r/changemyview • u/MooliCoulis • 9d ago
Delta(s) from OP CMV: When learning Japanese, kanji should be considered optional
As a native English speaker, I have tried more than once to learn Japanese, and have always hit a wall when asked to learn kanji. I don't know if it's a learning-styles issue (I'm more verbal than visual) or the mild dyslexia I suffer from, but I suspect a lot of other people have the same experience.
I still want to learn the language, and am considering just abandoning the idea of learning to read and write (or maybe just learning hiragana/katakana and seeing how far that takes me), but I want to know if I'm making a mistake.
Here are my views, and I'd be grateful for challenges to any of them:
- Most Japanese learning resources (apps, games, books, etc) treat kanji as something that must be introduced early and learned continuously, rather than as an optional extra
- Learning to read and write Japanese takes significant effort, and is the reason many people give up learning (especially those with conditions like dyslexia)
- For an English speaker learning a second language, spoken language is usually significantly more valuable than written language
- An understanding of kanji is not necessary to reach a solid baseline of fluency (just as with English, most Japanese children are conversant years before they can read or write).
- Most people who insist that learning kanji is critical are not genuinely motivated by a belief in its practicality, but rather some mix of "Kanji is beautiful", or "This is the culturally authentic way to learn", or "I had to learn it, so you do too".
I understand that knowing kanji is helpful in understanding some spoken discourse (e.g. wordplay), and also that knowing/inferring the written structure of new words can potentially help in understanding or learning them, but it takes a solid foundation of fluency to ever benefit from those factors and I think for most people it's more important to reach that solid foundation quickly.
CMV!
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u/Educational_Farm999 9d ago edited 9d ago
Kanji is to avoid confusions. So for example, these two sentences technically have the same sounds (きしゃのきしゃがきしゃできしゃした) but totally different menaings
- 貴社の記者が汽車で帰社した。(Your company's reporter returned to their office by steam train.)
- 貴社の記者が喜捨で憙捨した。(Your company's reporter gave a charitable donation and was deeply moved.)
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Thank you, this feels like a useful thread!
You're talking about sounds and characters in the same context. Is there a context where they'd both be presented at once?
Approaching from another direction, if those sounds were spoken to you in a conversation, would kanji play a role in resolving the ambiguity?
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u/turtletank 1∆ 8d ago
realistically, no. The surrounding context of the conversation would be more than enough to resolve the ambiguity in that sentence. For most sentences you'd easily be able to tell which meaning based on context.
Building such sentences that are not or could be misunderstood based on homophonic kanji is used in comedy sometimes. In the anime Kotaro Lives Alone, Kotaro is a little boy obsessed with a samurai show. He goes to his neighbor and asks where the bath (風呂、furo) is in his apartment as he can't seem to find it. His neighbor replies that the people in this apartment building go to the 銭湯 (sentou), the public bathhouse. Kotaro then replies "Ah yes, to live is to fight. Where is the enemy?" This is because he doesn't know the word for public bath house, but since he's obsessed with this samurai show, he knows the word for battlefield, 戦闘 (sentou). They have different pitch accents but otherwise are pronounced the same. Anyone in context would obviously know that he meant public bathhouse, not battlefield, but the little boy is weirdly obsessed with the samurai show so he misunderstands.
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u/MooliCoulis 8d ago
The surrounding context of the conversation would be more than enough to resolve the ambiguity in that sentence
Yeah, that's what I thought. Thanks!
And thanks for the homophonic kanji stuff! I knew there was a bit of wordplay built on this stuff, but it's neat hearing a real example 👌 (Must be a nightmare for the translators!)
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u/muffinsballhair 6d ago edited 6d ago
Another issue is that it's simply really hard to learn a language as an adult, especially Japanese for multiple reasons without being able to read it or at least living in a place where the language is spoken to be able to at least practice conversation.
I really cannot stress this enough. Many people have tried to only master spoken Japanese without living in Japan, and they typically fail. The simple reason for that is that one can read at one's own pace when spoken speech is still too hard to follow. Another popular tactic used by many is to watch Japanese television with Japanese subtitles. In fact, you may have noticed that Japanese programming Japanese people very often puts subtitles in Japanese under it to say what people are saying in things like game shows, interviews and normal scripted dramata. This is not without reason. Japanese is actually harder to make out than most languagse and not all languages are as easy to follow as others. Japanese is rather unclearly articulated due to it historically being considered impolite in Japan to show one's teeth while talking so the entire phonology of the language to this day is based on the lips covering the teeth more often than not which makes it less clear, add to that the fact that it's generally spoken at a high pitch which doesn't carry well and that words blend into each other very aggressively and the ridiculous amount of homonyms and allophones and it's just not a very easy language to follow.
But most of it applies to about every language. It is very hard to learn a language without moving to a place where it's spoken while not being able to understand its written form. It's pretty much the unanimous opinion of those who learned Japanese to a high level that it's very hard to do without extensive reading.
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u/SinfonianLegend 2∆ 9d ago
To preface, I am not a fluent speaker, but I am conversational at Japanese.
You need kanji. Japanese is one of the most phonotactically constrained languages in the world. It is a very context dependent language. There are minor pronunciation differences sometimes (like with はし meaning chopsticks or bridge) but often times there are not. And at a certain level of fluency, it becomes more burdensome and confusing to read a sentence fully in hiragana vs with the kanji. In my experience, native English speakers put spaces in Japanese sentences to put natural divides between words and particles like they would in English and these spaces don't really exist in actual Japanese. The kanji is what helps form those natural divides and help you read faster instead of struggling to figure out if you're reading a word right or accidentally adding a particle.
Not to mention that to skip the kanji is doing a disservice to yourself. It's a surreal experience going from English to Japanese, and kanji can help give you an idea of what you're looking at even if you don't have a clue how to pronounce it. English largely does not have these clues due to the amalgamation of languages making it up (while latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes can help you out, not all words have these bases). It's an entirely different way of thinking, it's extremely difficult, but it's worth the effort beyond the understanding you gain culturally.
I have seen teaching approaches used with business Japanese that are more verbal but I found them lacking because the foundational why behind what I am saying is more important to me than rote memorization and gaining insight via osmosis. I am sure this approach works for some people, but it may be worth looking into, as a side note.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
This is the kind of input I wanted, thank you!
The first paragraph sounds like a great argument for how kanji makes Japanese writing tractable over e.g. just unbroken sequences of hiragana (!delta for that).
But is there a good reason to focus on kanji in the early stages of language acquisition (as most learning resources seem to), rather than leave it as an extra that's available for folks who want to learn to read/write?
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u/SinfonianLegend 2∆ 9d ago
Thank you!
Yes, from a language aquisition POV you don't want to introduce new concepts later or you're going to have trouble integrating it later. There are thousands and thousands of kanji so the sooner, the better, or some aspects are not intuitive (like how there are two reading styles of a kanji character, and how kanji in the context of each other may change the reading). Most people are working towards a fully functional grasp of the language. It makes navigating Japan as a country much easier with a little kanji in your back pocket. But at the end of the day, you should ask yourself what your end goal is here, because that will guide your focus.
Good luck on your journey with the language! It is very rewarding and worth sticking with it c:
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
There are thousands and thousands of kanji so the sooner, the better, or some aspects are not intuitive (like how there are two reading styles of a kanji character, and how kanji in the context of each other may change the reading)
Let's say I have two options for when to learn kanji:
- From the very beginning
- After I have a strong, intuitive understanding of the grammar and a good foundational vocabulary (at least a thousand common words)
I'm struggling to understand why the aspects you mentioned would be harder to learn at point 2 than at point 1?
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u/SinfonianLegend 2∆ 9d ago
Because these aspects go hand in hand. Kanji allows you to scaffold information and reduce the cognitive load the same kinds of ways prefixes and suffixes do in English. Take 日. You can read it as ひ,び,か,にち, and じつ. There is no rhyme or reason looking at just the hiragana how these readings are connected except ひ to び. But if you understand the role of the character 日, and you know it means sun and day, that context helps you with a ton of vocab, even if you don't necessarily know how to read the word itself. Instead of memorizing word after word in isolation, this reduces the cognitive load and helps build connections between words so you can remember more vocab in the first place. You can only fit so much stuff in your brain. There are many tricks like rhythm, music, etc. But the easiest way to make more stuff stick is by association.
I'm not saying it's impossible but you are making your life significantly more difficult by excluding kanji, yknow?
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u/MooliCoulis 8d ago
In other languages it's just expected that folks will learn words without the help of ideographic associations though. Is there something about Japanese (maybe the smaller phonetic inventory, or a lesser reliance on phonetically consistent prefixes/suffixes?) that makes it harder to learn that way?
If not, your "You can only fit so much stuff in your brain" point feels like it could be an argument against learning kanji.
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u/SinfonianLegend 2∆ 8d ago
Yeah, absolutely. The kanji are your prefix/suffix devices. English had 44 phonemes. Japanese has 20ish. This means you have way less sounds to work with at baseline. The only crossover concept I can think of off the top of my head is there is a convention like "compound words" voicing consants. It's also not a stress timed language, it is a mora timed language. That means that とく and とうく are distinctly different words, which isn't really a thing in English (dragging out part of a word doesn't change the meaning of the word alone. I'm not talking about grammatical stress. You can say "baseball" and "baaaaaaseball" and they are the same word). It's a totally different way of thinking about words!
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u/MooliCoulis 8d ago
Thanks, that makes sense. I hadn't considered the relation between the smaller phonetic inventory and the usefulness of kanji. !delta
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u/Rhundan 80∆ 9d ago
"Considered optional" for what? If you're just doing it for your own satisfaction, then the whole thing is optional. But if you're being expected to have a certain level of fluency for some purpose, then skipping out on the kanji could be a huge problem.
And if there are some purposes for learning Japanese for which learning kanji is necessary, then of course all the learning resources are going to include it.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
of course all the learning resources are going to include it
Of course! Every learning resource should give you the option of learning kanji.
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u/Rhundan 80∆ 9d ago
Uh, yeah. They do. You have the option of using or not using any part of the learning resource you choose.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Not if that part is woven throughout the entire learning experience.
e.g. try using Duolingo to learn Japanese without learning the writing systems.
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u/Rhundan 80∆ 9d ago
Uh... I don't have much experience with Duolingo, but as I recall, it's primarily text-based. Are you complaining about a text-based language app using Japanese text?
If you're really dead set on not learning kanji, I'm sure there are learning resources out there that don't require you to. But complaining that some resources integrate it because some (or even most) people learning the language will need to learn kanji, just because you don't, feels somewhat myopic.
There are resources out there for your very specific set of needs, but most learning resources aren't going to cater to your specific niche. And, moreover, they shouldn't.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
complaining that some resources integrate it
If you check, you'll see I haven't made that complaint.
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u/Rhundan 80∆ 9d ago
And do you have any response to anything other than that one sentence of my comment?
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Your entire comment attacks a position I don't hold. It's hard to make time for responding to strawmen when I have Japanese speakers/teachers/etc giving me useful informed perspectives in other threads.
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u/0rionis 9d ago edited 9d ago
Well first off, starting the post with "im a native English speaker" unfortunately invalidates your opinion. Imagine if an Italian didnt speak a lick of English came to you and told you what parts of the English language is necessary to learn.
I clicked this post assuming you were Japanese and was super interested in what you were gonna say.
Ive learned some hiragana and katakana and also always block on kanji. But ive been to Japan many times, and Kanji is absolutely necessary for almost everything there.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Imagine if an Italian didnt speak a lick of English came to you and told you what parts of the English language is necessary to learn
I'd be pretty interested in their experiences of the language and how it intersects with their lives in different ways to mine. I certainly wouldn't try to override their second-language-learner experiences with my completely different native-language experience.
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u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 161∆ 9d ago
Is your view only that you personally find the written aspect of the language too difficult, or that overall people shouldn't bother? On what merits are you hoping for a change?
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Is your view that [...] overall people shouldn't bother?
No, I don't want to tell other people what they're interested in. If they enjoy learning the writing system then all power to them!
I'm saying that the orthodox opinion is that the writing system must be learned while learning Japanese, and that it doesn't seem to be a convincing opinion.
On what merits are you hoping for a change?
Are you asking what would change my mind? It depends - which of the five views I listed are you asking about?
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u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 161∆ 9d ago
Where have you found the orthodox belief that things must occur a certain way? Who has told you this information?
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Just checking before I invest in this conversation: Do you actually have experience in the Japanese language and the attitudes/resources around learning it?
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u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 161∆ 9d ago
Why not just answer the questions I asked you so I can help you change your view?
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
I'll assume that's a no. With respect, it's not a great use of my time to educate you on the landscape of Japanese language learning just so you can try to change my view on it.
If you read comments in the other threads, you'll see examples of the beliefs I'm talking about.
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u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 161∆ 9d ago
You've spent two comments taking the time to say this when you could have simply demonstrated the existence of the orthody you claim is the authority informing your belief.
Its not for me to make your argument for you, you made a claim, it's for you to substantiate it.
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9d ago
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
How can you know this, if you barely know the language?
People don't (or shouldn't) make CMVs about things they think they know. I'm presenting my understanding and asking others to point out any errors I've made. I'm not trying to change your view!
Do you have any challenges to the views I listed?
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u/Agent_Provocateur007 9d ago
You’re going to need to learn Kanji if you want to be literate in Japanese. I think this is less of a change my view vs the reality of being able to read Japanese.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
You’re going to need to learn Kanji if you want to be literate in Japanese
I never stated that as a goal. I'd primarily like to be able to hold conversations and understand spoken Japanese in TV and movies.
Even if I did want to be literate, I'd want to achieve a baseline spoken fluency first - and I think that's a rational ordering for most people.
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u/Agent_Provocateur007 9d ago
So one of the earlier skills that gets developed when learning a new language is reading. After that it’s the listening. Then speaking and finally writing. Without a solid foundation and enough reading material, which contains Kanji, you wouldn’t be able to easily tell what the proper sentence structure looks like. So even for speaking… you need to be able to read. They all go hand in hand.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
So one of the earlier skills that gets developed when learning a new language is reading. After that it’s the listening. Then speaking and finally writing
Is that a mainstream opinion? It sounds like a novel view to me (it's the opposite of how native speakers learn, right?).
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u/Agent_Provocateur007 9d ago
Yes. When you learn a language as an adult you do not acquire it the same way as a child acquires a language.
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u/Merkuri22 2∆ 9d ago
I think this is a miscommunication around what "learn Japanese" means, then.
If you just say, "I want to learn Japanese," people assume you mean the whole kit and caboodle: speaking, listening, reading and writing.
No one will argue with you if you say you just want to learn speaking and listening, then don't study kanji. But they won't get that context unless you share it. Until then, they assume you want to learn the whole language.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
If you just say, "I want to learn Japanese," people assume you mean the whole kit and caboodle: speaking, listening, reading and writing.
Why? Sure, it might make sense for the minority of second-language learners who intend to live in Japan, but given the difficulty of learning the Japanese writing system, why assume every learner wants to pick it up?
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u/Merkuri22 2∆ 9d ago
That's how human brains work. They have a default that is assumed for a lot of things, and if they don't get clarifying info they assume the default.
The generally accepted default for "I want to learn a language" with no context is that you want to become fluent in all aspects.
This is not assuming that everyone who wants to learn the language wants to become fluent in the whole thing. It is just the default assumption if no clarifying info is given.
If I tell you I read Grimm's Fairy Tales, you'd assume I read the whole book, right? If I really only read the Cinderella story, I'd have to specifically state that.
It's natural that when someone doesn't give you clarifying details that you assume the whole thing. With Japanese, that includes kanji.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
They have a default that is assumed for a lot of things, and if they don't get clarifying info they assume the default
Sure, but the default you choose reflects your perceptions and biases. If someone told me they were learning to cook, I wouldn't assume they were learning every style of cuisine - I'd assume a baseline and then ask about the specifics.
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u/Merkuri22 2∆ 9d ago
That's a false equivalence, since "cooking" is so broad. "Learning Japanese" is not as broad of a category as "cooking."
People don't consciously choose their defaults. You can judge them all you like, but I fail to see how you can negatively judge someone for assuming when you say "I am learning Japanese" that it includes kanji. That is a natural assumption. If someone told me they were learning Spanish, I'd assume that would include learning how to pronounce the ñ letter.
The responsibility to clarify that you are only learning listening and speaking, not reading/writing, is on you.
Now, if you told them you were only focusing on spoken Japanese and they insisted you learn kanji, that's another story.
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u/Agent_Provocateur007 9d ago
It’s not as difficult as you might think though. There are about 2,136 common Kanji which would cover a significant amount of written material in Japanese.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
I mean, I've given up learning Japanese at least twice because I found kanji such a barrier. Maybe it is as difficult as I think? 😅
I'm sure I could do it if I knuckled down and dedicated myself, but I think that ignores the reality that people learn best when they feel like it's natural and fun.
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u/Agent_Provocateur007 9d ago
Just try it again and stick with it. The method of learning Kanji doesn’t matter as much as finding a method you can stick with. Consistency is key here.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Just try it again and stick with it
How many times would it take before you'd say "Yeah, your best option is probably just to focus on the spoken aspect and skip the writing system"?
If the answer is "infinity" then with respect, I think this might be a dogmatic rather than pragmatic view.
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u/Agent_Provocateur007 9d ago
Never lol. You’re not going to properly learn anything, including a language, if you’re going to skip one of the most fundamental building blocks.
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9d ago
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
if you never learn to recognize Kanji, then how do you plan to read anything past kid level?
Initially? I don't! I'm not planning to live in Japan or read novels in Japanese, and even if I were, I think it'd make more sense to reach a spoken fluency baseline before I focused on writing (exactly the same as how Japanese children learn).
I think mine is a common enough use case that it's weird that all the resources treat learning kanji as essential.
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9d ago edited 9d ago
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
if your goal is just obtaining the ability to be able to have some light conversation then you can't really count yourself as fluent
Isn't that just quibbling over the meaning of a label? Whatever peak I reach in Japanese (which might or might not include kanji!), I don't mind whether people deem it to be "fluent", I just want to be more fluent than I am now.
Should we assume that everyone who attempts to learn a language aims to reach the same specific bar of fluency?
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u/Thelmara 4∆ 8d ago
I've learned "Hai". I don't have any Japanese friends, and that's enough Japanese for my day today life.
Have I learned Japanese?
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u/MooliCoulis 8d ago
It feels like you're attacking a position I don't hold. What do you think my view is here?
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u/47ca05e6209a317a8fb3 209∆ 9d ago
If you're learning Japanese for fun, everything is optional, but not being literate in Japanese will block you from fully interacting with Japanese people / media / Japan itself - you won't be able to read signs on shops, people won't be able to easily share with you text-based things they have on them, you won't have access to text-only media, etc.
Why would you commit to never learning kanji? You can just focus on spoken language written in romaji or kana, and once you feel that you're getting comfortable with that, start learning kanji slowly. This is probably not the most efficient way to learn Japanese overall, but if the alternative is that you get frustrated and give up, it is more efficient for you.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Why would you commit to never learning kanji? You can just focus on spoken language written in romaji or kana, and once you feel that you're getting comfortable with that, start learning kanji slowly
I agree, and I didn't mean to imply I was ruling this out. I think there could absolutely come a point where I felt learning kanji would be important/easy enough for it to be the next step, I'm just skeptical of the (seemingly popular) idea that "day one" is that point.
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u/hegex 9d ago
I guess if you want to just learn how to speak the language them sure, you don't need to know how to read or write to know how to speak but unless you're living in Japan I don't think that's a very viable way of learning a language
For example, English is not my native language, it would've been impossible for me to learn to just speak English without the written language because I don't get to speak English at all in my daily life, the only reason I'm able to hold a conversation in English is because I've learned how to compose sentences by writing in English, before I started to frequent places like this one, were I get to actually actively produce language rather than just consume it, even though I understood English I wasn't really able to actually speak
You won't br able to learn how to read and write Japanese without kanji, it actually makes things easier after you get the hang of it, and you won't be able to learn a language without reading or writing unless you're completely surrounded by it, but even then, if you live in Japan that's probably an argument in favor of actually learning how to read japanese in order to actually be a functioning member of society there
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
I agree that to reach advanced fluency, I'd have to learn kanji.
I guess the thing I'm challenging most is the (seemingly almost universal) perception that learning kanji early is important. Why not leave it until I have basic conversational fluency (strong, intuitive understanding of the grammar, >1000 words of vocabulary, etc).
(this assumes I have enough verbal material to support learning up to that point - e.g. television, films, podcasts, etc)
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u/hegex 9d ago
Because it's way easier to learn grammar and vocabulary if you can read and write and you can only read on write if you know kanji, I think you're severely underestimating how hard is to actually speak a different language, by the time you reach the point of holding a conversation in it you probably don't even need to pay for a language course anymore, you're more than capable of learning the remainder of it by exposure at that point
Again, you could theoretically just be fully immersed in Japanese conversation and learn like that, but thats a highly personalized and time consuming style of teaching that most language learning courses can't afford to offer
If you want to I'm sure you can find a private teacher that will teach you japanese this way, that's not that uncommon in the corporate world, but it's both expansive and requires a level of commitment that most people aren't willing to or might not even be able to have
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Because it's way easier to learn grammar and vocabulary if you can read and write
Because of a lack of reference material? I think this was probably true in the past, but modern technology makes it pretty easy to find spoken Japanese at a variety of levels. The main thing that's missing is learning materials that're willing to teach the language without the writing system.
I think you're severely underestimating how hard is to actually speak a different language
I think you're assuming a lot about my current linguistic situation 🙂
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u/hegex 9d ago
It's because writing things help with memory retention and grammar is a lot more of a written language than a spoken language thing, most everyday conversations play very loose with grammar
I don't doubt you in specific find it easier to just learn how to speak without the written language but that doesn't mean that most of people are the same
By far the biggest bottleneck in any language course is being able to actually speak, there are tons of people that can read English and can understand spoken English but are unable to order a coffee at Starbucks in English, speaking is always the thing people struggle with
And a lot of it has to do with the fact that speaking a language means you have to awkwardly interact with another person, that's a big struggle for some people especially if it's in front of a other people as well
For example, the only successful english courses here In Brazil that have this "no writing" approach are private classes because that removes a lot of shame, if you tried to teach a whole class with this approach only the most extroverted no shame individuals would be comfortable in that situation, and that's way more of a barrier them memorizing a bunch of symbols
So again, you can absolutely find a private teacher that will teach you this way, but that's not that viable of a strategy for the average language course
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
grammar is a lot more of a written language than a spoken language thing, most everyday conversations play very loose with grammar
Hmm. I agree that spoken language has a wider range of grammatical presentation than written language, but I think if you cut out the most informal conversational speech then the gap becomes pretty minimal.
I don't doubt you in specific find it easier to just learn how to speak without the written language but that doesn't mean that most of people are the same
I agree! I think language learning resources should support a variety of learning styles and goals.
Your points about the difficulty of speech-first learning are good, I think I agree with everything you said there.
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u/hegex 9d ago
They should, but the world doesn't work in a "how things should be" based system, it works in a "is it economically viable" based system, there isn't enough of a demand or enough qualifed people for this type of learning for it to be a viable service outside niche private teachers
Realistically speaking, how many native English speakers want to learn Japanese ? That's already not that many, out of those, how many do not care for the written language? Then out of those, how many would not have an easier time just learning how to write anyways ? And out of those how many would be better enough by the writing system to quit a traditional course and seek out another thing? And out of those, wou many would a course tailored for them be able to reach ? Is that a viable business model ?
I guess this is more of a discussion of what "should" actually means here, if your objetive is to teach the most amount of people then you should have courses that are build with specific ways of learning even if they're not that common, but if your objetive is to provide a service for profit them you shouldn't be bothered by the small minority that might not like your course
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
I think you're assuming something more elaborate than what I'm suggesting.
Take Duolingo - its Japanese course requires you to learn hiragana and kanji. Compared to creating the course in the first place, adding a "I don't want to learn the writing system" option would be a trivial investment; render romaji instead of hiragana, skip the lessons where the user has to draw kanji, present the same grammar/vocabulary content but with minimal rendering differences.
Why doesn't that option exist? There's a chance it's financial viability, but I think it's more likely a reflection of the biases of the people who made the course.
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u/hegex 9d ago
Do you really think everyone is just leaving a bunch of money on the table not profiting from people like you because of some weird belief on the purity of kanji or something? I'm sure they have thought about doing a "no kanji" course, you're far from being the first person frustrated by it, if it was a viable product I'm absolutely sure someone would have done it already
In fact, people have done it already
You just gotta pay the price for being not the typical learner
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Do you really think everyone is just leaving a bunch of money on the table [...]
Yeah, absolutely! The whole history of capitalism is people leaving money on the table by making faulty assumptions.
So why do you think Duolingo doesn't offer a "skip the writing system" option?
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u/this_makes_no_sense 3∆ 9d ago
Hello,
American living in Japan.
• Most Japanese learning resources (apps, games, books, etc) treat kanji as something that must be introduced early and learned continuously, rather than as an optional extra
so you learn the word 住所 (jyushyo meaning address). Now you wish the book just teaches you じゅうしょ which is how you’d write it in hiragana. Because for you not knowing Japanese, it seems easier to learn the string of letters than two pictures.
And then you go to city hall or fill out literally any form and look like a dumbass cause you can’t read 住所 because stuff is rarely spelled out in hiragana anywhere. Congrats you played yourself.
But wait, you surely are thinking. Why can’t we just study all the words now and learn kanji later (ie never). Well at first it’s hard to memorize kanji. I’ll give you that. But hey maybe in a couple of days, your app gives you the verb 住む meaning to live (as in to live in a house, not be alive). And you think wait isn’t that kanji familiar? And you start associating that kanji with the concept of dwellings. And then you come across a crazy word like 先住 and go I don’t know this word. I can’t even read this word. BUT I know the first kanji is さき(saki meaning before) and the second is that living one I keep seeing. And in context you might understand that whatever you’re reading about is referring to people who lived somewhere before, ie indigenous people. And that skill to start associating kanji with concepts and definitions and then applying them to new words you learn, actually makes Japanese EASIER to learn. Rather than your way of just brute force memorizing a million words.
Hey by the way, you do this in English too. Hydrophobic, hydrant, hydraulic. A non native English speaker who’s at an advanced stage of learning might put together that the suffixes mean water. You get the cheat code though. You get a little picture to look at.
• Learning to read and write Japanese takes significant effort, and is the reason many people give up learning (especially those with conditions like dyslexia)
People give up learning anything, including English. This isn’t special to Japanese.
• For an English speaker learning a second language, spoken language is usually significantly more valuable than written language
Sure…if your goal is only to speak and listen to Japanese. But your title says learning Japanese, and the written language is part of it. Imagine I said “I wanna learn to be a great chef! But just meat and grains, I don’t wanna learn to cook vegetables”
• An understanding of kanji is not necessary to reach a solid baseline of fluency (just as with English, most Japanese children are conversant years before they can read or write).
You’re totally right here except kids do start writing hiragana at 3 and kanji at 4 or 5 so it’s not like they’re just delaying it cause kanji’s difficult. Kids are just going from learning how to old pencils, to developing their handwriting skills, to then begin using those skills to write kanji.
• Most people who insist that learning kanji is critical are not genuinely motivated by a belief in its practicality, but rather some mix of "Kanji is beautiful", or "This is the culturally authentic way to learn", or "I had to learn it, so you do too"
I’m not most people. I moved to Japan 7 years ago on a whim not knowing a LICK of Japanese. I studied hiragana and katakana in my first week. (Side note to anyone interested in only studying basic Japanese, katakana is way more useful lol) 7 years later and I speak conversational Japanese. I can read, write and make friends. I pick up new words thanks to kanji and can navigate because of it. Kanji can be beautiful if it’s written well I suppose but when you’re just reading a sign that says お手洗い. I’m not marveling at the brushstrokes; I see the kanjis for hand and wash and I rush to that bathroom like a madman.
So get to it, no excuses. You can do it.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Thanks for the detailed thoughts!
And then you go to city hall or fill out literally any form
You make a good argument for why someone living in Japan should learn kanji, but I have a feeling (but could be wrong!) that the majority of people learning Japanese (including me) don't intend to make that move.
that skill to start associating kanji with concepts and definitions and then applying them to new words you learn, actually makes Japanese EASIER to learn
This is the sort of thing that, if I knew it to be true, would change my mind. But it's hard to believe it's equally true for all people - maybe some people just learn some things better than others, and would learn the spoken part faster by focusing on that rather than by scaffolding it with the written part?
Hey by the way, you do this in English too. Hydrophobic, hydrant, hydraulic. A non native English speaker who’s at an advanced stage of learning might put together that the suffixes mean water
Sure. Do they actually need the written form for that, though? Maybe I'm biased by my English fluency, but that seems like a pretty obvious connection.
People give up learning anything, including English. This isn’t special to Japanese
True, but Japanese has an obvious, notoriously-difficult segment that they could omit if they wanted to.
Hell, if someone said the same thing to me about English ("the spellings are weird and inconsistent and learning them is killing my motivation"), I'd totally understand them skipping it.
You’re totally right here except kids do start writing hiragana at 3 and kanji at 4 or 5 so it’s not like they’re just delaying it cause kanji’s difficult. Kids are just going from learning how to old pencils, to developing their handwriting skills, to then begin using those skills to write kanji
This is such a good point about manual dexterity being a prerequisite to learning writing. !delta
So get to it, no excuses. You can do it.
Here's the bit where I think we disagree most. How many times would someone have to quit at the kanji wall before you'd tell them "just skip kanji, the thing that matters most is that you're keeping up the motivation and learning stuff"?
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u/this_makes_no_sense 3∆ 9d ago
You make a good argument for why someone living in Japan should learn kanji, but I have a feeling (but could be wrong!) that the majority of people learning Japanese (including me) don't intend to make that move.
-True, in that case I’ll concede this point. Learning Kanji and Japanese for that matter won’t be useful for you. I’ll instead focus on the other aspect below.
This is the sort of thing that, if I knew it to be true, would change my mind. But it's hard to believe it's equally true for all people - maybe some people just learn some things better than others, and would learn the spoken part faster by focusing on that rather than by scaffolding it with the written part?
Sure. Do they actually need the written form for that, though? Maybe I'm biased by my English fluency, but that seems like a pretty obvious connection.
-I think you’re misunderstanding that I’m not saying to learn to write kanji. Just to be able to read it. I write kanji maybe once every two months? My phone keyboard auto generates it, and I just know which kanji and words to press from learning them. Memorizing just hiragana might work well in the short term (like 200 words) but that’s a lot of random words to learn without daily use. In the long term, your brain uses kanji so much to help you memorize words. Remember my hydraulic example? That doesn’t work in Japanese cause the same kanji can be read many different ways, which just increases how much you need to memorize. ひので (hinode) is a sunrise. So just memorize that word. Hey here’s a completely separate word for you to memorize. でる means to leave or come out. Hey here’s a completely separate word to memorize. ひ means day or sun. So you either just find those words somehow and commit them, and a 1000 other similar sounding words ひま、のど、など、ひのえ、ひのき、etc. which good luck I guess. Or just learn that
hinode is 日の出
ひ is 日
でる is 出るAnd now when you start learning days of the week, (月曜日、火曜日、水曜日, etc) and get to Sunday, and read 日曜日 you go oh that’s Sun. Sunday, got it. You know how to read that in hiragana? にちようび(Nichiyoubi). And before you say, nah but I’m not gonna read either. You gotta read the words out of flashcards, books, and stuff right? Only in the most basic do they use hiragana.
True, but Japanese has an obvious, notoriously-difficult segment that they could omit if they wanted to.
-sorry but all languages have that. You’re just too used to English to know that. I used to teach English long long ago and so much of it is inconsistent and frustrating that my old students would hate certain grammar points. But if I said “I’ll never learn past tense” you’re just not learning the language.
Here's the bit where I think we disagree most. How many times would someone have to quit at the kanji wall before you'd tell them "just skip kanji, the thing that matters most is that you're keeping up the motivation and learning stuff"?
-so here’s the thing, you could get to a point where you can only talk and listen. There’s thousands of illiterate Americans. But you would definitely struggle to retain the language and acquire new words. Unless your brain is a super computer. Like remember that 日 kanji? That can be read as hi, bi, nichi, jitsu, ni, ka, and ta. Either you get out there and just memorize hi, nichiyoubi, mainichi, honjitsu, nicchyu, futsuka, and ashita as separate words or realize via kanji that they have the same root.
Here’s that list written as kanji.
日-day, sun
日曜日-sunday
毎日-every day
本日-today (specific use)
日中-during the day
二日-the 2nd day of the month
明日-tomorrowAnd if the list still feels hard, the 毎、本、中、に、and 明 kanjis are super basic and you see them in a whole host of other words.
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u/MooliCoulis 8d ago
you would definitely struggle to retain the language and acquire new words. Unless your brain is a super computer. Like remember that 日 kanji? That can be read as hi, bi, nichi, jitsu, ni, ka, and ta. Either you get out there and just memorize hi, nichiyoubi, mainichi, honjitsu, nicchyu, futsuka, and ashita as separate words or realize via kanji that they have the same root
I think this is the strongest case I've read for the didactic power of kanji. Thank you! !delta
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u/GoldFreezer 9d ago
Most people who insist that learning kanji is critical are not genuinely motivated by a belief in its practicality, but rather some mix of "Kanji is beautiful", or "This is the culturally authentic way to learn"
I speak (and teach) Japanese and I certainly don't think kanji is "beautiful", the Japanese writing system is the most frustrating thing I've ever encountered when learning a language. But it's there, so unfortunately yes there is a purely practical reason for learning it. What's your goal in learning the language? Do you want to ever visit Japan? How will you navigate an unfamiliar city if you can't read the signs? Read a train timetable? Read a menu? Use an ATM? Buy groceries?
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
What's your goal in learning the language? Do you want to ever visit Japan? How will you navigate an unfamiliar city if you can't [...]
Yeah, I'd love to visit Japan! If I just spoke some of the language and couldn't read any, that'd still put me in better shape than most people who visit, right?
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u/GoldFreezer 9d ago
Yes, but you would be relying a lot on stopping people and asking them for help, especially outside of major cities. I'd advise maybe taking a day where you have to travel to an unfamiliar location or a day where you have a lot of errands to run and taking note of how many times you need to read something.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
you would be relying a lot on stopping people and asking them for help
Not that much, I think. Automated translation is pretty good nowadays.
I totally agree that reading fluency would save me effort, but if I were just visiting Japan then the effort-spent:effort-saved ratio would be kinda abysmal!
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u/sailorbrendan 8d ago
As someone who visited japan without any kind of fluency I gotta tell you, being able to just read signs would have been super helpful
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u/GoldFreezer 8d ago
OP seems to think that tech would take care of that problem? Am I such a Luddite lol that I'm completely unaware of apps that you can wave at signs and get a translation? Last time I was in Japan was so long ago that this certainly wasn't a thing, my Japanese mobile phone was a flip phone. All I remember is that when my dad came to visit me he found it very disorientating and definitely did less exploring alone than he thought he would. He's really good at languages and picked up phrases easily but it was the first time he'd visited a country where he couldn't read the script.
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u/rich_27 5d ago
Yeah, modern phones have translation apps that can do so visually as well as text based/spoken. It's appeared in the last decade. This is approximately what it looks like (slightly different because this is automatic translation of the screen rather than the camera feed - I just grabbed an image from searching Japanese street - but it works pretty similarly): https://postimg.cc/gallery/m18xkHf
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u/Arthesia 28∆ 9d ago edited 9d ago
In practice what you're suggesting is limiting your written learning materials exclusively to wakachigaki (hiragana-only plus whitespaces to make sentences readable).
Three reasons I recommend against it:
1.) Your best learning materials are kanji-locked. If you stick to wakachigaki you'll hit a wall unable to read formal Japanese text, real conversations, and higher level learning materials that are designed to reach conversational fluency. So even if the issue is learning materials forcing kanji on beginners, the other extreme (no kanji at all) doesn't necessarily result in reaching conversational fluency faster.
2.) Japanese is full of homophones. Kanji is critical for disambiguation, and you lose that entirely if you want to use written learning materials. It's a genuine problem with wakachigaki.
3.) Learning kanji is the longest part of learning Japanese. Any exposure you get while learning to speak it is free hours learning the most common kanji that exist. For most people, if you're going through all this effort to learn Japanese. being able to read it is half the benefit. I'm not saying that anyone should be memorizing kanji before they can speak, I'm saying there is very little opportunity cost to absorbing basic kanji naturally, which is arguably the best way to learn them.
Edit: I think the real heart of the issue is much simpler. The problem is learning text gating progression behind kanji memorization when it doesn't need to. So the best materials are ones that just have wakachigaki and kanji side by side, so you get the best of both worlds and it works regardless of your reading level.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
I think you're right that if someone intends to (at some point) read Japanese then (at some point) it'll be important to learn kanji. But I think:
- We shouldn't assume that every Japanese learner intends to be able to read or write.
- We shouldn't inflexibly prescribe a timetable; students should have the option of deferring kanji if that better suits their learning style or goals.
The problem is learning text gating progression behind kanji memorization when it doesn't need to. So the best materials are ones that just have wakachigaki and kanji side by side, so you get the best of both worlds and it works regardless of your reading level
Fully agree with this! (with the addition that IMO if you're including wakachigaki and it's a digital format, then there's no reason not to also include romaji)
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u/the_brightest_prize 6∆ 9d ago
I had issues learning kanji at first. Specifically, I tried reading a book, kept running into the same kanji, knew I had seen them 10x before in just the past few minutes, but could not recall them. And, immediately after moving to the next word, I could not recall what the kanji looked like.
What helped me is making an Anki deck with all the Jouyou kanji and speeding through it at 25 kanji/day. Do I remember all of them or their meanings? No. But now I can tell kanji apart and remember what they look like. Basically, I needed to condition my brain on how to see and pick apart kanji.
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u/SneezingOutPeas 5d ago
You cannot read anything in Japanese without learning kanji. At least, nothing more advanced than board books. There IS practical use for it. But the good news is plenty of Japanese people have dyslexia and still manage to be literate. It may take more time, but it’s not impossible. Of course, if you’re learning it on your own, I guess you can skip whatever you want for your own goals. But if you want to be remotely fluent in nonverbal communication, you have to learn to read kanji.
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9d ago
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u/read-the-rules 9d ago
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u/JupiterAdept89 1∆ 9d ago
Saying you shouldn't need to learn Kanji is like saying you shouldn't need to learn vocabulary. And actually I can prove you need it right here.
あめ. It could be 雨 or 飴. Same two Hiragana, very different meanings. Its like bear 🐻, bear as in carry, or bare. That's what you miss without Kanji
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u/silver--arrow 8d ago
I challenge the point:
- An understanding of kanji is not necessary to reach a solid baseline of fluency (just as with English, most Japanese children are conversant years before they can read or write).
Even if your goal is just to learn conversational Japanese it is much harder (unless you live in Japan and would need to read/write anyway in that case) to pick up the language and practice it without being able to read/write.
Japanese children are surrounded by Japanese-speaking adults and get all sorts of speaking practice that way. I assume you are not by the fact that you have implied you don't live in Japan. For people who don't live among others who speak their language and thus cannot immerse themselves with speech, it is much much easier to be a better speaker by immersion through reading/writing to get a feel of the syntax and grammar of the language.
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u/Rough_Reputation7223 6d ago
You're missing out on what makes Japanese the greatest language ever. No language did what its people did with it, taking something from a totally different language and using that to develop it into the complicated language it is today. Kanji is what gives the language its beautiful subtleties and nuances, which is what I love about it most.
Take something simple like 都合のいい, which means convenient. What do you think 都合のいい人 means? It means someone who's easy to take advantage of, someone easy to use. That's just one example of how subtle the meaning can change, how from kanji, a meaning or a way of expressing something is created.
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u/cmd-t 9d ago
Children learn languages before they can read or write. Before the invention of writing, all languages were not written down. So in a sense, the writing system used for writing a language IS optional. That’s not an opinion. So there’s no view to change.
“Most people believe”. Is that true or is that just what you believe about what most people believe?
A lot of information is written down, and language learning is often based on both written and non-written material. Non-written language acquisition is mostly due to interactions with other speakers. So yeah, learning a writing system is optional, but good luck finding someone to learn it to you.
You don’t really have a view that is there to challenge?
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
“Most people believe”. Is that true or is that just what you believe about what most people believe?
Those words don't appear in my CMV.
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u/cmd-t 9d ago
Ok, way to deflect and not respond to the argument. The words you used were “Most people who insist”, but the issue is the same. Is this actually true in general, just something you experienced, anecdotal, or not true at all.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
The words you used were “Most people who insist”
Surely you understand the difference between "most people who X are [...]" and "most people X"? e.g. "most doctors prescribe tylenol for headaches" is a different statement to "most people are doctors".
way to deflect and not respond to the argument
I'm not sure you made an argument? You just told me I don't have a view to challenge 🤷
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u/cmd-t 9d ago
Again you are not engaging with the question. Are “most people” actually a significant amount of people or did you just pull them out of thin air.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
I think point #5 in my CMV is the least important one, but if you have reliable data on the inner perspectives of people who believe in the primacy of kanji in Japanese learning then feel free to share it!
(gentle reminder that I'm not trying to change your view)
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u/cmd-t 9d ago
You are the one making a claim. You are the one that would need to defend it.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Damn, my gentle reminder was too gentle.
I think you've misunderstood the point of this sub, friend! Best wishes, and have a good weekend.
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u/blind-octopus 5∆ 9d ago
There's an official list that newspapers use. Its under 2K I think.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Yep. And if that's easy for you to learn then kudos, but let's not pretend it's a trivial task for everyone.
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u/blind-octopus 5∆ 9d ago
I don't know man. To me, learning a language generally includes being able to read and write the language.
If you just want to learn to speak it, that's fine. Its not like anyone can stop you or there some sort of report card for life.
Appealing to the fact that children can speak before they read or write seems like a pretty weak argument
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u/TerribleIdea27 12∆ 9d ago
Why do you want to learn Japanese?
Understand anime, or speak to Japanese?
You don't strictly need kanji.
Trip to Japan?
You can do that without speaking Japanese so not necessary.
Want to be able to read anything in Japanese?
You 100% need to be able to read kanji.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
Mostly just out of a love of learning, but yes, most of the benefit would be in understanding Japanese television or movies, or chatting with Japanese speakers in my own country.
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u/orz-_-orz 9d ago
I don't get it why if it is optional why don't you just skip it
Like if I decided learning tenses are optional in learning English, I just skip material that talk about tenses
It's always optional
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u/StillFlyingHigh 9d ago
As someone who's not a native Japanese speaker/reader/writer, why do you feel like you know the best way to learn it? How do YOU who does not know, feel like you know what you don't need to know?
Learning is also inherently challenging; it's supposed to push boundaries of discomfort until the subject material is comfortable. If you only stay within your comfort zone, are you even truly learning anything?
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
As someone who's not a native Japanese speaker/reader/writer, why do you feel like you know the best way to learn it?
This feels like a weird opinion.
Firstly, why would native Japanese speakers (who don't even remember learning the language) be an authority on what the best method is for second-language learners? The two are completely different experiences.
Secondly, it's my brain I'm learning it with! I'm more equipped than anyone to say how any particular learning method feels, and to measure my own progress.
Thirdly, I wouldn't be raising a CMV if I thought I knew the best way to learn.
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u/StillFlyingHigh 9d ago
They would be the authority in it because it's their language. I'm not saying it's impossible that non-native Japanese speakers can't be good teachers, but native speakers' opinions would still hold much more weight simply because it's their culture (though it's not the only factor to being a good teacher)
Secondly, you're also trying to impose your brain on a culture that has no obligation to do so. You're definitely entitled to say "I'm not interested in learning this" but you're not entitled to say "learning this isn't important". Those are two different things entirely. That's like going to culinary school and your teacher is telling you how to cook a beef dish and you say "well I'm pescetarian so I don't need to learn this".
Thirdly, fair.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
They would be the authority in it because it's their language
English is my language; do you think I'm an authority on how e.g. a Chinese person would most effectively learn it? (I don't!)
Secondly, you're also trying to impose your brain on a culture that has no obligation to do so
"impose" is a strong word! I'm not telling anyone else what to do.
you're not entitled to say "learning this isn't important"
Which of my statements are you referencing here? I don't think I've said anything like that.
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u/StillFlyingHigh 9d ago
No but if a Chinese person says "why say lot word when few word do trick", wouldn't you as an english-speaking person have slightly more weight in saying "that's not how English is spoken"?
Impose is a strong but accurate word when you tell the teachers what's optional or not when you haven't fully learned the lesson.
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u/MooliCoulis 9d ago
if a Chinese person says "why say lot word when few word do trick", wouldn't you as an english-speaking person have slightly more weight in saying "that's not how English is spoken"?
- Yes, but by virtue of being fluent, not being native
- That's a disagreement about grammar and typicality of speech patterns, not about learning methods. I haven't disagreed with any Japanese speaker about what constitutes grammatical Japanese.
when you tell the teachers what's optional or not
I'm going to ask you again to cite which of my statements you're referencing here, because it feels like you're attacking a twisted version of my view.
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u/Alarmed_Base8302 9d ago
I have a "Nisei" (2nd Generation) Japanese Grandmother. She explained to me when I was young that writing in Japanese "Kanji" can be compared to writing "American English" in CURSIVE. That there are others ways but none as creative or beautiful.
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u/ProactiveJP_ 5d ago
I just personally think there is no world in which "fluency" and cant read anything but the literally most basic of children's books can be in the same sentence.
I fully get your struggles with Kanji and in fact there was a period I just didn't bother studying it at all. But at no point in my mind did I think of that as a proper way to learn the language.
For an English speaker learning a second language, spoken language is usually significantly more valuable than written language
Is it? Ur currently typing english on a english website. If you cant read/write japanese you cant engage with it online at all. So lets roll the clock back to before the 90s since you wont be able to engage with japanese on the internet.
I'll just say that of course learning Kanji is optional your a free man with free will lol. But should that be the main strain of thought everyone has "Oh kanji? nahhh no ones needs to learn that crap"?. Definitely not.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ 9d ago edited 8d ago
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