I noticed that the only time I actually read Kanji is in SRS.

I learn most Vocabulary in hiragana and..I rarerly read stuff in Japanese I just watch allot of Anime and Dramas and I understand it very well thanks to all the vocabulary I learned with Hiragana .

Sure it won't get me a ''job'' in Japan nor I would be able to read signs in Japan, but hey I do not live in Japan and I can easily manage in a conversation if I ever get confronted with it.

Okay and yes sure I will be missing out on some fun stuff that is heavily Kanji based, but even websites can be furiganized these days.

So really for my goals of learning Japanese I wonder why keep frustrating myself with Kanji?

One of my first triggers to learn Japanese was ''lol what if I could watch this show without subtitles'' and somehow that is still what I deep down only want .

I am not looking for confirmation or some encouragement to do kanji,but I would like your opinion on this view.

[s0apgun]

Nope, 橋 - bridge and 箸 - chopsticks are both read はし, and there are numerous other occurrences like this in Japanese. Simply put when reading Kanji gives a distinct meaning to a word and when speaking you depend on context clues and tones.

But I am Listen en watch more Japanese so I should be able to know the context of the word easily.

On top of that I always learn Vocabulary in sentences or Furiganized Kanji. So I always know the word or the context.

It's possible to be very functional in Japanese without a lot of kanji, but even that functionally illiterate level requires between 600-1000 daily use kanji. Most Japanese people know between 2500-3000, and it affects the way they communicate.

From time to time there's misunderstandings that are solved by someone explaining which kanji are in the word they're using while drawing it on their hand with their finger.

Even if you don't want to read, I think kanji are such a large part of the culture that to ignore them becomes more work than just learning them to begin with. Also, you're on a forum of a site with the mission to learn kanji...I wonder what kind of responses you're going to get.

You have a clear goal in mind. What you do works just fine for achieving that goal. So continue doing it.

We are all literate in our native language/s and most of us want to be literate in our target language/s. With that in mind, learning to read early is more efficient for us.

You may, of course, want to learn how to read japanese in the future. You can do it, too, not unlike the japanese people or almost all (deaf people differs a little) literate people in their native languages, after you have a good command of the spoken language.

You'll be illiterate. Are you sure you'll never want to read normal content? Books, internet?

Haib, how are you approaching learning Kanji? It's possible to learn less kanji and use just those in words that use it and kana in the rest.

If it helps, find Japanese subtitles for your anime and dramas. That'll get you reading and listening at the same time.

I think it would be kind of smart for most people to gain an adequate aural comprehension of Japanese before they start hardcore kanji study, personally. I think it's not irrelevant that kids generally have been speaking the language for years before they start writing it. Homophones are not a huge problem -- we have lots of them in English, too, and generally they're resolvable from context, pitch accent, and from the fact that some of them are much commoner than others.

At the same time, I think there are some things it's hard to get over without knowing kanji -- like the technobabble in some science fiction anime. (Because a lot of those scientific words won't come up in conversation, so you pretty much have to learn them by reading.) And generally, I find that it's easier to passively acquire vocabulary through reading than through listening, because the words don't come at you so fast.

Personally I really like reading books. And not all the books I want to read are the kind of light novels I'm liable to find on torrent sites. But you're the best person to judge what you want to achieve. It may be that you're happy forever with a mostly-aural knowledge of the language, and it may be that you come to a point where you feel the need to improve your kanji knowledge.

Well, if you'd learn Arabic without learning the أَبْجَدِيَّة عَرَبِيَّة‎, why not? Or English without reading, and without being able to read and contribute internet forums etc, just to watch TV and have a chat here or there, that's perfectly fine.

With hindsight, though, I think learning kanji was the easy part, so I would just get on with it.

DoctorHabib, you definitely can. There are plenty of fluent speakers who didn't learn to read well or at all. You can always return to kanji later if your reason for learning Japanese changes.

Knowing kanji has a number of benefits (both during the language learning journey and as a final outcome.) But, as you say, considering your objective you can weigh the benefits against the big investment of your time.

I also think it can be very motivating and beneficial to build a language foundation and get some proficiency in listening and speaking before tackling the RTK/kanji vocab mountain (for those who do.) I'm not so sure it can be compared to how native children learn to read, however. Foreign learners using reading to acquire the language is a bit different. And neither will be already familiar with all the new vocab they encounter while reading.

(Mr AJATT has observed that many people give up after RTK. Maybe he'll modify his advice given the number of people giving up on Japanese before they even get started. His order works, I think, for a certain kind of person, but that's not most people.)

s0apgun Wrote:Nope, 橋 - bridge and 箸 - chopsticks are both read はし

Nope,
橋 - はし [2] (LH)
箸 - はし [1] (HL)

If the OP is learning Japanese by listening then he will hear the difference.

If he's coming from a language without pitch accent or tones then he probably won't notice the difference. But context takes care of it usually anyway.

It's certainly possible to learn enough to watch TV in Japanese without learning kanji.

However, one thing to consider is that knowing kanji may help with that in some ways, since learning things in a written format can ultimately help improve your listening.

Another thing, which is just advice, is that learning a language can open new doors to you in unexpected ways. If you learn kanji it might have unexpected benefits in the future. For example, maybe you'll one day find that you really like Japanese novels (even if you're not much of a reader in English!). Or maybe you'll one day find yourself living in Japan.

At any rate, I think putting a lot of effort into language learning can help teach you other skills in life, and learning kanji could be part of that. So, if you're a rather busy person already I'd say don't worry about the kanji. If you have a lot of free time, why not try to learn the kanji as a life experience?

Inny Jan Wrote:

s0apgun Wrote:Nope, 橋 - bridge and 箸 - chopsticks are both read はし

Nope,
橋 - はし [2] (LH)
箸 - はし [1] (HL)

If the OP is learning Japanese by listening then he will hear the difference.

There are about 50 million or so Japanese people who will disagree with you on how those words are pronounced.

kitakitsune Wrote:There are about 50 million or so Japanese people who will disagree with you on how those words are pronounced.

Haha, yeah. Certainly us 関西人 do! And we love to make fun of the Tokyo-ites!

The OP is basically right.

Theoretically, you could learn Japanese to a fluent level with no real problem using just kana. The amount of resources containing furigana are more than enough to get you to that point.

Except you'll still be technically illiterate. If you are fine with that, then I say go ahead and continue with what fits your style and language learning goals.

But it's not really theoretical if people have been doing it for a long time, right? I mean, they were getting fluent using romaji. (There weren't the advantages then of knowing kana).

Admittedly, unlike the OP, they were living in Japan and needed to speak it. But the listening opportunities for self learners now are amazing. I think the OP might want to find speaking partners, though. Meaningful output and feedback will improve what he gets from listening.

I personally think reading is a huge advantage (and kanji are interesting), but it's not a necessity by any means. As I mentioned before, I think fewer people would give up if they could achieve some level of ability to communicate and comprehend within a reasonable time.

I agree with most of the people in this thread. It's not hard to learn kanji if you're already using an SRS. Just put in a card with the front being '行く' and the back being 'いく'. Sure, there are some words that have the same kanji and okurigana but different pronunciations, but it isn't a problem in 99.9% of the time.

With that being said, you don't have to learn kanji. As long as you're having fun, don't worry about.

However, let me give you one good reason you may want to learn how to read. In the past couple of years, there have started to be subtitle files for Japanese dramas and anime appearing online. You can read what the characters are saying in your favorite shows. Whenever I watch a show with subtitles, my comprehension increases by easily 20-30%. I enjoy it more because I understand it more.

I personally find not problem with not using Kanji if you are willing to accept illiteracy. Kids learn their native language orally first, then the written form. However, compare the speech of two people where one is illiterate and the other is literate and you can definitely notice a difference in their speech.

I am shooting for literacy, because I feel that it will help me gain vocab faster, but one doesn't have to do the same.

Doctorhabib,
anything is possible under the Sun.

I've never heard anyone speak in kanji (or hiragana for that matter). I sometimes think I must have been unlucky.

buonaparte Wrote:I've never heard anyone speak in kanji (or hiragana for that matter). I sometimes think I must have been unlucky.

I personally have never seen the "draw kanji in the air to clarify meaning" thing with the exception of how to spell people's names.

I think sticking with hiragana makes perfect sense for a lot of people. Adult students convinced the director of a private Japanese school that I have attended to change the curriculum so that many classes concentrate more on comprehension and oral fluency and less on Kanji while adding a track for people who wanted more Kanji and reading practice. The school was going under because adult students were failing the final exams and were stuck taking the same level over and over. Many students are professionals whose jobs requires then to travel to Japan, but who don't really need Japanese fluency because they work in English eg. doctors who teach short courses in Japanese hospitals. Some students are Japanophiles or lovers of some particular Japanese drama, anime, music etc. Only a few students are aiming for literacy. Now more students who attend this school are achieving a usable level of comprehension and oral fluency.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

buonaparte Wrote:I've never heard anyone speak in kanji (or hiragana for that matter). I sometimes think I must have been unlucky.

I personally have never seen the "draw kanji in the air to clarify meaning" thing with the exception of how to spell people's names.

Actually, i get the "writing kanji in the air" thing all the time when talking to japanese people. Usually when i ask them about a kanji and no one has pen and paper.

The writing in the air thing is ingrained in the culture, and it isn't just kanji. My students will do it in English, and I'll frequently do it if I'm describing how to spell something to one of them. The difference in comprehension is night and day.

Maybe some day I'll see it, but I haven't yet (outside of, as I said, names -- but even then in my experience it's more common to describe the kanji rather than trying to draw it in the air, which is often confusing). If it's "ingrained in the culture", it must be other places than where I've lived.

Quote:Usually when i ask them about a kanji and no one has pen and paper.

Well, I was thinking of situations outside a direct question of "what kanji do you use for this word?" Which isn't something that comes up in normal conversation that often.