possibly even recognition ability, despite carryover of ability through passive recognition. Even if one suggests there is no adverse impact despite the evidence, and instead focuses on possible impact (e.g. additive rather than substractive modeling of the issue), active recall and gestural modality are more efficient for learning than single modality passive recognition, so hopefully touchscreens and awareness of how the brain and body process language will encourage continued evolution of learning so that pedagogy, detailed recognition ability, and flexibility/robustness of character use continues to progress, even as or despite the phenomenon of orthographic composition without computers becoming rare or infrequent.

To summarize: Regardless of the issue of computerized production and recognition reducing computerless production and recognition in terms of commonality of media communication, motor memory makes learning production and recognition better, period, in any medium, so hopefully it will be made use of, and not in the old school sense of rote learning, but with new paradigms to accompany new scientific findings and technological tools.

To resummarize even more simply: Even if you set aside aesthetics and form (calligraphic prettiness, neatness and legibility), and minimize concerns with needing-to-handwrite-to-communicate for the sake of argument, you'll learn things faster and more easily, such as reading typed kanji, by using handwriting as a muscle memory tool.

So in that future world where everyone's using transparent screens in midair, you should still learn and review with handwriting. And if in that future world text itself has gone by the wayside, gestural learning as part of multimodal learning will still be important. (Especially if we replace text with some multisensory, synaesthetic media.) Even if we digitize our minds I bet spatial/motor processes will continue to be important for encoding and reinforcement, even if only in some abstract virtual dimension. ^_^

cntrational Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:No, it's not just about neat handwriting. Japanese people forget not just how to write kanji neatly, but how to write the kanji at all. It's not a matter of literally being unable to draw the strokes, it's just remembering which kanji to use for a word (or not remembering the kanji at all for rarer words).

I seriously doubt this. Everything I've read has told me that while the Japanese have forgotten how to handwrite kanji, they're using more kanji then before. Computers make it easy to input kanji; it makes people lose skill in writing things by hand. However, it also makes it easier to use more kanji; all you need to do is to know the pronunciation and select it in your IME.

You do know what the word "write" means, don't you?

JimmySeal Wrote:You do know what the word "write" means, don't you?

You did read the post, didn't you?

yudantaiteki Wrote:It's not a matter of literally being unable to draw the strokes, it's just remembering which kanji to use for a word (or not remembering the kanji at all for rarer words).

This makes it clear that they're talking about using kanji, not physical writing.

Well, some of both. If you rely on the IME's help messages to tell you which kanji to use, you may forget how to write them. Also, selecting the correct kanji from a multiple choice list (in an IME) is a totally different skill than writing a kanji from scratch. I was just trying to say that it's not writing neatly that's the problem, it's forgetting the kanji when it's time to write them.

Ah, fair enough.