Re: I Want to Learn Kanji First. Is this Foolish?

From: Sceadu (aeonarcanum_at_NOhotSPAMmail.com)
Date: 02/06/05 

Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 20:15:19 -0600

"Chive" <sirchive@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:2qoa019h4dm0ssdn6652g0bv2pmc078h9b@4ax.com...
> Hello. I just discovered this newsgroup today.
>
> I've been studying Japanese on my own for about six months. I'm fifty
> years old and about a year ago I suddenly realised how much I
> regretted that I had never become fluent in a second language. Well,
> never too late. So I spent a few months trying a few languages and
> finally settled on Japanese.
>
> In my own mind I'm on a ten year plan. In ten years I'd like to be
> able to read a newspaper or a popular novel in Japanese as well as
> carry on a conversation. I've always been fond of written language and
> I find that I'm fascinated by Kanji.
>
> So here's my question. Is it reasonable to focus on written Japanese
> as a beginner? Can I follow a Kanji First rather than a Kanji last
> plan? Or is there some pitfall to this idea that I lack the experience
> to see.
>
> I have a dozen or more books on learning Japanese and most of them
> take a conversation approach to learning. You start out with hiragana
> and katakana and only begin to gradually work in some kanji after you
> have progressed a bit. But there's something about long strings of
> hiragana that just seems unnatural to me and hard to decipher. In
> contrast a sentence written with Kanji has a logic to it - the Kanji
> provide the base meanings and the kana flesh things out.
>
> I really don't understand why a beginners book can't start out on
> lesson one with Kanji. Is it just assumed that foreign learners can't
> cope with Kanji?
>
> Has anybody else tried learning Japanese with a Kanji-centric approach
> from the beginning? Are there any books that teach Japanese with a
> written Kanji oriented appoach rather than a breezy conversational
> kana method?

(For studying kanji alone, a good book would be Hadamitzky & Spahn's "Kanji
& Kana." There are also workbook editions.)

I think the ideal would be to learn a few days worth of language basics to
get your bearings, and then ASAP memorize all the kana. The benefit of
this is that you can start losing your Roomaji training wheels right away,
plus you'll become familiar with all the sounds in Japanese. After that,
start introducing the kanji in your lessons as you learn their respective
words (I think a decent textbook would do this anyway). So the answer to
your first question from my perspective is, not kanji first or kanji last,
but kanji at the same time throughout, starting as soon as you can handle
it (i.e. after you have a firm grasp of kana, pronuncation, and basic
grammar).

On a side note, I started off with a Berlitz-esque approach of conversation
but didn't get far. I got frustrated because, simply put, Japanese has a
lot of nuanced elements that need to be explained with the cultural
context--you can't just absorb it from example sentences like French or
German. So I tried again from the beginning, starting with kana & grammar,
and had much greater success.

As for kanji, you're going to have to learn them all eventually, so it's
better to at least get a taste of what each kanji looks like as you come
upon its Roomaji equivalent in your texts. In addition, you'll find the
kanji works like a built-in mnemonic, such as when a single character can
be used in a standalone or compound manner, or even several different
pronunciations and nuances for standalone and compound. The pronuncations
are different but the meanings are usually the same or similar, so being
able to link them to the same kanji makes a lightbulb go on. The problem
you might find is that each kanji has so many tidbits to pick up--different
readings, meanings, where the okurigana begin, the actual strokes, and
especially the compounds it's used in--that "browsing" kanji sort of
mushrooms your work exponentially. That's why it's good to try a workbook
approach that takes you through the entire Jouyou set in a logical linear
sequence.

About parsing strings of kana, it is awkward. That's one of the big
reasons why I think the (fringe?) idea of abolishing kanji is a bad
idea--there are too many homonyms in Japanese to make reading it
phonetically simple (Listening comprehension is hard enough for me already,
even with context and accent). It does get easier when your vocabulary
grows, but of course by then you'll be reading stuff with kanji thrown in
anyway. Maybe you can find some children's furigana readers for practice
if you hate the kana readers. I heard a few popular novels were printed
with furigana as well, or you could always try kids' comics, although if
you take that route you shouldn't try to imitate their speech patterns.
(On second thought, you might want to forget the comics altogether... it's
kind of a minefield.)

As for your last two questions: I think you definitely have to drill and
practice the kanji in an ordered manner like Japanese schoolchildren do if
you don't want a spotty and haphazard vocabulary (like mine). In spite of
this, I find I'm able to read a lot of stuff I don't expect to be able to
read after such a lousy method for five years, so I think your 10-year goal
is definitely possible if you keep up the regimen. Lastly, the integrated
sort of book you're looking for might be "Reading Japanese" by Eleanor Harz
Jorden [http://tinyurl.com/49qzs] (which is supposed to go with her
Beginning Japanese series that I haven't tried). It introduces several
kanji in each chapter and then makes you read (many) samples using them.
Unfortunately, it only covers 425 kanji and uses the ARS (Annoying
Romanization Scheme) where "ji" is "zi," "tsu" is "tu," etc.

Anway, you should probably get a second opinion from one of the people on
this board who has actually succeeded in memorizing all the kanji.
Sceadu

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