Hey TL, just an interesting thought thats popped in my head as I learn Japanese slowly in my Uni.
So, I am aware there are nearly 2300 total characters that the average Nihongo student has to learn. 2000 of them being official Kanji.
So, theoretically, if there are High School dropouts in Japan or kids that are bad with memorizing that sort of thing, there would be a lot if illiterate people that couldnt even read the newspaper.
I would like to ask any Japanese people, how is that sort of issue avoided... or is it avoided at all. Is it assumed not everyone can read a newspaper comfortably?
I ask because our HS drop out rate is kind of high in Canada and the USA, but people can still at least pick up a newspaper on the way to work lol.
Am I asking a stupid question? Maybe, but I still want to know is it like 100% of the kids that learn 2000 Kanji?
Characters are like words, and then there's strokes and whatnot, dictionaries are also helpful. I don't think a student dropping out means they're completely illiterate, it could mean that they're not getting the full education but they can still be self sufficient and still learn.
On January 09 2012 09:30 cameler wrote: Hey TL, just an interesting thought thats popped in my head as I learn Japanese slowly in my Uni.
So, I am aware there are nearly 2300 total characters that the average Nihongo student has to learn. 2000 of them being official Kanji.
So, theoretically, if there are High School dropouts in Japan or kids that are bad with memorizing that sort of thing, there would be a lot if illiterate people that couldnt even read the newspaper.
I would like to ask any Japanese people, how is that sort of issue avoided... or is it avoided at all. Is it assumed not everyone can read a newspaper comfortably?
I ask because our HS drop out rate is kind of high in Canada and the USA, but people can still at least pick up a newspaper on the way to work lol.
Am I asking a stupid question? Maybe, but I still want to know is it like 100% of the kids that learn 2000 Kanji?
japanese is based off an alphabet called hiragana. each kanji pronounciation is based off these hiragana. for people with limited vocabulary, books and magazines targeted to them tend to put the hiragana pronounciation next to some of the kanji (this called furigana). It would be the equivalent of saying something like WTF and then putting (What the Fuck) next to it.
that being said most people tend to have knowledge of something like 400 or so kanji. there are illiterate people but they are usually yakuza or immigrants. plus japan has a decent education system.
You start to learn kanji in elementary school, In japan High school is not required by law so there is many people here who does not attend high school. If you can get past middle school your knowledge in kanji should be just fine to get by a newspaper.
I don't know about Japan specifically, but different newspapers will have different levels of difficulty, so that people with lower knowledge can understand.
An unrecognizable kanji would be equivalent to difficult vocabulary, so it would probably be skipped over or the person will guess what it means when read in context.
So what I'm saying is, Japanese shouldn't be too different from English.
there are no dropouts in the japanese schoolsystem. every pupil will pass. about kanji: even former prime minister taro aso was often blamed being not able of reading all of the common kanji.
Why direct this question only at Japan? Many other Asian countries have this same concept. Anyways, I feel like most of the characters (including the most popular ones) would have already been taught before high school. I took Chinese school as an afterschool when I was in elementary school (I live in the US) and we did 10 words a week. Obviously in a school in Asia, they would do more than what we did here (maybe 20 to 40?). Also including the fact that Asian schools have longer hours and more days I'm sure that a good majority of the useful words are all learned in time. With that aside, I do believe that Chinese (traditional) is actually the most complex of the three main Asian languages. It has more brushstrokes and more variety in words.
From what I know, the newspapers here in my city have a language difficulty of about grade 7-8. So even if you do drop out of high-school, you'll be able to read a newspaper.
learning a language is just like how a child learns english. While yes japanese is much harder to learn if you start from an early age and its all you speak then a typical child learning their own language shouldnt have a problem reading a simple news paper.
It's an even bigger deal in countries where they use written Chinese, like Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, since there are even more "kanji" you have to memorize. And simply put, yes, if you don't know the characters, you can't read most newspapers. They do have those kiddy-newspapers with the Chinese (Taiwanese, in this case) equivalent of hiragana called "bopomofo" next to the kanji to help kids learn them, but otherwise you're fucked.
As an interesting anecdote, I grew up as an ABC (American Born Chinese) in Midwest America, and I observed that while most kids were bilingual to a certain extent (could speak/understand Chinese because it was spoken at home, fluent in English because it was the language at school), most were fairly illiterate and couldn't read or write to save their lives. On the other hand, Korean-American kids on average could both read and write, my guess being because there are no kanji in the language to learn (technically there are but you don't actually use them), just hangul.
When I moved to Taiwan after 5th grade I had to start nearly from scratch, so I suppose I do have some personal experience with the question you're talking about. With the environment you're in though, it really isn't that hard to pick up the language, and by now while my English is still better than my Chinese, I can read newspapers and stories with no problem.
2300 isn't a lot though... although it'd be closer to 4000 if it was pre ww2... Chinese students use even more...
Oh and there's also approximately 212 radicals ( they're the basic characters that can be used to build up more complex ones ) The bottom half of the left character is just a wider version of the one in the middle of the right character. Same stroke order anyways/similar.
By the way, many of the kanji compounds are the same ( with the exceptions to some where they choose an alternative character in place of something else ) Their individual character meanings are very much the same with the exceptions to a few.
smoke/flower = fireworks flower/fire = fireworks
Also best if you use the Holy Right hand if you're using a brush/paint ( since they're meant for left to right / top to bottom strokes.
On January 09 2012 09:36 MadMaxMKII wrote: there are no dropouts in the japanese schoolsystem. every pupil will pass. about kanji: even former prime minister taro aso was often blamed being not able of reading all of the common kanji.
Isn't that because he did his university work at Stanford or something like that??
To OP: what you have in mind is valid. This is why Japanese got simplified in the early 20th century. It's not an easy language to learn, but it is really not that bad either.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you don't have to know all "2000 characters" to read; similarly, you don't need to know that many words in English in order to read. A lot of the words can be guessed through context.
If you think Japan has it rough with kanji, you should see countries that uses Chinese. By the time you finish middle school you can pretty much read most commonly used characters, and can at least infer the meanings of the ones that one cannot recognize. Japan at least has the furigana system for kanji, authors can use this if they know their work is also meant for younger people(i.e toy boxes, manga). The key is to read often, even normal people that went to university struggle with kanji/Chinese characters now and then everywhere in Asia.
Also, it's much easier to recognize a kanji, than to write it. You (the OP) being a student of Japanese, I'm guessing you need to learn to write every kanji you learn right now. In reality, many Japanese know how to recognize (i.e. read) a certain set of kanji, but will have trouble if they need to write it on paper. Moreover, these days, they don't really need to write it on paper because they use computers and they only really need to recognize them. That's why the Japanese are actually adding to the list of official kanji, instead of simplifying it further!
Also, since most words are made up of two or more kanji, you get help in guessing a word you can't read, by recognizing half of the word in some way.
On January 09 2012 17:43 iMAniaC wrote: Also, it's much easier to recognize a kanji, than to write it. You (the OP) being a student of Japanese, I'm guessing you need to learn to write every kanji you learn right now. In reality, many Japanese know how to recognize (i.e. read) a certain set of kanji, but will have trouble if they need to write it on paper. Moreover, these days, they don't really need to write it on paper because they use computers and they only really need to recognize them. That's why the Japanese are actually adding to the list of official kanji, instead of simplifying it further!
Also, since most words are made up of two or more kanji, you get help in guessing a word you can't read, by recognizing half of the word in some way.
It's actually not that bad, alot of Kanjis are really really common and very easy to spot. when you read a lot the stuff just comes to you very easily and fluidly.
In my personal experience I have picked up around 800-900 Kanji in 5 months of living here with no real study. I knew none when I came. By that I mean I have no trouble reading but can only write very few of them. As has been mentioned many Japanese forget how to write the less often used Kanji.
As far as illiteracy goes. I am no expert but the problems with illiterate people in English speaking countries is generally a conceptual one - the idea that symbols represent sounds. Learning to read isnt exactly hard. I think the idea of representing meaning with symbols and sound being secondary is more natural to humans. Of course it makes a much more cumbersome system.
On January 09 2012 18:05 PlaGuE_R wrote: kanji is really nice looking but 2300 characters is so much! thank god for the Romans giving us their alphabet ^^
The fastest someone did this was around 17 days. Yes. They recognize that amount. Go play with Anki ( goes up to 3000ish/ although there are some custom ones that go to 7800 or so... but that'd take much longer ) if you want to do that ( most people take 30-40 days ). It is a SRS type thing if you like that sort of stuff.
My literacy in Chinese has degenerated to the point I struggle with reading long texts. This is after 4-5 years of not reading the language much. Not that my Chinese was good to being with.
So yeah, I do think Asian languages are harder to master but if it's your first language I think it should be like English: It comes intuitively to you.
I don't know about other people who speak in more than one language but for me, when I think of stuff to write, even if it is in Chinese, I usually form my thoughts in English first before I translate it.
Edit: Also, it is easier to recognise groups of words rather than individual ones.
On January 09 2012 18:05 PlaGuE_R wrote: kanji is really nice looking but 2300 characters is so much! thank god for the Romans giving us their alphabet ^^
It's not just really nice to look at. I don't know about Japanese, but in Chinese, single characters contain thousands of years of cultural development and history. Sometimes a handful of characters need entire paragraphs in Western languages to describe. Chinese is also incredibly compact. A person reading in Chinese can capture the same meaning much much faster than a person reading an alphabet based language simply because the ideas are transmitted so much faster.
On January 09 2012 09:30 cameler wrote: Hey TL, just an interesting thought thats popped in my head as I learn Japanese slowly in my Uni.
So, I am aware there are nearly 2300 total characters that the average Nihongo student has to learn. 2000 of them being official Kanji.
So, theoretically, if there are High School dropouts in Japan or kids that are bad with memorizing that sort of thing, there would be a lot if illiterate people that couldnt even read the newspaper.
I would like to ask any Japanese people, how is that sort of issue avoided... or is it avoided at all. Is it assumed not everyone can read a newspaper comfortably?
I ask because our HS drop out rate is kind of high in Canada and the USA, but people can still at least pick up a newspaper on the way to work lol.
Am I asking a stupid question? Maybe, but I still want to know is it like 100% of the kids that learn 2000 Kanji?
Someone at the level of a high school dropout can easily read enough kanji for a newspaper. There are illiterate people in all countries though, and they probably won't be reading newspapers regardless since if they did, they probably wouldn't be illiterate.
Kanji are hard as butt to learn for foreigners, but it's really not an issue when you live in Japan because you're exposed constantly. WRITING kanji is a different story, I'd go as far as to say that Japanese people in general are quite bad at writing kanji since cellphones have the ability to do it for them, making them train it less. It's quite common that foreign japanese students at a high level write obscure kanji better from memory than average Japanese.
The Heisig method (I think this is what nalgene is talking about) is only useful if you have close to zero understanding of the language. What it teaches you is how to remember characters, how to build characters, and how to write them: all of those things are something non-native learners find confusing. I actually don't find doing the whole thing beneficial: once you've done 400 or so from Heisig's textbooks, you get the point Heisig is pushing forward and can teach yourself with a dictionary on hand. Once you get the point, the whole textbook is more boring than dirt.
To those wanting to learn Japanese fresh, I definitely recommend doing a few hundred from his "Remembering the Kanji" textbook as well as doing his "Remembering the Katakana/Hiragana" textbooks. "Remembering the Kanji" may enlighten you on how kanji is constructed and will probably teach you much easier and lasting methods to remembering the damned things. The Hiragana and Katakana textbooks are extremely good and are short enough that your attention span shouldn't stray far. If you get the point he's pushing forward, you shouldn't forget neither katakana, hiragana, or kanji quickly.
If nalgene is talking about learning kanji with raw SNS, you're wasting your time and learning absolutely nothing. Adults, unlike children, understand context so you don't have to go the hard route and ROTE learn everything. Obviously ROTE learning works fine but its the hard way of doing something, is extremely uninteresting, and you're very likely to forget a lot of it without constant repetition or exposure to it. In a way, foreigners have an advantage Japanese/Chinese children do not have when learning their first language and it would be prudent to tap into this advantage ASAP.
Why Japanesne? Chinese is much harder, no? And even then, people that hasn't even finished Primary School can still pick up a news paper and understand a bit. As you live in a country you are bound to be able to pick up something.
Speaking from the perspective of Chinese (which is the same, but more characters) its pretty easy to recognise characters after you've been learning for a little while. This is mostly because the characters are actually made up of a much smaller number of symbols, so each character is made up of 3-4 frequently recurring symbols.
However, you forget them quite fast :/ So if you don't keep it up it is difficult. But in Japan and China they are surrounded by them at all times.
Just like how you don't forget stupid arbitrary spelling in English, you're just surrounded by it all the time.
I'm just guessing the OP is white or something. It's an activity he can do if he's got lots of spare time.
On January 09 2012 20:54 divinesage wrote: My literacy in Chinese has degenerated to the point I struggle with reading long texts. This is after 4-5 years of not reading the language much. Not that my Chinese was good to being with.
So yeah, I do think Asian languages are harder to master but if it's your first language I think it should be like English: It comes intuitively to you.
I don't know about other people who speak in more than one language but for me, when I think of stuff to write, even if it is in Chinese, I usually form my thoughts in English first before I translate it.
Edit: Also, it is easier to recognise groups of words rather than individual ones.
It's easy for me to think in either language, but shouldn't it be easy for you? The structure isn't too different from English save only the lack of conjugations.
sure, they may be made of of 26 different components, but unless you know french, latin, ancient greek and german, you probably can't guess the meaning of the word from the letters you know. The letters don't convey (much) meaning themselves.
Its not really that different than having thousands of words/syllables made of a small set of lines/symbols, which do convey information.
On January 09 2012 20:54 divinesage wrote: My literacy in Chinese has degenerated to the point I struggle with reading long texts. This is after 4-5 years of not reading the language much. Not that my Chinese was good to being with.
So yeah, I do think Asian languages are harder to master but if it's your first language I think it should be like English: It comes intuitively to you.
I don't know about other people who speak in more than one language but for me, when I think of stuff to write, even if it is in Chinese, I usually form my thoughts in English first before I translate it.
Edit: Also, it is easier to recognise groups of words rather than individual ones.
It's easy for me to think in either language, but shouldn't it be easy for you? The structure isn't too different from English save only the lack of conjugations.
Not really. Take for example this thread. If I was the OP and I was supposed to type this in some other language, I'd use English as a base to start off my train of thought. Maybe we could think of it this way, your inner voice has a master language, and it's the one which you use most commonly and intuitively.
Or maybe it's just my horrible Chinese vocabulary at work.
Most kanji used in everyday life has the hiragana characters in smaller print above the kanji. The official number of kanji is almost 2000, but there are thousands more, most people aren't expected to be able to read all of them all the time. So e.g., signs and magazines show the hiragana as well, but some newspapers might not. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
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