Are radicals really any use?

For what it’s worth, I agree with @kikichichi that Japanese really ought to be taught using plain form first…

I’ve been told it’s more annoying to hear beginners stumbling around (perceived to be) trying to be overly polite when just normal casual Japanese will do. The more fluent you become, the more you are expected to know the proper way/time to say things but for beginners, ease is more important.

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This is true. But you’re leaving out the opposite case, where adults talking in plain form to strangers (because they are beginners) can sound extremely impertinent, even rude. I wouldn’t suggest talking to strangers in Japan without learning basic desu/masu forms.

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I like you’re mindset about doing what’s fun and working for you to keep yourself motivated.

I would give the advice to integrate grammar sooner rather than later, as it will be the glue that will start putting all the little pieces together. Fluency will certainly require it. I think it will also make more sense of the things you’re already hearing/seeing. Sometimes you have to do the “boring” stuff to achieve the next level of mastery.

As for customization, well, WK works because it follows a method, and that method requires a certain amount of order. If that method doesn’t work for some people, that’s okay. Customization via Anki is a great idea. And learning kanji as you learn new words is a valid way to do it. I struggled with that method, which is why I use WK, but obviously people will have different experiences. All the apps and internet resources around are significantly harder to customize than a classroom curriculum, simply because they cater to exponentially more people. They’re so convenient but can also be frustrating in that sense. I agree that you unfortunately won’t see much change in that area.

Interestingly, I actually find polite form to be way less complex - it’s so much easier to conjugate for example! It feels less stressful to me. Then again, I think I tend to talk a bit more politely to people in English until I really get to know them.

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Personally, the fact that the ます forms have more regular pitch accent patterns gives me more confidence when I can’t remember if a short verb starts high and goes low or the opposite.

This doesn’t mean I misuse polite language to escape pitch accent concerns, but when I’m speaking polite Japanese it feels nice to have that comfort level.

I need to go back and drill on the most common several hundred verbs’ pitch accents.

If a Japanese person took offence to a beginner foreigner using plain form then that’s their problem…under normal conditions, plain form is not considered impertinent or rude and definitely not “extremely”.

Using incorrect verb modifiers however, that is a different story (-ro, -te)…those are dangerous.

People get overly hung-up on politeness and can pretty much be ignored as a beginner…you will win points if you do however BUT will also annoy people in casual situations (friends).

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Okay, sure if you remove the rudest possible parts of plain language then yes, plain language isn’t as rude.

I do agree that people worry about it too much, since for an adult, polite language (丁寧語) is the absolute baseline for speaking in a public setting, and would be insufficient on its own for any native. Most learners never move past that.

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I studied Japanese for three years in college and really neglected kanji. Coming back to studying, I decided I had to start with kanji. The beast must die. The radical system isn’t perfect, and different sites use different mnemonics, or sometimes even what the radical is suppose to be (kanjidamage.com for example). But they will help as time goes on. For example: and 約, and 妁. You’ll also need to know them to use a japanese dictionary.

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I agree with you in the main here, and especially with your point that using too polite language when it’s not called for will make you seem stiff and unfriendly.

I guess what I’m trying to say about using intimate language with strangers is that because they are strangers, they have no way of knowing how much a beginner you are, so umbrage might indeed be taken. Yes, allowances are made for foreigners, but it isn’t that much more work to use simple signs of respect (desu/masu) when interacting with people you don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just more worried about appearing rude that you are?

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No, I wouldn’t want to appear rude to them, any more than II would like to appear condescending maybe when being too formal (I sort of view it as posh or upper class, nose in the air type thing). But I’m not speaking it except with my own son, I am only reading it and listening to it. If I was going to be interacting with Japanese people directly I certainly would make every effort to learn the correct form of speaking with them. Since I am not though, that is very low on my list of priorities.

From my experience in very rural settings, nobody really cares at all as they are just happy to see you try and communicate with them…learn a bit of the local dialect (which might be “rude” anywhere else) and you have friends for life…maybe big cities are different?

"signs of respect "
Totally disagree here…Japanese people in normal settings are not thinking about this just as you would not think to chastise a tourist for not calling your sir or madam when asking directions to the nearest toilet.

When in Rome, sure, but always remember you are not Roman and not expected to be Roman…

That makes sense. I learned the plain form first, because my wife is Japanese and it wouldn’t be good to use the “polite” form with her. One small correction though for this part:

Using the polite form in a casual situation in Japanese wouldn’t be seen as condescending, posh, or upper class. It would be seen as stiff and distant. I just want to make sure you understand that this isn’t remotely a class thing. It’s a situational thing, much like tu/vous in French.

I’m not talking about using keigo. Just normal polite speech, equivalent to, “Excuse me. Where is the washroom?” I wouldn’t chastise them, but I might feel taken aback if someone said, “Hey buddy, where’s the john?” even if (especially if?) they did have a strong accent. (I know… not a perfect example, but we don’t need to switch registers in English as much as one does in Japanese.)

the very first kanji probably don’t need any mnemonics. they’re simple and won’t get a lot worse for quite a while. you will then need these kanji plus something when the more complex characters start to pop up. then it’s not only stuff like 上、金、星 anymore, but harder to memorize stuff, like 曜、続、練 and it will get increasingly difficult to tell them apart.
you still won’t need the wk radicals. but some sort of analysis is useful. i’m assigning katakana to parts that look like them, and use existing kanji for their parts, so 様 is a tree, a sheep and water. 曜 has 2 ヨ on top of the bird and a sun/day on the left - that’s the extent of my memory aids. if i do need something todiscriminate 通、道、進、逃、運、連、追 and so on, i make short versions like “sheep on the road”.
and then the vocab becomes available, and it’s “送 like in 送る”.

i’d say it’s all a matter of taste.

It’s funny how beginners (granted I’m a noob myself) are normally the ones who think radicals aren’t useful, then you start running into difficult kanji like 難しい (heh) and you realize there’s no reasonable way to learn them without them.

Also, all this time ducking around in the forums could’ve been used to learn all the radicals of the first levels :wink:

I know I’m super late to this party, but I figure I’ll throw my 2 cents in anyway for any other people new to Japanese who decide to read this.

Radicals (and thinking in components in general) are insanely useful. Take this kanji for example:
image
Once you understand how to, this is how many parts it should be broken down into:
image
Just 2. This makes remembering how to put this kanji together even simpler than remembering 4 parts, and MUCH simpler than remembering 13 strokes.

You’re working from the bottom up when you start WaniKani. Learning the radicals and kanji like this will help you to more easily piece together more complicated kanji later on, and then those more complicated kanji are once again used inside even more complicated kanji, but it’s much easier to remember them as collective wholes rather than saying, “I don’t need radicals,” and then trying to remember every little piece (or even worse, [gulp] stroke [shudder]).

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From what I’ve heard it’s not a respect thing, as you say they know we are learning the language. It just sounds weird to them and not a natural way to talk. So to me it seems better to learn a simpler version first that in many situations is more natural, than a more difficult one that isn’t. If the teacher or system actually reminds the student at each point which version they are teaching, which they should since it’s so important to the language, there shouldn’t be any issues using the wrong one?

I was just comparing it to our culture and how it feels to me, I understand the analogy isn’t that accurate.
I do have a question about class however since you mention it. Being formal doesn’t just work one way, it works both. So while they are ultra polite to those of much higher station it means they can be, and the assumption seems to be, that they are, ultra rude to those well below their station. It does seem like a class system to me. And I’m not saying we’re any different, just that it may be more automatic in Japanese to speak down to the unemployed or homeless etc. to use an extreme example. And just like they feel it’s unnatural for us to be speaking formally to them in casual settings it’s unnatural for them to speak casually with someone below their station- with a lower status job or whatever.
As I said this is a question, not an assumption on my part, it’s just something I would like to understand more about them.

lol that would sound fine to me. :stuck_out_tongue: I love that the Japanese are so polite as a rule but I don’t expect it here from locals so why should I expect it from those coming here learning our language? If they took the time to learn the local lingo that’s just awesome.

That’s exactly my approach. I’ve put katakana and kanji names on all the radicals that basically are that symbol or close enough to and found names for others. There’s only one or two that I’ve left as is because I’ve found no better reference (for me) to remember.

As for the more complex kanji, I am exposing myself to those every day. My clocks/calendars on my laptops are now in Japanese and I’ve been marking days on my calendar in Japanese and writing a diary with the days marked, soon with the time of day too now I’m learning that. I started off just using the kana for them but now I just use the kanji and have no trouble reading them.

I’m only responding to my posts, I haven’t read much else. And it’s not like I have reviews waiting- they are hours in between. :stuck_out_tongue: Also since I already knew over 90% of the radical symbols once I put the names to them I knew them by the radical reviews just went by in a blur.

For me recognising kanji isn’t as big an issue as remembering their Japanese names. I was able to recognise most of the 160 kanji from the second grade in under a week, going from zero. But that’s only by their english translation, learning their ON and KUN was taking a lot longer so I was looking for other ways to do it.

In this example I would recognise the two kanji I already know for sun and sword and the rest is easy. But even others that don’t have immediately recognisable symbols, if it’s a word I really want to learn I will just learn the symbol as it is. I don’t see them as dozens of lines I see them as a whole and that’s what works for me.

This made me think of the story someone told (probably in one of the many topics where people recount their embarrassing mistakes) where someone wanted to try to use more words so as not to sound repetitive, so instead of ごはん for “meal” they started saying めし. Finally the grandmother of the Japanese family they were with snapped and went on about how it was a rude way to talk.

You won’t find anything in a typical English-Japanese dictionary that tells you you’re going to make a grandma flip out if you keep saying めし.

I’ve heard of families where the girls are scolded if they say うまい instead of おいしい.

There was also that topic yesterday about the school superintendent who resigned after using the word お前 when talking to the father of a boy who died by suicide. Not really the same, since he’s native, but it shows that politeness is a topic with potentially grave consequences.

There are a lot of generalizations in this topic about what Japanese people think about politeness. I don’t think you can really say for sure what any given Japanese person on the street is going to think about your casual language.

Plus, the more natural your Japanese sounds, the less leeway you’ll be afforded. It’s likely that it will be assumed that the better your sentence structure and pronunciation are, the more you know about politeness. So if you get proficient in casual Japanese, it will be assumed that you are also proficient in polite Japanese but are trying to make some kind of point, if it would have been appropriate to use it.

EDIT: Thesaurus entries that shed light on the pitfalls of うまい and めし

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Where exactly is that well of knowledge coming from that you feel confident to lecture people living in Japan how it is really done? Is this some kind of 外-splaining?

This definitely is pretty hardcore, it’s going out of your way to be impolite.

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Nope. As I said, it really isn’t a class thing. I would expect most middle class Japanese would use the polite form with a homeless person just as they would with any stranger on the street.

Where you do see the non-mutual polite/plain form conversations you were referring to would be for example where your boss at work uses plain form with you but you use polite form back at her. Or you are friends (but maybe not yet close friends) with someone who is a year or two younger than you. He uses polite form to you, but you respond in plain form.

This kind of social inequality is quite different from what we are used to in North America and a little hard for me to get used to. But that’s the way the Japanese language works. And unlike the kind of class-based condescension you are imagining, it’s one where the roles are rather fluid. (e.g. You might be the older friend in one relationship but the younger in another.)

And interestingly since you mentioned that you want to use plain form when conversing with your son, that does appear to be the rule these days. But a few generations ago (and perhaps still in some more traditional families), children were expected to use the polite form with their parents.

My girlfriend’s mom still uses light keigo when talking to me. It’s not full blown, but things like ご家族 when talking about my family and generally using 丁寧語. My girlfriend commented on it to her. Personally, I don’t really care either way, and I’m not too worried that it means she feels distant or anything.