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Learning Japanese
iindigo:
--- Quote from: jamienumber9 on May 01, 2009, 11:37:53 AM ---And I argue that if you don't know the reading of the kanji it's a waste of time, because you can't freaking read. Ok, so you learn a heap of kanji, then you have to go back through and learn the readings? It seems more difficult to me than learning the whole kanji the first time.
--- End quote ---
Not necessarily. At first, you won't be able to audibly read, but you can look at Japanese text and have a pretty good idea of what it's saying, even if you can't pronounce it (I've done this myself a number of times). It's a starting point.
Look at it this way: learning the strokes of kanji first and the reading afterwards allows you to more efficiently allocate effort to both tasks instead of fumbling around trying to do both at once and wasting energy. After you learn the kanji, just mentally hook up the kanji to their readings through sentence SRS reps. Doesn't sound that difficult to me.
Aneroph:
--- Quote from: iindigo on May 01, 2009, 11:50:31 AM ---
--- Quote from: jamienumber9 on May 01, 2009, 11:37:53 AM ---And I argue that if you don't know the reading of the kanji it's a waste of time, because you can't freaking read. Ok, so you learn a heap of kanji, then you have to go back through and learn the readings? It seems more difficult to me than learning the whole kanji the first time.
--- End quote ---
Not necessarily. At first, you won't be able to audibly read, but you can look at Japanese text and have a pretty good idea of what it's saying, even if you can't pronounce it (I've done this myself a number of times). It's a starting point.
Look at it this way: learning the strokes of kanji first and the reading afterwards allows you to more efficiently allocate effort to both tasks instead of fumbling around trying to do both at once and wasting energy. After you learn the kanji, just mentally hook up the kanji to their readings through sentence SRS reps. Doesn't sound that difficult to me.
--- End quote ---
But you realize that a lot of Japanese things come with Furigana now to help foreigners and children to read. Seems like learning the Hiragana/Katakana is pretty improtant. I only know about 150 kanji, but I know a butt load of vocab and grammatical rules. I buy manga magazines with Furigana in them and can read most of it just fine having not learned most of the kanji. It also seems a little weird that he makes you learn so many kanji when there are only lik 1980 or so Jouyo kanji.
iindigo:
--- Quote from: anerph on May 01, 2009, 03:36:26 PM ---
--- Quote from: iindigo on May 01, 2009, 11:50:31 AM ---
--- Quote from: jamienumber9 on May 01, 2009, 11:37:53 AM ---And I argue that if you don't know the reading of the kanji it's a waste of time, because you can't freaking read. Ok, so you learn a heap of kanji, then you have to go back through and learn the readings? It seems more difficult to me than learning the whole kanji the first time.
--- End quote ---
Not necessarily. At first, you won't be able to audibly read, but you can look at Japanese text and have a pretty good idea of what it's saying, even if you can't pronounce it (I've done this myself a number of times). It's a starting point.
Look at it this way: learning the strokes of kanji first and the reading afterwards allows you to more efficiently allocate effort to both tasks instead of fumbling around trying to do both at once and wasting energy. After you learn the kanji, just mentally hook up the kanji to their readings through sentence SRS reps. Doesn't sound that difficult to me.
--- End quote ---
But you realize that a lot of Japanese things come with Furigana now to help foreigners and children to read. Seems like learning the Hiragana/Katakana is pretty improtant. I only know about 150 kanji, but I know a butt load of vocab and grammatical rules. I buy manga magazines with Furigana in them and can read most of it just fine having not learned most of the kanji. It also seems a little weird that he makes you learn so many kanji when there are only lik 1980 or so Jouyo kanji.
--- End quote ---
Hirigana and Katakana are positioned after Kanji so the student realizes how trivial they are compared to Kanji.
And "so many kanji"? Where are you getting that? If you go with the Heisig method, you learn the 2000 kanji required to be considered literate. Any learned thereafter are picked up from SRSing sentences and aren't really part of what he prescribes since you are the one that picked out the sentences to use.
Aneroph:
--- Quote from: iindigo on May 01, 2009, 08:18:34 PM ---
--- Quote from: anerph on May 01, 2009, 03:36:26 PM ---
--- Quote from: iindigo on May 01, 2009, 11:50:31 AM ---
--- Quote from: jamienumber9 on May 01, 2009, 11:37:53 AM ---And I argue that if you don't know the reading of the kanji it's a waste of time, because you can't freaking read. Ok, so you learn a heap of kanji, then you have to go back through and learn the readings? It seems more difficult to me than learning the whole kanji the first time.
--- End quote ---
Not necessarily. At first, you won't be able to audibly read, but you can look at Japanese text and have a pretty good idea of what it's saying, even if you can't pronounce it (I've done this myself a number of times). It's a starting point.
Look at it this way: learning the strokes of kanji first and the reading afterwards allows you to more efficiently allocate effort to both tasks instead of fumbling around trying to do both at once and wasting energy. After you learn the kanji, just mentally hook up the kanji to their readings through sentence SRS reps. Doesn't sound that difficult to me.
--- End quote ---
But you realize that a lot of Japanese things come with Furigana now to help foreigners and children to read. Seems like learning the Hiragana/Katakana is pretty improtant. I only know about 150 kanji, but I know a butt load of vocab and grammatical rules. I buy manga magazines with Furigana in them and can read most of it just fine having not learned most of the kanji. It also seems a little weird that he makes you learn so many kanji when there are only lik 1980 or so Jouyo kanji.
--- End quote ---
Hirigana and Katakana are positioned after Kanji so the student realizes how trivial they are compared to Kanji.
And "so many kanji"? Where are you getting that? If you go with the Heisig method, you learn the 2000 kanji required to be considered literate. Any learned thereafter are picked up from SRSing sentences and aren't really part of what he prescribes since you are the one that picked out the sentences to use.
--- End quote ---
Whoops, I was looking at the chinese kanji learning on his chart. Still, learning 3000 is a bit much unless you plan on going to China and learning some Chinese. The 2000 is all they are "allowed" to use in any media, and if they use anything not in those 2000 kanji, they have to add the Furigana to it.
Here is the website that khatsumoto linked to http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=691&p=6 I thought it was a good read.
Tatsujin:
--- Quote from: iindigo on May 01, 2009, 11:15:56 AM ---
--- Quote from: jamienumber9 on May 01, 2009, 06:13:05 AM ---...but not to bother with writing it...
--- End quote ---
That's not on the site anywhere. He says not to learning the readings yet, but writing is supposed to happen with the SRS repetitions. The writing that he criticized as bad was writing each character over and over thousands of times in a mindless school style with no story tied to it. His point is that muscle memory alone is much harder to train to remember characters than your mind is.
Reading comprehension FTW.
--- End quote ---
There are different types of people that learn differently. Everyone learns different. Some people are visual and can comprehend when you show them pictures and examples of pictures. Some people need to write, touch or feel it to learn it. Some people need details or extra information or guides and some people can learn from 1st or 2nd encounter (whom you call 'perfect' memory).
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