Re: I Want to Learn Kanji First. Is this Foolish?
From: Travers Naran (tnaran_at_no-more-virii-please.direct.ca)
Date: 02/06/05
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Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 02:15:58 GMT
Chive wrote:
>
> 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.
Studying kanji will cure you of that. :-)
> 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.
Yes and no. Japanese is first and foremost a language spoken and listened
to by millions of people. The written language merely tries to play
catch-up. IMHO, when approaching new material, learn to speak it before
writing it. But you can do this in parallel.
> 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?
They can't at the beginning. The number of words you'll be learning is
enormous and memorizing the readings can be quite onerous at the beginning.
That's why 1st year is just getting used to the basic language and kanas.
After that, it's the fire hose of kanji.
Now having said that, try the middle ground of the 4 pillars approach. For
each "step" or chapter, give yourself these simple goals:
- Speak 1 new grammatical form
- Learn 10-20 new words
- Learn 3-10 kanji (depending on your own ability)
- Learn to listen to the language you've just learned.
So give yourself "chunks" of the language to learn and learn to speak,
write, read and listen said chunk.
Japanese for Busy People is ideal for this because the book comes with a CD
with all the dialog spoken at almost normal speeds. The listening
exercises are suited for exactly what you've just learned.
I highly recommend the Basic Kanji Books. It teaches you to see the
patterns in kanji, and is very good at making you aware of kanji radicals
which are critical for looking things up in a jisho.
My Japanese class didn't want to learn kanji (for the most part), but our
teacher was kind enough to help the 2-3 of us who did want to study it.
Each week, we learned new kanji we could use instantly with the material we
were learning in class. It all worked together.
But learn to speak the language because it makes learning to read it SOOOO
much easier. I also recommend reading manga for early reading practise
(#@$! you, Charles, where ever you are). I asked a question earlier about
building up to reading novels, and based on the answers then, you might
want to try this:
manga -> newspaper articles -> short stories -> novels
- Next message: Pieter Mioch: "Re: I Want to Learn Kanji First. Is this Foolish?"
- Previous message: Sceadu: "Re: I Want to Learn Kanji First. Is this Foolish?"
- In reply to: Chive: "I Want to Learn Kanji First. Is this Foolish?"
- Next in thread: Pieter Mioch: "Re: I Want to Learn Kanji First. Is this Foolish?"
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