So what’s the point of this topic?
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The average western mind just isn’t prepared for kanji because it’s just so different from what we’re used to. It’s an excellent writing system because each concept has its own symbol meaning you don’t necessarily need to know the pronunciation to glean meaning from a text. Some studies suggest the brain processes the meaning of images faster than it does when reading phonetic scripts.
This is really hard in the beginning for most people. Just go slowly and methodically without worrying about where you are at this point in time. It gets easier and your mind will eventually grasp the inherent logic of kanji.
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When I started learning japanese I also thought “why the hell do we need kanji?!” But then I found Wanikani and I really like how they teach them. I go on a slow, but steady, pace and have learned a lot. By now (around a year into studying with Wanikani), I like kanji and find them very interesting, especially because they are so different from what I’m used to.
@SystemD You simply should decide for yourself if you want to put some effort into learning kanji and they may fall into place after a while of studying them or if you don’t want to learn them. If learning japanese is “only” a hobby to you and you don’t like it - drop it. Learn/do something else. Or bite your way through it.
Good luck with your studies!
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The point of this topic is to plan, promote, and finally implement a multi-trillion yen transition into a bright future for Japan, take WK down, and make everyone who reached level 60 have wasted a lot of time.
What is the reasoning for this? I can see that publishing in either Korean and Japanese are huge handicaps, in my field (CS) I came across several publications that had the potential for the flagship venues content-wise, but were published in the Japanese Engineers Journal on … with a nice paywall to make sure no one can find it. Further publications were Japanese only. My impression was that they could have thrown their work directly in the trashcan, no one can find that stuff. I guess for Korean it’s similar. But how kanji or no come into this picture, I can’t understand 
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I’d say, it is logical and intuitive once you’ve learned enough kanji. Until then it really ain’t.
Well said. Actually, thank you for the civilized manner in which you present your opinion. It makes me respect it even though I strongly disagree with it (I think kanji is one of the best things about Japanese - up to the point that I always feel a bit annoyed when I find “usually written in kana alone” note in a dictionary).
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And if Inglish waz riten lyk þis, wear iitþ leter reprezents wan saond þen it wud bii matþ iizier tu lern.
A country isn’t just going to change their whole language because it’s too hard for people to learn. Language is part of a country’s culture and identity.
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You say that, but Japanese is stealing a ton of English, despite having perfectly good words for those things. They clearly aren’t worried about changing their language.
Also, from Wikipedia on the history of kana
So kana is kinda an attempt to replace Kanji to make things easier in the first place.
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Thanks for bearing with me.
After twenty years in Japan, I still cannot get my head around kanji. It’s frustrating looking at notices and being able to read only part. It’s frustrating when my (Japanese) wife says she doesn’t want to speak to the neighbours because she isn’t sure of the way their name should be read, and to make a mistake would mean embarrassment. Serious embarrassment. It’s frustrating at a class when you write a kanji legibly, only for a teacher to mark it as incorrect because they think you’ve used the wrong stroke order.
Kanji is something I have to deal with every day. It’s not a hobby, and the frustration of having to deal with it is difficult to convey. Incidentally, a lot of Japanese say the reason they like manga is because they don’t have to read so much text. Text is difficult.
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The point is that books are already written like that in Japanese, in order to help people read.
If they weren’t worried about changing their language out of convenience, I think there would be a lot more words that people choose to write in kana rather than kanji. Loanwords come about either because they describe an entirely new concept, in which case it’s much easier to take an existing word for it rather than figure out the kanji and the readings that should go together to represent the thing, or they describe an existing concept. If they describe an existing concept, and they’re replacing a pre-existing word, then sure.
But there are many cases where they still use kanji/kana for things they could just as easily used a loanword for. 飛行機, 冷蔵庫, 原子, etc. If they didn’t care about their culture, then they would have no problem dropping the difficult kanji from them.
And you can say the same about Korean. The key difference however, is that back then there was a need to change the writing system, since most people were illiterate. They were never really losing anything since most of the population didn’t use it in the first place.
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Now, here is something I totally agree with. I don’t understand the concept of stroke order either. For me, as long as the kanji is legible, it shouldn’t matter how did I write it… Well, that’s the good point about WaniKani - it completely ignores stroke order.
Anyway, I understand your frustration. However, if you don’t plan to leave Japan, I’m afraid, your best option would be to study kanji…
Btw, you might want to use WK - even if mnemonics don’t work for you, radicals do help to memorise kanji, and you can always give them different names and create your own mnemonics, which might work better…
Anyway, best of luck to you!
I am only lv4, but have some time under my belt studying with Kana only (Human Japanese textbook does that in v1).
Since I learn Kanji I felt Japanese is even much more fun. I can also see some kind of “rules” under the surface. I can’t understand it well enough, but there are some patterns. It’s a great feeling for me to suddenly be able to make more sense with all these characters.
Re the replace Kanji with $x discussion I think it is kinda pointless. Complaining does not help here. Billions of text would be needed to rewritten and the ninth most spoken language of the world would need to be adapted for lots of people. For me it is pretty clear that if you want to properly learn japanese you have to go through Kanji. Without being able to read english, I would not have managed to learn english in a halfway decent way.
Also I understand why the Kanji stroke order might be important. I have a lot of calligraphy from my japanese teachers and when you write Kanji with a pencil, you will see where the pencil started and where it ended. It’s important for reading to have it proper.
Kanji won’t go away. I can only tell that a lot of japanese in the past weeks I used WaniKani suddenly put a light bulb in my head on, and despite i mix them all up, it’s fun.
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This is just silliness. Any inability to read a family name is merely a result of there being multiple readings and asking which reading is the correct one is normal.
And the neighbors are aware their name has multiple readings and they know people can’t guess it.
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But you don’t belong in that culture even if you live there when you don’t even want to assimilate.
What is exactly are you doing here? This is a place to learn Kanji. You won’t learn anything if you don’t have any motivation.
Try to study Kanji first, then see if you still hold on to your opinion after you become literate.
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I’m sure that liking manga because they don’t have to read much text is due to time, and at the speed you can consume manga. Not because text is difficult. Although this is pure speculation, I really doubt that to be the case.
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Yes, I completely agree. But that’s the reality in Japan.
Oh yes, I’m sure Leebo knows nothing of life in Japan.
Ask him where he lives, I dare you.
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Its funny how many people ask the same stuff or have the same arguments like this on the r/learnjapanese and get down voted so hard.
Are you troubled because you have problems with kanji or your wife has problems with kanji? Japanese people don’t really have a high kanji expectation from Gaiji McGaiface in my experience, they rather wonder why anyone would bother with it in the first place.
Searching for “average reading hours” or something I found that both Japan and Korea are very low, China was not that impressive as well. But it is arguable whether it’s the writing system or the horrible job the education systems are doing to nurture curiosity beyond “what you have to do” (or something else).
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I know (o.O)
There are a fair amount of people who think that kanji is nonsensical and don’t like using it, but … that’s way it is, you know? Kanji makes a lot of sense once you get to higher levels because they’re actually very systematic, and don’t take this the wrong way, but if you don’t want to learn kanji then you might want to stop learning Japanese because it’s never going to go away.
I’m going to stop posting on this thread because I think my opinion has been repeated a few times by now.
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