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NOT learning kanji | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| cod2 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4554 days ago 48 posts - 69 votes  | Message 1 of 4 08 July 2015 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Has anybody successfully learnt Japanese by NOT learning kanji? By that I mean, not
learning kanji specifically and in advance, but learning to recognise words as one encounters them. I don’t need to be able to produce kanji from memory. I only want to be able to read. I don’t like Heisig. Tried it several times and gave up. I still retain about 300 of so basic kanjis from those attempts with Heisig and with Henshall. I am otherwise following my diluted version of the 10,000 sentences method with Anki. When I encounter a word during review, I write it a few times either with a finger in the air, or with a stylus on my mobile screen. I make no attempt to write it from memory. I just trace it. I make no attempt to know the meaning of the individual kanjis that make up the word, or the other readings they might have. Not quite sure if that’s going to work when I have a deck of 1,000 or 2,000 sentences. Has anyone successfully acquired a good degree of Japanese reading comprehension skill by “letting the kanjis come to them”? Thanks. Edited by cod2 on 08 July 2015 at 4:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4797 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 2 of 4 08 July 2015 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Heisig helped me, and I'm sorry you had such a hard time with it. It certainly made
things better because I was able to recognize a lot of the individual components through compounds, and with time, you'll notice that many kanji tend to be repeated in words that have related meanings. But of course, you do get these complex little buggers a lot, too. You can start by focusing on the spoken language, and learning to recognize the vocabulary through hearing it, try to make some progress there, and then tackle the written language. Like what Arrekksu here did, I believe, and I think Jpod101 was used extensively as well as other native media and talking with natives. You could also read books that extensively use hiragana, or at least are fully furiganized, and a lot of manga for teens have that, as well as kids books, or short stories. However, it will keep bugging you that you can't recognize the kanji, and really limit your choice of resources, and you will eventually have to learn it sooner or later. You mentioned that you know the radicals from Heisig, correct? If you do, then maybe, as you go through your reading, you can stop, focus a little on the kanji, take apart it's individual components/radicals which you will recognize if you have done them through Heisig, and make your own mental picture or mnemonic, put that in Anki or a notebook, and move on. Do not try to memorize it, but every time you see it, remind yourself of that mental image you used. With time, you will come to recognize it completely and automatically. It's like a very low-intensity Heisig method, spread over time and space, and not necessarily exclusively kanji study. You don't necessarily have to write out stories, just hints that will remind you of the meaning/reading. I guess you could in retrospect rote recognize the kanji through lots of repetition and tracing/writing, I know it worked for me for some of the easier and more common kanji, but it was long, painful, and tedious, and that's why, even though Heisig may not be everyone's cup of tea, to me it was the least painful, and most economic solution, in terms of both time and energy. You can adapt it to fit your needs. You don't have to go through the book, or the kanji order presented, necessarily. Just try to know the radicals/primitives, and then read and connect, and make pictures/mnemonics/etc. as you go about your sentences and reading. I think there was an excel sheet floating around somewhere with the 200 or so radicals. I do have it somewhere, and I'll look for it and send it to you when I do. I hope that helps. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cod2 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4554 days ago 48 posts - 69 votes | Message 3 of 4 08 July 2015 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's actually quite a good idea, and coincidentally that's what I was thinking yesterday.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3542 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 4 of 4 12 July 2015 at 1:39pm | IP Logged | ||
For this purpose you can just use furigana. It works just fine. I'm assuming you can read hiragana and katakana just fine, since learning those is infinitely easier than learning kanji. If I'm reading a text and I get to a kanji I don't know, then I'll just insert a random syllable and pretend that is its reading for that reading session. Later I'll go back and check my list to see how well I guessed. Rule is: you don't have to stop reading just because you don't know the reading for every character. Usually it's easier to remember the meaning than the reading, so you'll still get the meaning of the text involved, even if you guessed the wrong reading. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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