What if I wanted to learn Japanese without learning how to read?

[izzyfizz96]

Spoken Japanese is highly context-based, thus omitting basically everything you can assume (things like subject, particles, objects, etc). A lot of the time a complete sentence is just a verb. Learning just through speaking can be confusing in that regard, plus it becomes much more difficult to take a lot of time to deconstruct a sentence until you can understand. And if you were to read sentences only using kana or romanji, Japanese has a ton of homonyms that, while you can differentiate them using kanji, it can be nearly impossible to discern without them. Kanji in general is a huge asset to learning Japanese, even though it’s the hardest part and specifically WaniKani doesn’t really teach them in order of importance or usefulness. So if you want to just be able to be able to use the Japanese you’ve learned sooner, I’d suggest a textbook with some audio CDs, but don’t neglect Kanji altogether. Besides, unless you live in Japan now or have plans to in the future, almost all Japanese you’re going to encounter will be either written or Japanese TV cough cough anime cough so written Japanese is gonna be more important/useful anyway. TLDR you probably can, but Kanji is such an important aspect of the Japanese language so I wouldn’t