I’ve noticed that sentence scariness started to flip

Alright so the more and more Kanji I learn, I notice that instead of getting scared of lots of kanji in a sentence like a beginner does, I actually get a bit queasy when a sentence is almost all hiragana!
Anyone else experiencing this or know how to help with this? Thanks lol! :sweat_smile:

30 Likes

I know exactly what you mean~~~ It just looks like gibberish at first glance! I think the best thing is just to keep improving vocab/grammar. The more patterns we can recognize, the easier things are to parse.

And, hopefully, the more you learn, the more you’ll be seeking out reading material that is filled with nice juicy kanji to keep things tidy, anyway.

7 Likes

I bought a children’s book awhile back ago and had this issue when reading it. Having no kanji in just sitting there trying to pronounce things out trying to understand it.
Not sure how helpful reading only kana stuff though is, but if you do I think just need to pronounce them out and try to recall the words

4 Likes

Sometimes I don’t understand a word in conversation but when they write it down I can read it xD

3 Likes

This is actually a great thing to do! It might seem hard at first, but keep at it!

By reading stories with more kana, it forces you to recall the word based on its pronunciation (and context), rather than its kanji alone. For example, hearing/reading じむしょ as compared to reading 事務所. You can’t have a conversation with someone and constantly ask them to write the kanji for the words they just said - you need to be able to grasp the meaning aurally. :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, keep in mind that there are words with kanji that are/can be written in hiragana or katakana, for tone, emphasis, or sheer convenience.

6 Likes

I’d actually say that reading じむしょ and hearing it are different skills, though related. I can hear じむしょ and read 事務所 just fine, but reading じむしょ will nevertheless cause me to stumble just because I don’t normally ‘sound out’ words I’m familiar with - I just recognize them.
I’d compare it to having to read English written phonetically, or just badly misspelled. You can do it, but you’re not used to it, so it’s rough and slower.

4 Likes

Oh yes. I watch Japanese on YouTube with Japanese subtitles turned on, when available.

2 Likes

The automatically generated ones are awful, though. And not many Japanese YTers go to the trouble of subtitling in Japanese. Or do you only watch the educational channels?

It’s why I hate trying to read Japanese children’s books. For some bizarre reason the Japanese seem to have mostly collectively decided to write books for very young children in mostly kana, which makes it surprisingly hard to parse and understand for someone learning Japanese as a second language. I get that small kids aren’t going to be able to understand many kanji… but that’s why furigana exist. It’s kind of a sore spot for me, lol.

1 Like

The goal of the kana only children’s book is to familiarise the child with reading kana, though. It would be counterproductive to also throw the kanji at them at the same time, even with furigana. You want all the kana to be the same size, usually larger font, too, to allow the child to increase his reading speed. First things first!

5 Likes

Pro tip: if you have Netflix, change your account’s language to Japanese, and then you’ll be able to choose Japanese subtitles

not saying I’m a pro, I’ve barely used this feature lol

3 Likes

Hmm, it’s not super-consistent. A good number of Kinoshita Yuka’s videos have non-autogenerated Japanese subtitles, and even Kizuna Ai’s videos which aren’t really subbed in Japanese have Japanese text pop up for emphasis pretty often.

1 Like

I listen to Japanese news every day at work. I frequently find myself turning a word into kanji in my head, then I decipher the kanji. It is kind of comical.
One step at a time!

You know if this applied to all the users on your account? Or it is done in a per-device basis?

1 Like

I just checked by logging in on a different device, it’s definitely by user and not by device.

1 Like

Thanks. I have a familiar account with several older people so this can be an small problem, but it is nice to know we have the chance anyway.

1 Like

I share my account with multiple family members as well, and nobody has complained about Netflix showing gibberish. lol

1 Like

私はプロでございます!

It works per user. My mum is on my account and her one in still in Dutch, thankfully.

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.