Hey, i am a beginner to the whole learning kanji experience, and i just wanna know if the meaning of the different kanji has any real world value, or is it mostly so we have something to remember the kanji by? Because i get that sometimes the meaning of vocabulary is very much the same as the combined kanji that make up the vocabulary, but at other times it has no correlation at all and i find that very confusing.
Thank you!
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Strictly speaking you could go without learning the meanings and just learn the definition of each vocabulary, as those are what actually make up the language. However, learning the meanings is still very beneficial. Most of the time the vocabulary meaning will be related to the kanji meanings. It also helps when you encounter a word you donât know yet, often youâll be able to infer a general meaning from the kanji used.
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This!
If you donât know the meaning of kanji, you wonât be able to guestimate the translation of unknown words. Youâll be forced to look up every new vocab you encounter.
WK will teach you the most common readings, so that together with the meaning, is a huge help when reading.
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I consider the meaning of kanji more like the concepts you would associate the kanji with, rather than a literal meaning. Of course, for learning, an initial meaning of a kanji is super useful, especially when you just start or just get to know the kanji.
Overall I notice that the more familiar a kanji becomes, the more it become a thing in and of itself. Much like when I learnt English as a new language, I used to link the English words to the Dutch I natively speak. After a while, you donât need the link between the two anymore and the English words are just that; English words.
Iâm still a beginner in Japanese, but this is a trend Iâm seeing in Japanese as well. I donât translate easier Japanese texts anymore. I just âknowâ what it says. (there is an obvious risk here, thoughâŚ)
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The only real time there is no correlation between kanji meaning and vocab meaning is ateji, which is when kanji are used for their sound and nothing else. Like in the word ĺŻżĺ¸ (sushi). Those kanji were only chosen because they can make the sounds ă and ă, not for what they mean.
But ateji are a minority of all words.
In other cases, there is always some meaning that is relevant. You might just be noticing that sometimes kanji have multiple meanings, so it might not be the meaning that was initially taught.
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Well, eh. Anyone can just associate a kanji with words theyâve previously seen it in and get the same exact benefit so learning the meaning really only provides this advantage for the very first word you learn that uses that kanji.
Though if you only know the word and not the meanings of the individual kanji, it can sometimes be hard to tell what the actual meanings of the component kanji are supposed to be, in some cases. That would make it harder to use that first word to help with another word.
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In some cases, perhaps, but I think we all can agree this not only applies to a minority of kanji, but this issue is further shrunk by just learning words in order of usefulness generally too. You have to consider that usually when you are seeing a kanji for the first time, its got a very high probability to be in a very basic word. The first time someone sees č is most likely going to be in čă and not čéŚ. ĺŁ should be learned before äşşĺŁ, for example, so that would prevent you from getting confused about ĺŁ in the first place.
Regardless, I think its doing everyone a disservice to claim that being able to infer meanings of words is somehow a special advantage you get from learning the english meanings someone made up. Past the first word for a vast majority of stuff you come across, people who didnt learn the meanings arenât going to be at any notable advantage. Can you find a handful of cases where they might have one? Sure. But donât forget to weigh that against the time youâre taking to study the meaning in the first place.
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Japanese meanings are fine as well⌠I can see either being helpful as long as you understand what nuance theyâre pointing at. I donât see English being a special advantage or disadvantage, for any given kanji meaning. If you already know some Japanese, you can try learning the Japanese meaning instead or translate it yourself.
The idea that an English meaning is âmade upâ doesnât really sit well with me, because I mean, at the core thereâs some concept being expressed, no matter what language you use. (and it was originally ancient Chinese)
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Your whole post seems to be focused on the small part of
english meanings someone made up
but not only is that irrelevant to the point I was trying to make, but I think youre reading too much into it. Iâm literally just saying that some other person decided this english word fits this kanji. I dont think anyone here would disagree with that. My whole post was about why that word isnt something you have to explicitly study. I wouldnt study the japanese word for tat kanji either
And I usually do. Obviously itâs possible to do it without explicitly studying kanji meanings as well. I still feel like saying âthey donât matterâ would be wrong, so Iâm on the side of âthey matter.â Theyâre there and being important behind the scenes even if someone doesnât dig into them.
I guess weâre just answering differerent questions. I was not thinking of this as âdoes studying kanji meanings matterâ and the answer to that question might be ânoâ for some people.
I didnt read the other posts so I donât know if youâre referring to what someone else said, but I dont believe I ever said they donât matter.
The concept behind a kanji is important for practical reasons, but as far as those practical uses go youâll be able to get all you need to know from the words the kanji is used in.
What doesnât matter is what english word you use to express it. Of all 3000 something kanji Ive studied, I could probably tell you, with confidence, the english meaning of like 30 of them. In my head, though, I have a concept associated with just about every single one of them. Im not here arguing that associating a concept with a kanji isnt important for learning vocab, Im here telling you you donât need to explicitly study some english word to do it.
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There have been more than a few times that I have been able to infer the meaning of a word when reading manga by the individual meanings of one or both kanji.
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Well, I mean, the question of the thread was, as far as I could tell, âis there value in studying kanji meaningsâ. I think there is, and itâs not my place to say what language someone should use if theyâre interested in them, as long as they make sure they understand what the concept is. Even in Japanese, you have to be careful about that, so itâs not unique to English meanings.
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I wouldnât disagree, but going back to my previous post I mentioned you have to weigh that against the time you are putting in if you are going to consider it from an efficiency standpoint. I think for practical purposes, the concept you are able to extract from the vocab words (and again, usually it only takes one honestly) is good enough for making inferences.
Obviously Iâm going to be in the minority here since basically everyone on this site is learning kanji meanings and people are gonna probably over value their importance. But regardless, some people (not you) make the claim that word meaning inference is some advantage specific to explicitly studying the meaning and I mean thats just completely incorrect. I just want to point out how apart from first encounters, you can almost always do it with relatively the same ease anyways.
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I think, as others have said, it definitely can have value to assign meaning to the kanji alone as it helps you when trying to figure out the meaning of new words / compounds containing that kanji as you come across them.
Itâs also useful to know the meanings of kanji when you see them as part of another kanji. For example, it is easier to remember that ć means âfeeling / emotionâ when you can break it into ć (become) on top and ĺż (heart) on the bottom. For some reason WK breaks the top part down into further components (maybe because the shape is slightly different from ć?), whereas ć¸ loses the ĺż but WK still calls the right part ć. So, remembering the meanings of kanji can help with forming your own mnemonics for more complicated kanji as well.
However, if thereâs a kanji that has many possible meanings or nuances to it, I also wouldnât stress out if you mess up when trying to remember the WaniKani primary meanings, especially if you are getting the vocabulary reviews containing that kanji correct.
To give an example, I still have not burned ĺŽ, a kanji from WK level 6 and often one of the first taught in any beginner-level Japanese course, not because I donât know what it means but because when I see it my first thought is ĺŽĺż (relief) or ĺŽĺ ¨ (peaceful) or ĺŽĺŽ (stable) which make me think âpeaceâ and not ĺŽă (cheap) or ĺŽćĽ˝ (comfort, ease). Since, after checking other dictionaries, it seems that âpeacefulâ is also a perfectly fine meaning for this kanji, I finally just added it as a user synonym. I wouldnât do that if the meaning I kept thinking of wasnât correct, but in this case it was.
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