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Time to read Japanese decently?

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
17 messages over 3 pages: 1 2
Lakeseayesno
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Mexico
thepolyglotist.com
Joined 4335 days ago

280 posts - 488 votes 
Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian
Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 17 of 17
13 June 2013 at 7:27pm | IP Logged 
IronFist wrote:
I was talking phonetics, not the names of letters (which happen to be the same in Japanese).

"ka" and "ki" in English both begin with a K so you can be reasonably confident that they will start with a "k" sound.

In Japanese there is no such luxury. "ka" and "ki" look nothing alike, yet they are both "k" sounds.

You've missed my point. I wasn't discussing phonetics, I was referring to the fact that at some point in our life, we learned to differentiate symbols (by assigning a sound to them) and thus mastered our ABCs. After that came words, and then you forgot all about the hardships of the task of learning separate morphemes because your brain was busy putting them together into words and giving them a meaning.

However, my interpretation of your reply is that you're breaking kana units down into even smaller units (not KA but K-A... from where I stand, that's not unlike saying B isn't "B" but "b-e-e"). I think that might be hampering your retention. They're not "k" sounds: they're all separate phonetic units that in written form just happen to start with the same consonant.

This is just my take on it, but to try and remember written form か・き・く・け・こ (...and every other line of the gojuon, etc etc) as part of the same consonant group JUST because they start with a K sound won't help you improve your reading speed. Kana is rather illogical in that sense because it doesn't come with an in-built pattern that could help us group up similar sounds in an easier way (ie, there's no "this stroke indicates is a K sound, and this little stroke by the side should mean it is KA, but on this next one there are two strokes crossing so it's a KI" rule)--kana absurdly requires that you memorize each symbol and corresponding sound separatedly.

Regretfully, learning kana is essentially the same as having to learn two brand new 48-symbol alphabets, each symbol coupled with sounds almost entirely alien to English (but I'm sure everybody who ever learned Japanese outside Japan knows that, so forgive me for the unnecesary emphasis).

So in a nutshell... practice is the name of the game. :/


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