Current Events > is it easy to learn how to read japanese?

(+) Yeah! (+)

i can read korean text, which made traveling in korea easy cuz i could read signs and menus at restaurants.

can one learn japanese easily or is it like chinese and i should give up my material life and become a student at a Confucius institute.
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Good luck pal. There's a shit ton of Kanji.
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no, but learn it anyway
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For context, Japanese school kids spend the first 6 years learning how to read. And even then it's not like they'll know all the readings for every Kanji.
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Kanji is honestly the hardest part.

Learning Hiragana / Katakana is do-able by most folks since it's very similar to the Western / Latin Alphabet.

But Kanji is just raw memorization and a long standing legacy from the Chinese in a written language that was designed to make it hard for foreigners to learn.
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No
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It's relatively easy to memorize the hiragana/katana syllabaries but much harder to learn how to actually pronounce whole words and hard af to learn the language overall. But as far as being able to look at a word and at least be able to romanise it, it's not that hard.
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I tried to study Japanese for years and then gave up. I learned Hiragana and Katakana, but never got very far with Kanji. and I had trouble with spoken language. like things like how to count stuff was difficult cause they use different words depending on what your counting. japanese has alot of weird rules for things like that. to this day, I think I still can read katakana and hiragana but I don't always know what it's actually saying. so I might as well be reading german or french. if I had never given up my plan to live in Japan I might have gotten farther. but me visiting Japan finally and deciding not to actually live there was probably a huge blow to my studying of the language.

and yes I know TC can't see this. this is for everyone else

Zikten posted...

I tried to study Japanese for years and then gave up. I learned Hiragana and Katakana, but never got very far with Kanji. and I had trouble with spoken language. like things like how to count stuff was difficult cause they use different words depending on what your counting. japanese has alot of weird rules for things like that. to this day, I think I still can read katakana and hiragana but I don't always know what it's actually saying. so I might as well be reading german or french. if I had never given up my plan to live in Japan I might have gotten farther. but me visiting Japan finally and deciding not to actually live there was probably a huge blow to my studying of the language.

and yes I know TC can't see this. this is for everyone else

I'm kinda in a similar position. I've definitely slacked off on my Kanji practice. As in I no longer actively study. Probably at the reading level of a 3rd grader lol. However, I think I can still get by as I can understand when spoken to and am able to vocalize my thoughts. Worst case scenario, I just ask a local what something says or means.
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You can't read any language if you blocked everybody.
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tennisdude818 posted...

You can't read any language if you blocked everybody.

I can see it, so he hasn't blocked me
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You can learn to read and write hiragana and katakana in like two weeks. Kanji will definitely take up some time, although you don't need to learn how to write them at all (I did though because it's all beautiful).

If you're not planning on using the language except for just the occasional trip to Japan then I don't think it'll be worth your time to learn Kanji aside from the absolutely basics, and even then it's better to just learn words with the kanji in them, like (to eat), (to drink), etc.

If you do for some reason plan to learn the language I can help. I am quite passionate about the Japanese language. So far I'm able to write a little bit more than 2000 kanji by memory and I don't plan on stopping, ever :P

Kanji practice

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Yomi posted...

You can learn to read and write hiragana and katakana in like two weeks. Kanji will definitely take up some time, although you don't need to learn how to write them at all (I did though because it's all beautiful).

If you're not planning on using the language except for just the occasional trip to Japan then I don't think it'll be worth your time to learn Kanji aside from the absolutely basics, and even then it's better to just learn words with the kanji in them, like (to eat), (to drink), etc.

If you do for some reason plan to learn the language I can help. I am quite passionate about the Japanese language. So far I'm able to write a little bit more than 2000 kanji by memory and I don't plan on stopping, ever :P

Kanji practice

Props for learning how to actually write it. I can read and type Kanji on a computer, but I can't write for shit. I've probably even become bad at writing Katakana at this point even though it's easy to read.
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There are four Japanese character sets:

Romaji, which I'm typind in right now.
Katakana and Hiragana, which have a couple dozen characters apiece.
And Kanji, which is as hard as learning to read Chinese because it actually is the entire Chinese character set.

So really reading Japanese is a superset of reading Chinese.
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tennisdude818 posted...

Props for learning how to actually write it. I can read and type Kanji on a computer, but I can't write for shit. I've probably even become bad at writing Katakana at this point even though it's easy to read.

Thanks! It's definitely something you have to enjoy/love in order to not lose motivation and even I have to make sure to write every day in order to not forget them since I don't live in Japan.

I spent some months focusing solely on kanji because they were really difficult for me at the beginning, but now I can't even imagine the Japanese language without them. Nowadays I do more actual general writing instead of just random kanji so it even helps to memorize new words I'm learning at the moment :)
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DevsBro posted...

There are four Japanese character sets:

Romaji, which I'm typind in right now.
Katakana and Hiragana, which have a couple dozen characters apiece.
And Kanji, which is as hard as learning to read Chinese because it actually is the entire Chinese character set.

So really reading Japanese is a superset of reading Chinese.

I'm pretty sure that you need to know far fewer Kanji to read a Japanese newspaper than Hanzi for a Chinese newspaper. The hard part about Kanji compared to Hanzi is the numerous different pronunciations that a single Kanji can have depending on what it's combined with.

I may be missing something, I can't read Mandarin.
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katakana/hiragana are super easy, as people have been saying. Even katakana alone would be useful since its just used to write loan words phonetically.
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Yomi posted...

tennisdude818 posted...

Props for learning how to actually write it. I can read and type Kanji on a computer, but I can't write for shit. I've probably even become bad at writing Katakana at this point even though it's easy to read.

Thanks! It's definitely something you have to enjoy/love in order to not lose motivation and even I have to make sure to write every day in order to not forget them since I don't live in Japan.

I spent some months focusing solely on kanji because they were really difficult for me at the beginning, but now I can't even imagine the Japanese language without them. Nowadays I do more actual general writing instead of just random kanji so it even helps to memorize new words I'm learning at the moment :)

Oh yeah it's definitely a good idea to learn the Kanji every time you learn a new word. I'm just too lazy to practice writing it. Have you taken the JLPT? I want to take N2 this year but my reading speed is still slow.
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TeaMilk posted...

Even katakana alone would be useful since its just used to write loan words phonetically.

It is one of its uses, yes. But I'd be cautious about thinking it's the only one. Katakana is also used for emphasis, names of animals, plants and even onomatopoeia.
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it takes japanese people 6 years of school to learn 2000 kanji characters and even so, most will only memorize the most used ones.

hiragana and katakana are pretty easy though.

tennisdude818 posted...

Oh yeah it's definitely a good idea to learn the Kanji every time you learn a new word. I'm just too lazy to practice writing it. Have you taken the JLPT? I want to take N2 this year but my reading speed is still slow.

Sadly the JLPT is not available in my country (Dominican Republic) if I do get the chance of taking it sometime, somewhere, I'll do it for sure.

Gather some N2 review materials and get to studying then, you can do it!
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Honestly, if Japanese / Chinese languages want to become as popular with Westerners / Non-Asians,

They would push Hiragana / Katakana over Kanji since it's so similar to the Western / Latin alphabet.

The same with Zhuyin Fuhao / BoPoMoFo, it has a similar simplicity as Hiragana / Katakana.

Both of those would easily skyrocket the popularity of the language overall if Kanji wasn't a main focus and more of a relic in the written language.
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Yomi posted...

tennisdude818 posted...

Oh yeah it's definitely a good idea to learn the Kanji every time you learn a new word. I'm just too lazy to practice writing it. Have you taken the JLPT? I want to take N2 this year but my reading speed is still slow.

Sadly the JLPT is not available in my country (Dominican Republic) if I do get the chance of taking it sometime, somewhere, I'll do it for sure.

Gather some N2 review materials and get to studying then, you can do it!

Thanks. It sounds like youd crush N2 so maybe N1 is more your speed if you get the opportunity.
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KamenRiderBlade posted...

Honestly, if Japanese / Chinese languages want to become as popular with Westerners / Non-Asians,

They would push Hiragana / Katakana over Kanji since it's so similar to the Western / Latin alphabet.

The same with Zhuyin Fuhao / BoPoMoFo, it has a similar simplicity as Hiragana / Katakana.

Both of those would easily skyrocket the popularity of the language overall if Kanji wasn't a main focus and more of a relic in the written language.

It would be so hard to read a Japanese book without Kanji though. English is going to remain the international language for a long time.
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tennisdude818 posted...

It would be so hard to read a Japanese book without Kanji though. English is going to remain the international language for a long time.

I'm sure they can work around it just like English has.
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KamenRiderBlade posted...

Honestly, if Japanese / Chinese languages want to become as popular with Westerners / Non-Asians,

They would push Hiragana / Katakana over Kanji since it's so similar to the Western / Latin alphabet.

The same with Zhuyin Fuhao / BoPoMoFo, it has a similar simplicity as Hiragana / Katakana.

Both of those would easily skyrocket the popularity of the language overall if Kanji wasn't a main focus and more of a relic in the written language.

The problem with this is that without Kanji Japanese is a, fundamentally, broken language. Sentences would be extremely drawn out and too cluttered/ambiguous to read. Kanji not only spaces out sentences by separating words, but gives different meanings to words.
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@KamenRiderBlade posted...

Honestly, if Japanese / Chinese languages want to become as popular with Westerners / Non-Asians,

I don't understand this mindset at all. A languages' purpose is not to become popular but to facilitate communication and Japanese does that just fine as evidenced by their literacy rate (99%).

There'd be no point in taking a language which is used just fine for their native speakers and change it for the sake of making it "more popular" to the western world.

Mandarin and Japanese are already two incredibly popular languages considering how difficult and different they are, one of them is already a lingua franca in its own right when it comes to Chinese languages. They're just fine.

In fact, if I recall correctly, the only reason Korean stopped using Chinese characters like Japanese was because of the low literacy rate, had this never been a problem it wouldn't have been changed either and for Japanese at least, it's not a problem at all. They even add more kanji as time passes.
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tennisdude818 posted...

wow. i need to up my game
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I teach kanji lessons, there are many but once you get the hang of it, it's like a lego piece, once you learn one all the other pieces start falling into place.

EDIT: but yes, by the sheer numbers it can look daunting to some people, learning the first 20 a day is always my goal for a first class and works every time with the people I work with, from there it is smooth sailing as compound symbols keep reincofrcing the meaning of the original symbols. you basially study the old symbols while learning new ones, ez pz.
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It's not easy. I have a better kanji knowledge than many Japanese natives (I passed the Kanji Kentei Jun1kyuu 1), but it's because I literally spend hours every day reading and writing Japanese. I love kanji and most people hate them. I love them so much I started to learn Chinese just to learn more kanji (Chinese uses many more characters).

However I don't recommend learning to write to most people. Takes way too long for too little payoff. Instead you should just learn to read words. I always did better on the yomi (reading) questions even with lots of writing practice. It's just quite hard to remember them perfectly especially with rarer characters. Thankfully you don't have to know how in the modern world. You can just type into your computer or cell phone and find it there if you need to handwrite something. I am a fan for the book Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course. It gives you a nice selected of 2300 kanji and words they are used in along with methods to help you remember them. The order it presents them in is very good. You learn words that only use previously used kanji and learn kanji that are made up of previously introduced components before learning new components. There is also an attempt to keep phonetically related kanji together. If you want to learn to read that would be my recommendation.

Oh and the kana are easy (not nearly as easy as an alphabet like Hangul, but you should be able to learn them in a few days if you put effort into it).
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Kanji are freaking easy. Just time consuming as all hell.

The thing about it is, the more you learn, the easier it becomes to learn more. That initial hump of getting used to how Kanji work, identifying components/radicals/etc, and getting a feel for their readings... it's the initial hump. Once you get past it, it gets much easier. Ultimately it comes down to brute force and memorization, but if you can learn the kana, you can learn the Kanji.

The real tricky part of Japanese is the grammar. You pay a lot up front in terms of difficulty (mostly just re-wiring the way you're used to processing language really), but again... surmount the initial hump and things get a lot easier very quickly. That's the nice thing about it, once you pay your dues, the number of surprises/super hard stuff that appears later is very limited compared to other languages that start off easier, but have dark secrets lurking in the background (looking at Spanish/Subjuntive mood, Mandarin/, etc).
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@YonicBoom posted...

I reckon it's possible to learn all the Jouyou Kanji as fast as 3 months if you are super hardcore, but in a more natural way (through learning vocabulary) it would probably take 6 months to a year depending on how much you read.

That's what I did (the three month thing) it's really not for everybody but since I already wanted to learn how to write all the I did it and it's now helping me a lot when it comes to learning words that have said kanji in them.

Even though writing them by hand is not necessary at all it really does help a lot when it comes to memorization. Once one gets accustomed to how kanji work it all gets really easy and it's all a matter of actually putting in the time and effort to learn the ones you actually need.

For some reason the different readings of the kanji was never a problem for me, I tell people to imagine them as some root words in English. Take the prefixes hydro-, aqua- and water-, they both originate in different languages but that's not the point, the point is that they mean the same thing, water. Now let's look at some words:

- Hydrophobia
- Aquatic
- Watersports
- Hydroplane
- Aquarium
- Waterfall

Now replace said prefixes with a cool symbol that kinda tells you what the character represents, in Japanese that cool symbol would be the kanji.

phobia
tic
sports
plane
rium
fall

As weird as that explanation is, it seems to tick for people who have trouble with kanji when I explain it to them :P
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Yomi posted...

As weird as that explanation is, it seems to tick for people who have trouble with kanji when I explain it to them :P

I always liked explaining it like

- Count
- Try
- Country

where counting and trying are their own separate words, and country has nothing whatsoever to do with either counting or trying, but if you pronounced "count" as in "country" on its own, you could get slapped.

I think I prefer your explanation a bit better as it lends itself to the actuality of Japanese (and Chinese, by extension) a lot better.

As long as the people you're explaining this to don't go in expecting to see or anything, taking your example too literally ( is technically EXACTLY that though, just not pronounced thank god).

The number of symbols and logos the average person knows is astounding, so I like to use that as an example too. For example, $ can be read a LOT of different ways depending on context (cash, dollars, money) which all mean similar/same things, but different. # as well, and don't get me started on context-sensitive abbreviations and whatnot (somehow we have no trouble understanding "atm" in different contexts despite being shorthand for two different things). And it's theorized that the average person knows upwards of 1000+ corporate logos by the age of 10, which is really not different at all from knowing the around the same age.
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