I guess it would be easier, but as you said, if you're to rely on written material, it's not going to be so easy to find plenty of interesting hiragana-only resources. I often do the same thing as you describe too: going from meaning to kanji to pronunciation... or inversely from pronunciation to kanji to meaning. This can be seen as an advantage though... Whereas you can see this as one more thing to memorize, it's also one more association in your brain! If you can't remember the English word "saddle", there isn't much that is going to help you. Maybe it's not the best example, but in Japanese, you could remember how it's written "鞍" and then somehow remember the pronunciation (would work better with kango words though!)

I think you might be right that kanji hinders vocab acquisition (but only when you compare it to other languages), because its another piece of information you have to remember while studying vocab. But still, I don't think you'll be doing yourself any favors by removing kanji from your study. The fact is, kanji is a part of the language and you need to remember it. You're left with the options of studying Meaning -> reading, kanji or separating the cards and studying meaning -> reading and then reading -> kanji. So you either have cards with more to remember or double the amount of cards. Either could work, but the 2nd option sounds harder to me.

I disagree that kanji hinders vocab acquisition, at least when you're past the beginner stages. When you're past the wall where knowing the kanji isn't the issue but not knowing enough vocab is your major for not being able to read certain things. After that kanji is like the best thing ever, letting you learn new words with little to no effort at all (mostly true for compounds as otherwise you need to learn a reading). Until you reach this stage I can see how kanji can be a hassle, but if you want to learn Japanese it's something you have to learn anyway at some point.

Also, learning vocab together with kanji makes it easier to remember the kanji in the future. Unless you're in a rush to learn vocab NOW, I think it's a better plan for the future. I guess you could also strike a middle ground and include the kanji with furigana on the cards, I haven't tried this so I don't know if it's effective but at least you should be able to remember the use of some kanji without being hindered by not knowing.

Taishi wrote:

I disagree that kanji hinders vocab acquisition, at least when you're past the beginner stages. When you're past the wall where knowing the kanji isn't the issue but not knowing enough vocab is your major for not being able to read certain things. After that kanji is like the best thing ever, letting you learn new words with little to no effort at all (mostly true for compounds as otherwise you need to learn a reading). Until you reach this stage I can see how kanji can be a hassle, but if you want to learn Japanese it's something you have to learn anyway at some point.

This.

Not knowing kanji hampers vocab memorization, while knowing kanji greatly helps it. Basically kanji puts an extra step that takes a lot of time and effort to conquer, but once you do it the rest starts falling in it's place by itself.

Are you studying kanji with Remembering the Kanji + Reviewing the Kanji? Because at least for me that's what helped me climb the kanji wall.

shinsen wrote:

When you hear the news and they rattle off something like "genshiryokukaikakukanshiiinkai" they're basically sounding out kanji to you (原子力改革監視委員会). That's why it's called on-yomi, it's "sound reading". In a sense, they're not really saying words, they're "sounding out" the kanji.

Bravo.

There are a lot of reasons why "studying like children do" won't be possible and trying to do so is really naive from my point of view.

First of all, you're not a child. You're not that interested in the world around you anymore. Remind yourself how many times you were fascinated by some pencil, for example. Speaking of which, "pencil" is inscribed in your brain as "pencil" (or X in your native language). So you already have an association of it in your head. When you learn a second/third/forth/n+1 language what you're trying to do is encode an alternative meaning in your head. "pencil" is now "pencil" and 「鉛筆」 (no matter whether it has kanji, it's just some sounds to you or whatever). This is, actually, the most difficult process cause you want to retain the knowledge of your native language. So it's not the same. Short summary - you don't have children's interest in stuff (1) and you're hindered by your mother tongue (2).

Children have all kinds of teachers who teach them the language - their mothers, fathers, grandpas, grandmas, brothers, sisters, etc..., or let's just say "siblings". It's not only them, however. You're a child who doesn't have enough knowledge so basically everyone older than you explains you something somewhere in the years of your youth. Short summary - many teachers (3).

You want to be able to speak Japanese RIGHT NOW! You created this thread in order to remember Japanese RIGHT NOW! You don't have time! But kids do... That's why they can try to remember something without the kanji which they don't even know until they grow up a little. However, you won't be able to benefit from (3) cause you're now a fully-functional adult. Short summary - no time - (4)

Many words in Japanese have the same pronunciation but different meanings - 橋、端、箸, for example. You'll lose one of your perceptions about the words when you try to remember them. Usually most people rely on, let's say, "experience", "visual recognition", "association", etc... to remember a word. Your visual recognition and association will have a major drawback cause there will be many words with the same readings and your association will be impaired because katakana doesn't have any meaning like kanji do. Short summary - bad association (5)

Written English and spoken one don't really differ that much. That's not the case for Japanese, however. Japanese children master spoken Japanese only! And by "master" I mean the basic one. They don't use polite speech, keigo, etc... They pretty much use short sentences only. And yes, they don't use many words from written Japanese which is mastered much later. Short summary - kids use easy sentences (6).

And obviously, children have many years of experience behind them which you don't (7).

Oh and, they live in Japan (8).

So unless you cover pretty much all 8 factors, I don't see how you can benefit from the method you're choosing. This applies to pretty much everyone who's thinking he can mimic a kid. You just can't. Sorry.

Taishi wrote:

Very good post shinsen. That is indeed what they had in mind when writing old Chinese, from what I understand it is almost completely separate from the spoken Chinese at the time and the characters were used solely for their meaning.

So, when the Japanese first adopted the kanji, there was no prior writing system in Japan, correct? Does that mean that the vocabulary mainly consisted of the words we now know as kun-yomi? is kun-yomi pronunciation something that came from oral tradition, whereas on-yomi was constructed the other way around? I can see how many of the on-yomi compound words may not have been needed because such-and-such concept or object didn't exist and thus did not need a name yet. furthermore, there must be countless words that have faded from common usage with each generation. i guess my confusion is in the historical difference between kun and on yomi words, and the origin of words in ancient japan.

when you say that old Chinese reading and speaking were different, then where did the pronunciation for the written word come from? in contemporary Chinese, is the surviving lingual framework and syntax closer to the written or the spoken Chinese of old? Did the two merge and grow together in some way?

i know i'm being kind of vague and asking etymological questions that i could probably figure out using wikipedia, but i wanted to know other sources (book/website recommendations?) or garner insight from the koohii members.

Last edited by tashippy (2012 October 20, 4:45 pm)

What Taishi said. Knowledge of kanji makes vocab acquisition go a lot faster, esp. once you have the most frequent kanji committed to memory.

The reason we lack that "natural connection" is because reading, writing, listening and speaking are four different competencies that each need to be practiced separately. It's one thing to read a Japanese sentence at your own pace, when you have time to assign meanings to the words and digest it until your brain can grok what the sentence is conveying. It's quite another thing to process words as *sentences*, i.e., units of thought, when said words are flying into and out of your consciousness at a mile a minute. It's the difference between being able to play "Hot for Teacher" at 1/4 speed and playing it at natural tempo. You just need more practice.

I don't think you need some fancy method for learning vocab, but you need to expose yourself to lots of text *and* audio, so that you can train your brain to make that kanji<->meaning<->audio association. Text + audio (e.g., reading a news article and then listening to the associated TV clip) is great for this. I've been using 童話, books such as READ REAL JAPANESE, and most recently the news in this way, and it's really paying off.

That was probably partially a joke; 直近 is an uncommon word in speech but from context I doubt anyone seriously thought he was saying 貯金 (which isn't pronounced the same) even if they didn't immediately recognize ちょっきん. 

Speakers can use uncommon or rare words in speech that the other person might not understand in any language; there's a perception that this is more common in Japanese because of the number of sounds, but that's not true.

(None of this really has anything to do with whether learning kanji helps or hinders vocab acquisition for a foreigner because foreigners are in a fundamentally different place from native speakers when they're learning the language.)

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2012 October 20, 6:23 pm)

shinsen wrote:

yudantaiteki wrote:

Kanji represent actual Japanese words, and it's wrong to say that the news is "reading out kanji" and not saying real words.  News is on the radio too.

I did say "in a sense". Sure, everyone knows Tokyo is a real word. Is it anything more than simply sounding out the kanji for "eastern capital"? Do these kanji (東京） represent an actual Japanese word or does the Japanese word represent the kanji? Just something to think about.

What I think shinsen was talking about was how the words came to be, and especially when it comes to on-yomi compounds, you pick the kanji, and out comes a pronunciation, not the other way around. It's not saying that it's suddenly not a word if you say とうきょう. It's like in a book I'm reading where one of the characters said ケンテイ and the other character wasn't familiar with the word so the first character had to explain that it was written 献呈 which let him understand what it meant. Here's were shinsen's 'sounding out characters' comes into play, since 献呈 gave rise to ケンテイ, people didn't have ケンテイ and suddenly decided to stick kanji onto it. However when it comes to Yamato kotoba or kun-yomi, obviously it's the other way around, the words were there before the kanji.

And about what I said about old Chinese, the key point was that I don't think a lot of compound words were used, but single characters was thought to be enough to get the meaning across. Which is probably why it can be harder to understand a text written in old Chinese if read aloud, unless you're at least slightly familiar with the text.

How is learning kanjis any different from learning unnatural spelling for words in English? Learning how to spell physique or definitely won't help your oral communication in any way, but without it you couldn't read properly and, well, that's a pretty important aspect of language knowledge...

How the word is pronounced is actually of secondary importance.

Unless you want to talk to Japanese people.