erlog wrote:

I already covered this earlier in the thread. I think if you expect to live in Japan and call yourself bilingual then you should probably put in the small amount of extra work to be able to write kanji as well as Japanese people can because "when in Rome..."

There are lots of things that will separate you from Japanese people and mark you as a foreigner, and you can't address them all.  Just the other day a few friends of mine started talking about Japanese actors from shows or movies in the 90's when they were in middle school.  I had no clue who these people and shows were, and I'm sure that any native Japanese my age would have heard of them.  Should I have gone home and made an Anki deck of 90's Japanese actors?

Then there are the literally impossible things.  You can never share native Japanese people's experiences in school, for instance.  You can read about them and share your own experiences in your home country, but you can't directly relate to their own childhood experiences as a Japanese person.

yudantaiteki wrote:

...having the motivation to do the work is not something that everyone has.

Learning a language takes motivation and consistent effort over a long period of time, though. That will always be the case so I don't think it's useful to design study plans around people who, from the outset, are going to fail because they're not motivated.

People have motivation to do different things related to Japanese; some people may have a lot of motivation to read, but not so much to write.

dang it, Japanese is so hard and white people just aren't very good it.

And nobody on this thread is saying "white people just aren't very good at it."

Nobody ever just wants to get down to brass tacks and tell people they should probably  make it a habit to put in the time to study every day if they want to get better.

I see people say that all the time.

erlog wrote:

yudantaiteki wrote:

And nobody on this thread is saying "white people just aren't very good at it."

Yes, you are. You are saying that as a foreigner a different language standard should apply to you because you're a foreigner. I will quote, as proof, the nonsense you just posted wherein you tried to paint learning how to write kanji like Japanese people do as almost impossible.

You didn't quote it, though.  I don't remember saying it was almost impossible; it's not.  It's quite doable, partly because Japanese people often can't write kanji as well as the popular perception might be.  I am absolutely not saying that writing kanji is hard for foreigners because they're foreigners.  It's hard for everyone, native Japanese included.

You compared a fundamental language skill to weird trivia.

In my current daily life (in Japan), lack of knowledge of this sort of "weird trivia" marks me as a foreigner much more frequently than my ability in writing kanji.  It seemed to be a concern of yours, and I don't think the natural やっぱり外人 response of Japanese people is going to be tuned to differentiate between them.

Now, I'm fairly decent at writing kanji but I rarely have opportunities to display that in front of other people.  Most of the handwriting I do is copying stuff for my own purposes anyway.

yudantaiteki wrote:

I'm not saying you have to become a Japanese person. I'm saying that if you actually want to consider yourself bilingual and be considered bilingual by others then a necessary part of that is being able to write kanji words just as well as most Japanese people can.

This is not trivia. It's a fundamental language skill.

In terms of interacting with Japanese people, such trivia is quite important.  If you are excluded from a chunk of a conversation because you're not familiar with the cultural (or pop cultural) things that the Japanese people are talking about, that can be significant.  And in that sense it doesn't matter whether that's something that you technically consider as important to being "bilingual" or not.  Obviously you can be cut out of conversations because of lack of knowledge in your native language too, but often not in the same way.

That's fine, but if that's the case then they shouldn't spend so much time trying to rationalize and spin their own language deficiencies as "not mattering."

Ah-hah, here we go, I wondered when it would come to this.  I passed level 3 of the kanji kentei in 2004 (I intended to do jun-2 this time but I have more pressing things to do), so I can assure you that I am not trying to cover up any "language deficiency."

In the end I'm not sure we disagree on the fundamentals, just the degree -- I'm sure you would agree that there's a point after which learning to handwrite kanji is no longer a useful fundamental skill but just something to do for your own interest.  For instance, passing level 1 of the kanji kentei.  I think we just disagree on where that level is.

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2012 July 16, 7:50 pm)

yudantaiteki wrote:

You didn't quote it, though.  I don't remember saying it was almost impossible; it's not.  It's quite doable, partly because Japanese people often can't write kanji as well as the popular perception might be.  I am absolutely not saying that writing kanji is hard for foreigners because they're foreigners.  It's hard for everyone, native Japanese included.

Japanese people frequently overstate how "difficult" kanji are as a way of trying to empathize with foreigners who can't do it. They're trying to be polite. Japanese people can actually write kanji quite a lot better than they let on.

On top of this, the standard Western thinking on the topic is also that "kanji are just so damn hard." Those two things combine to give foreigners a very misleading impression about what's difficult and what's reasonable. I only know what I know about these things because I specifically stopped listening to the things Japanese people tell me about how to learn their own language.

I believe them when they tell me what's unnatural or natural. They know that intuitively. They don't actually know how high their reading level actually is or how many kanji they know. They are very poor judges of those things because they take it for granted.

yudantaiteki wrote:

In terms of interacting with Japanese people, such trivia is quite important.  If you are excluded from a chunk of a conversation because you're not familiar with the cultural (or pop cultural) things that the Japanese people are talking about, that can be significant.  And in that sense it doesn't matter whether that's something that you technically consider as important to being "bilingual" or not.  Obviously you can be cut out of conversations because of lack of knowledge in your native language too, but often not in the same way.

The difference is that you didn't live through that era in that place. Of course you can't be expected to know those things. You never claimed to be a Japanese person that grew up in Japan. However, you probably do claim that you are bilingual in Japanese.

It's a difference in expectations. If I told a Japanese person that I've spent 5 years studying 90's Japanese culture and consider myself extremely knowledgable about 90's Japanese culture, but then didn't know the very common thing they were talking about with regard to that then it would come across as pretty odd.

Why is it not okay in that situation, but somehow okay when it comes to language? It's okay to tell people you've studied Japanese for 5 years and consider yourself bilingual, but still be deficient in this basic skill?

You have set up the expectation that you should know how to write kanji. The only reason Japanese people don't expect it of you is because you're a foreigner. They should expect it of you just like they'd expect you to know the 90's trivia if you were claiming to be "bilingual" in 90's Japanese culture. The only reason they don't is because of the soft racism of double standards.

yudantaiteki wrote:

Ah-hah, here we go, I wondered when it would come to this.  I passed level 3 of the kanji kentei in 2004 (I intended to do jun-2 this time but I have more pressing things to do), so I can assure you that I am not trying to cover up any "language deficiency."

You might not be trying to cover a language deficiency with your rhetoric, but the vast majority of those making your same argument definitely are. Most people don't hold KanKen certs like you and I do. They consider it 無理 because they've gotten a bunch of bad advice about it.

yudantaiteki wrote:

In the end I'm not sure we disagree on the fundamentals, just the degree -- I'm sure you would agree that there's a point after which learning to handwrite kanji is no longer a useful fundamental skill but just something to do for your own interest.  For instance, passing level 1 of the kanji kentei.  I think we just disagree on where that level is.

Generally, I think that foreigners should be pretty solid up to around 5級/4級/3級. The problem is that things start to get fuzzy there, and kanji ability shifts over the course of people's lives. Most Japanese people during highschool are probably somewhere around 準2級 or 2級, but then they start to forget once they're not being actively tested on it.

They don't forget all of it, though. Most Japanese people could re-study for and pass 2級 pretty easily. So I think bilingual learners of Japanese should try to work up to around 2級, and then it'd probably be okay if they started to forget some of it as long as they continued to be immersed in Japanese culture.

I'm not going to stop until 準1級 because 3000 kanji seems pretty reasonable, and I want to have better than average abilities in Japanese the same way I have better than average abilities in English. I don't want to be proficient. I want to be good at it. With my current fairly reasonable study plan I will be at that level by this time next year.

My reference point is not just native Japanese speakers, but also my own level of English. I want to be able to do all the things I do in English, in Japanese. So far I'm on a good path toward doing that. If I fail at that I'll still end up with way better Japanese than if I hadn't tried to reach that goal.

vix86 wrote:

*: I avoided bilingual because it depends how you are defining, and I think you should too. I googled it and most operational definitions of bilingualism seem to suggest that you merely need to be able to communicate in a language to be considered bilingual usually. Some linguistics include writing in this, but most consider speaking to be the major determiner in this. Unless you are doing something pretty extreme, you are speaking 90% of the time in a language. (And typing most of the rest, in this age). "Native-like" is the term you want erlog.

I don't understand why this distinction exists. I don't understand why not everyone is striving to be native-like. By redefining what it means to be bilingual on the mistaken assumption that attaining "native-level" is too difficult or unreasonable we are intentionally creating plans that end in failure.

It's trite and corny, but I'm a very firm believer in the adage that "You should reach for the stars because even if you fail you might still reach the moon." If you start out saying the stars are too difficult, you'll slippery slope it all the way down to rationalizing it as a grand victory that you just managed to escape Earth's atmosphere. Meanwhile you'll have cheated yourself out of some truly grand victories.

Instead of trying to rationalize every tiny thing as a victory I think people should try to get better at accepting failure, and then working hard to overcome. The thing that we should find contentment and happiness in is executing our plans well toward our eventual goal. "It's not the destination...it's the journey," and all that.

I'm happy I passed KanKen 4級, but I'm happier that I was able to construct a proper plan and then execute it well.

Last edited by erlog (2012 July 17, 3:00 am)

vix86 wrote:

erlog wrote:

I don't understand why not everyone is striving to be native-like.

Time. Time. Time. Just not enough of it. I believe everyone sets that goal and includes "learning to write 2000 kanji" in that, but Time.

This is what I was talking about when I was saying that people construct their study plans like they're going to spontaneously drop dead in the next 18 months or that they're going to start hating Japanese. If Japanese is an interest for people then shouldn't it be reasonable to assume that interest will persist for a long time?

People might not have a whole ton of time day to day, but time has a way of stacking up.  Over the course of people's lives, people do actually have time. They don't have as much as they'd like, but they do have it. I see no reason why we need to be so short-sighted about things.

I just have more than one deck. One deck i focus on kanji readings and i do it a certain amount of time per day. The other deck focuses on writings and while it moves at a slower pace, i do it a little everyday so that one day i will be able to write everything i can read.

More input on the natives writing Japanese:

We had this Japanese teacher come to my school and they put her in charge of the kanji lesson. I'll ignore the fact that her stroke order was wrong pretty often, but every now and then she'd have to check the book for writing certain kanjis. In the very first lesson she wanted to tell us how important it is to write 隣 and as soon as she got to the whiteboard she realized she had completely forgotten it.

It was awkward.

@erlog, I found your posts very interesting. I too believe that being able to write is a must, and it greatly enhances your long-term memory.

The sad thing is people on this forum seem to have a very strong conviction in the community's overall learning method and can't accept outside criticism. Because of this the forum has turned into endless quarrels and self-proclaimed "advanced" Japanese learners' bragging posts.

Anyway, I was very surprised by your posts. I also don't see the reason why people wouldn't want to be the best in their hobbies. It's common human nature after all. Plus, writing really isn't that hard.

merlin.codex wrote:

The sad thing is people on this forum seem to have a very strong conviction in the community's overall learning method and can't accept outside criticism. Because of this the forum has turned into endless quarrels and self-proclaimed "advanced" Japanese learners' bragging posts.

Anyway, I was very surprised by your posts. I also don't see the reason why people wouldn't want to be the best in their hobbies. It's common human nature after all. Plus, writing really isn't that hard.

I totally agree that there is a kind of emergent 'consensus' (and not necessarily very good) method on this forum that many people seem to put too much faith in. As for the bragging, I don't know if people are 'bragging' as such. I'd say it's more like enthusiastic explaining how it is posts by people who have just learned a new trick and feel very empowered. Kind of like if someone who's just tied their shoes were to start lecturing the  others at the starting line of a marathon.

As for being the best in your hobbies, like so many things in life, it's a matter of tradeoffs. If you have to trade off enjoyment/convenience to be the best (and i'm not necessarily saying you do) then you can understand that some people won't prioritize it.

Back on the topic of kanji, I don't really get why writing at a level in line with your overall ability should be hard, unless you've completely neglected reading and have never written anything down in Japanese before. I don't really think kanji are orders of magnitude more difficult than other things in life, and therefore requiring extra special effort. They're just something you get used to like anything else.

I guess the thing with writing Japanese by hand is that most people on this forum have the following priority:

1) Reading (novels, manga, whatever. Subtitles perhaps in order to increase listening skills), i.e. recognising kana/kanji
2) Listening and Speaking (basic communication)

Thanks to wordprocessors writing by hand turned to be slightly unnecessary. But if you live in Japan being able to write is certainly a must to a certain extent.

@yudantaiteki
I guess you can learn writing by being exposed to a lot of books. If you read a lot and don't just skip kanjis, but look at them closely and try to memorise radicals etc. you will be able to write a few kanji, perhaps all if you read a lot, with time passing by.
On the other handside I think that writing is like listening. If you don't practice it actively you cannot master it or succeed at it.

A little off-topic but there are many people who always mention that they live in Japan, know Japanese people and such for no apparent reason at all. Sometimes it's really ridiculous - 4/5 of the entire post is covered with stuff like that and the last 1/5 is the actual question or answer. I call this bragging cause I'm pretty sure you can just write your post without all the background.

I think another great aspect of writing is that when you sometimes forget a word, you can easily reproduce it by recalling the kanji from which it is written. Especially useful when you're still using or hearing a word you're not used to, like certain terms.

Last edited by merlin.codex (2012 July 17, 6:40 am)

I will say that reading a lot has helped me a lot with knowing which kanji is used in any particular word (保証、保障、補償, for example), but not so much with learning how to write any specific kanji. Often I can remember some of the components; usually if I write something wrong I know it doesn't look right; and if I try to learn to write it, then it's a lot faster and easier than it was back when I was at a lower level and not doing as much reading. So it got me part of the way there, for sure, but I still have to study writing.

(I haven't done RTK. I'm currently trying to shore up my writing ability somewhat by studying for the KanKen.)

merlin.codex wrote:

A little off-topic but there are many people who always mention that they live in Japan, know Japanese people and such for no apparent reason at all. Sometimes it's really ridiculous - 4/5 of the entire post is covered with stuff like that and the last 1/5 is the actual question or answer. I call this bragging cause I'm pretty sure you can just write your post without all the background.

I've never seen that.  In fact, I think it's the opposite -- people don't mention their experience and circumstances often enough.  If your question is "Do I need to learn to handwrite Japanese?", the first thing you should want to know about anybody answering the question is what their experience is with the language and with life in Japan.