奴 is not (currently) Joyo kanji, and 猫 is, but is considered pretty high level within Joyo kanji for some reason, so it would make perfect sense that both would have furigana in a book for young adults.

What was the furigana on 色 and 面白い?  Perhaps they were unusual or invented readings.

Last edited by JimmySeal (2010 June 29, 10:48 pm)

JimmySeal wrote:

奴 is not (currently) Joyo kanji, and 猫 is, but is considered pretty high level within Joyo kanji for some reason, so it would make perfect sense that both would have furigana in a book for young adults.

What was the furigana on 色 and 面白い?  Perhaps they were unusual or invented readings.

the furigana on those two were いろ　and おもしろい respectively.  So their common readings as far as I'm aware.

I guess it just seems funny that I would be able to know them with my complete and total lack of vocabulary.  But it's not like I'm learning the same way a native speaker does so I guess it does make sense that I could acquire vocabulary on what they consider high level characters / non-Joyo before learning what they consider the low level Kanji.

It just stuck out as weird but I suppose with a little more thought it does make sense.

Womacks23 wrote:

Iron Man movies had some fun furigana

戦略国土調停補強配備局 (S.H.I.E.L.D)

lol that's awesome.

Last edited by arch9443 (2010 June 29, 11:01 pm)

Was 色 part of another word?  When they do compounds, like 橙色（だいだいいろ), if they put furigana over one kanji they also put it over the other, no matter what.

But furigana usage is often pretty arbitrary, so it's very common to see "odd" usages.

yudantaiteki wrote:

furigana usage is often pretty arbitrary

Bingo.

if they put furigana over one kanji they also put it over the other, no matter what.

Not always.  For example, I was just reading something that put furigana next to absolutely everything except for number kanji, even in compounds.

arch9443 wrote:

On a side note about Kanji.  I've recently started going through Pokemon heart gold in Japanese, and I'm noticing that without Kanji it is quite a bit more difficult for me to recognize vocab that I'm already familiar with.  Or even if I do recognize the word it still takes quite a bit longer for the word to register in my head?  Would this kind of thing be normal for a beginning learner?

Normal? Definitely. It's worth taking a lot of caution though. Remember, a sentence written in hiragana is like a spoken sentence, there's no kanji to help you in a conversation. If you aim to become fluent in the future, you will have to be able to understand Japanese just fine without kanji.

Aijin wrote:

It is indeed normal, but as Tobberoth said, it's not exactly a good thing. If you recognize the kanji form but not the hiragana, then it simply means that you've memorized the word through visual cues. You've made a direct link in your mind between the image (kanji) and the meaning. While this is fine for reading comprehension alone, it indicates that you haven't learned the word on the audio level: if you hear the word as spoken syllables alone (which hiragana is) you won't comprehend it. So for speech and listening comprehension it's necessary to be able to process the language through hiragana as well, as that indicates you have learned it on the audio level rather than purely visual.

As your oral comprehension increases you'll recognize the words when written purely through phonetics. Directly you can improve the skill by reading things written primarily in hiragana (manga and books for kids)

Yeah that's kind of what I was thinking.  So I guess I will make sure I have some primarily hiragana reading material around me for a while.  I would like to nail problems like these before they develop to much.

Thanks for all the responses.

Or develop the phonetic recognition from audio since: you won't ever be reading all hiragana, you need to develop listening skills anyway, audio is more readily available than all hiragana texts, and you can use your reading time to develop reading fluency and an awareness of what's typical in written Japanese.

One advantage Japanese kids and spoken-first learners have is knowing many words before putting kanji to them. The approach taken by some people here seems to be weighted a bit too heavily on reading (which is simpler for self-learners.) So resources that can be used as audio-only would be helpful, imo, for both grammar, vocab and general listening skills. (structured, level appropriate stuff - not background 'immersion')

It may not be fashionable now, but audio-only sentence exercises (substitution/transformation patterns) saved me. For eg, those various conjugations of different verbs need to roll off your tongue automatically ... before the listener wanders off. It's not easy. Beginner readers tend to comprehend the verbs, but gloss over the nuances of the conjugations and have a false sense of their ability to use them.

Material aimed children is great for learning. Bonus if you enjoy it. I enjoyed the fairytale stories (and it increased my cultural knowledge a bit.)

I guess I was referring more generally to the problem of immediately recognizing words only in kanji form - which applies more from the late beginner/intermediate level. To remedy that common problem, I think it's better to listen to the appropriate material rather than read a hiragana version of it.

Last edited by Thora (2010 June 30, 4:35 pm)

Yeah -- I think maybe to clarify what I said, I should say that there's not a big problem if you read all hiragana text slowly, or have to go back and re-read parts.  That's normal, even for native speakers.  If you are literally unable to understand a sentence in hiragana without having the kanji, that's a problem.

(EDIT: And by this I don't mean any arbitrary sentence in hiragana, I mean an actual text in all hiragana from something made by Japanese people for Japanese people.)

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2010 June 30, 7:21 pm)

だれ>誰 (apparently this kanji isn't common, but it's used pretty commonly, i've heard it so many times)
I found this in the recent book I was reading called: "秘境駅へ行こう". It's fiction. Bought it online for  cheap, since it was a huge sale, selling books for 4-10$.

ta12121 wrote:

だれ>誰 (apparently this kanji isn't common, but it's used pretty commonly, i've heard it so many times)
I found this in the recent book I was reading called: "秘境駅へ行こう". It's fiction. Bought it online for  cheap, since it was a huge sale, selling books for 4-10$.

Cool story, bro.

ta12121 wrote:

だれ>誰 (apparently this kanji isn't common, but it's used pretty commonly, i've heard it so many times)

How do you hear a kanji?
How is something both uncommon and used commonly?
Where can I get Japanese books for around the same price I pay for English books (about 10¢ each)?

Last edited by hereticalrants (2010 July 01, 1:23 am)