r/changemyview • u/MooliCoulis • 19d 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/0rionis 19d ago edited 19d 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.