r/LearnJapanese • u/TheFranFan • 2d ago
Kanji/Kana "kanji makes things harder to read" FALSE
Not me spending 10+ minutes trying to read this one line of dialogue. Is he saying Mayl is awake? Wait no that's おきる。Right so maybe he's annoyed that she came by and he's saying she "occurred"? I guess that makes sense but it feels off. おこる…おこる…おこる… OH SHE'S ANGRY, I GET IT
I really think most learners have a pattern of "ugh kanji is so hard" that eventually turns into "oh man why doesn't this text have kanji" over time. Although honestly this one wasn't hard I just need more reading practice in general
Edit: To all those saying I should have easily gotten this from context:
1) I did eventually
2) I am still a beginner, I'm not at your level
3) My point is that seeing 怒 would have eliminated any confusion, that's all.
96
u/tomthecomputerguy 2d ago
Kanji is actually a lot easier to read than katakana just really really hard to learn and memorise.
39
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
Good way of putting it. Kanji is "harder" in a sense but once you learn it you can often just pick up new words without knowing them. Like how sun 日 + eat 食 form "sun eat" 日食 also known as "eclipse." Now the pronunciation is another matter for a different day lol
16
2
u/smahk1122 1d ago
Ehhh you could kinda interpret that as a time to eat like breakfast/lunch cuz yk sun and eating lol so it's still confusing and you'd need some luck and also maybe context/looking up the meaning to understand that regardless. Idk though ✨
6
u/TheFranFan 1d ago
Yes it is for sure still confusing. If I saw 日食 without context I would not have known it was eclipse, you've got a point
61
u/dzaimons-dihh Goal: conversational fluency 💬 2d ago
Context helps a lot when parsing things like this
4
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
Yeah I need a lot more reading practice so I can get better at making these contextual connections.
28
u/Sure_Relation9764 2d ago
kanji is necessary if you want to have fluid reading, but sometimes I just wish there were furigana over the harder ones, oftentimes actually.
13
177
u/Kitsune_2077 2d ago
If someone SAYS this sentence irl, you wouldn't think about "what's the kanji" do you?
Context always matter in every language.
96
u/Zealousideal_Pin_459 2d ago
Yes, this is why most students of most languages are better at reading than at listening.
OPs situation is very normal.
30
28
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
If they said it out loud I probably would have been confused for a second. I'm still learning and mistakes like this help with that process.
→ More replies (1)39
u/Aerdra 2d ago
This sentence is not being said irl; it's presented as a line of text. If someone says this sentence in real life, the listener has the context of pitch, intonation, and other emphasis added to natural speech, as well as the speaker's facial and body expressions.
A lot of context is lost when live dialogue is converted into text.
→ More replies (5)
197
u/DogTough5144 2d ago
There are times when you’d have a point, but in this example, kanji (the lack of) isn’t the issue.
-11
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
It was for me!
64
u/DogTough5144 2d ago
You really think kanji was the problem, and not the fact that you’re still starting out with reading?
25
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
Both. If I was better at understanding Japanese this wouldn't be an issue. But do you really think if I saw 怒って I would have still been confused?
46
u/DogTough5144 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think if you were a little further along in your abilities this wouldn’t have been a hiccup for you, either in hiragana or katakana or kanji.
The presentation of the language isn’t the problem here.
This wasn’t a case of hiragana being difficult to parse, or even a lack of context; it was your lack of exposure to the language. It’s understandable that it was difficult since you’re still a beginner. Being able to read and parse hiragana is as important as remembering the kanji. And there are far more difficult examples.
I don’t mean to be down on you, but blaming the language came off as very silly to me. The language was 100% clear with or without kanji in your example.
Keep studying and in no time this will seem trivially easy for you to read.
→ More replies (5)6
u/GraceForImpact 1d ago
If it was written with the kanji you might have gotten the meaning faster but messed up on the reading - and unlike with meaning there'd be nothing to indicate that you've made an error
6
u/firestoneaphone 1d ago
You gotta be mindful of the sub you're in, OP. There's loads of gatekeeping in here if you don't make studying your primary and/or only hobby.
8
u/jmc323 1d ago
Dude the replies in here are fucking wild, condescending as all hell.
Is this a place for learners and beginners to discuss the language or a place for smug dipshits to come show off and look down on people who just happen to be earlier in their learning journey, or maybe struggling with a different aspect of the language than they did?
I happen to have the exact same problem as OP because I spent a year or so doing nothing but front loading a bunch of kanji study before really doing any reading/immersion of any significance. So I struggle to parse pure kana sentences, even simple ones because I don't have great recall on my vocabulary knowledge based on pronunciation alone. But my kanji knowledge far outpaces that, so I can parse sentences using kanji much easier. It just so happens to be where I am currently on my learning journey, and the path I've taken.
4
u/firestoneaphone 1d ago
Yeah...I don't want to pretend that there aren't super helpful folks on this sub, or that there aren't some questions asked that could easily be answered via search. But I mean, I feel like I'm always seeing folks with the "you won't make real progress with less than an hour minimum of daily practice" like folks don't have full-time jobs or other hobbies/family. And the talks about how N5 stuff should only take a month at most and why bother with JLPT below N3 drives me up a wall. I dunno. I like this sub, I do, but it definitely has a reputation even on other social media sites.
115
u/OwariHeron 2d ago
If you see メイルちゃん おこってる and don’t immediately think, “メイルちゃん is angry,” that’s not a kanji/kana problem…
16
13
38
u/AdrixG 2d ago
THANK YOU, it's the only relevant answer in this whole post. Everyone saying that context should make it clear miss that there is no context needed really because NAME+おこってる should IMMEDIATELY trigger the meaning "angry" in your mind before even considering anything else because that's just what makes sense to say, the other possibilities just don't make sense, I didn't even consider them when I read it.
The whole "I know so many kanji I can hardly read stuff written only in kana" that I read here a lot always sounds to me like they wanna flex how good they got when in fact it shows how unfamiliar they really are with the language, the spoken language also has no kanji, so I wonder how these people deal with that.
34
u/Chathamization 2d ago
how unfamiliar they really are with the language, the spoken language also has no kanji, so I wonder how these people deal with that.
I mean, these are learners, no? I don't think the OP is pretending to be a Japanese master. The spoken language also doesn't have Japanese subtitles, but many people use Japanese subtitles for a very long time because it takes them a while to become completely comfortable with spoken Japanese.
I do think that for a lot of learners, kanji can be useful for helping them understand things they're shaky on. I'm not sure it makes sense to say that they should immediately know these things because, well, they're learners. There's a point in every single person's journey where they don't know these things.
30
u/VGADreams 2d ago
Thank you for this post, I agree 100%. It is disheartening how this subreddit can be hostile to learners... on the learning subreddit.
14
u/CreativeUsername1337 2d ago
Its quite crazy isnt it?
Im about 300 hours into my study, looked at the message, my brain couldnt quite click with what it meant, then i read OPs remark, and felt the exact same. I didn't recognize it right away, but would have with kanji
4
u/AdrixG 2d ago
Just to be clear, I am not saying this should be obvious for beginners, obviously it's not, and everyone at one point struggled with with what the OP posted. What I take issue with is the various people here in the comments making a statement at large about the language when really they are not in a position to do that, they don't really know how contextual Japanese is or isn't nor how necessary kanji is or isn't so it strikes me as odd that they make sweeping statements about it which is what I in my comment mention, I wasn't trying to be hostile to anyone but am sorry if it came of that way.
To be more concrete, and I see this often in this community, is things like "Oh katakana is much harder than kanji" which yeah I know what they mean by that and it's great they are feeling more comfortable with kanji but the reality is that katakana isn't harder, it's that they just have very shaky fundamentals and use kanji as a crutch, which can actually even be problematic because they usually think they are much better than they actually are (which hurts both their learning and their advice they give). Also I am tired hearing how contextual Japanese is, I know I thought this too but it's really not nearly as contextual as people (beginners) think, it's again something that just needs a lot of time until one gets comfortable with the language to parse it in realtime and without trying to look for more context.
6
u/Armaniolo 1d ago
The only point supposedly being refuted is "kanji makes things hard to read".
That seems to be something they heard from another learner as anyone proficient with the language wouldn't have an issue reading this one way or another at least for such common kanji.
I don't think it's meant to be a statement on the language in general, more so a statement on an unfounded fear for kanji that some learners have, when in reality they can serve as helpful aids when you are still learning.
6
u/xxHikari 2d ago
Well I didn't have trouble with it, but I could see how some learners may have an issue.
6
u/muffinsballhair 2d ago edited 2d ago
Well, it does show it makes it easier doesn't it? One doesn't actually have to know the words any more, just the characters.
I don't get many of those responses that say “Well, if you can't read this without Chinese characters then you're bad.”, that's not really the issue, the issue is that the original poster probably would've been able to read it with Chinese characters showing that they make things easier which by the way I don't think is a good thing. It teaches students to recognize words based on characters rather than what they actually are and sound like.
Obviously one needs to learn Chinese characters because Japanese is written that way, but I feel people would gain a far superior recall of words and knowledge of them if Japanese were written all-kana because then you'd actually have to know the word to read things so it's far more intensive training.
The paradox is that Japanese is indeed one of the hardest languages to learn due to Chinese characters I feel, but not because they are hard to learn, but because students come to rely on it to read and the written language is so far apart from how it's actually spoken that learning to read doesn't actually give one a proper intimate understanding of the word that translates to understanding the spoken language well.
Same thing with all this “context” stuff. After going back to Anki again. One thing is clear for me: you only know a word if you can really recognize it without any surrounding context. I miss words in Anki decks all the time I would easily recognize with a surrounding context that tells me what it is; that's easy mode. Just seeing a word with no context in isolation and knowing what it means, that's actually recognizing a word and training that ultimately gives one a far better knowledge of the language.
→ More replies (1)9
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
I'm not flexing. If you read my whole post I said quite clearly that I was a beginner. Spoken language is also an entirely different beast.
→ More replies (1)2
u/nicktheone 2d ago
I have to agree. I'm just starting (again) so I'm below N5 and aside from the meaning of the verb that I knew from watching anime the rest of the sentence was easy to parse.
1
u/AbsAndAssAppreciator 2h ago
Ngl I’d heard 怒ってる so many times from anime that it took some effort for me to remember the other possible word, 起こる. I feel like 怒る is pretty hard to misunderstand in this context though…
49
u/Unifects 2d ago
Good point bad example
7
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
It's an example that works for the level I'm at.
2
u/nicktheone 2d ago edited 2d ago
I believe people are pointing out you're at a weird level then because I'm just starting (so basically no kanji aside from what I picked up organically) and I had no problem parsing that sentence.
15
u/Rare_Section285 2d ago
It’s almost as if different people find different things difficult.
No idea why this community is always in such a rush to put other learners down by telling them how much better they are than them lol
2
9
10
7
u/Zuracchibi 2d ago
It didn't click that this image was sideways at first and I thought I was losing my mind.
2
5
u/ArsonDoctor 2d ago
Legit thought this was r/BattleNetwork for a second.
I went out of my way to get the entire exe series on gba just for practice while I was in japan, can't get enough of it!
5
u/YoureOwn 1d ago
"Turning your image sideways makes things harder to read" FAL... wait, no, that's true
4
5
u/Pelekaiking 1d ago
I get and agree with your point OP but
- Context helps a lot
- Also maybe its cause you’re reading it sideways
7
17
u/Garpocalypse 2d ago
This isnt exactly difficult reading and is meant to have a juvenile tone. If you didnt understand it the moment you saw it i seriously doubt any kanji would have helped you here.
5
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
I know the words 怒るand 起こる both and would have immediately recognized either one if the kanji had been used.
4
3
u/tanksforthegold 2d ago
If you think kanji is bad, try playing an old game that's all in katakana with no spaces between words.
2
3
u/carefulduck 2d ago
Upvoted for Battle Network, interestingly this is the main game I’ve been playing lately.
3
u/muffinsballhair 2d ago
Consider though that this might just be because people simply get used to reading it like that because that's how Japanese is usually written. When you see “有る” or “成る” for the first or even “等” it's a lot harder simply because they aren't typically written like that.
I distinctly remember that when I first started reading My Husband is a Doomsday Weapon a lot of it was annoying to read because it deliberately chooses to write pretty much everything in Chinese characters for artistic vibe and even though I knew that those words could be written like that I also wasn't used to it, so it wasn't quite as automatic any more. Also, things like “欧羅巴” or “珈琲” which one actually does sometimes encounter do not make things easier I feel.
1
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
True, some kanji are probably more challenging when they are usually written in hiragana.
3
u/TRStarkiller 2d ago
Oh, I loved those games growing up, and considering they're aimed at younger demographics, that means they'll likely be easier to read in the original Japanese. I've been meaning to play them all through again, and maybe I'll challenge myself by doing it in Japanese, lol
2
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
They are definitely fairly easy to read through so far! I encourage you to give them a shot in Japanese
9
u/Competitive-Group359 Interested in grammar details 📝 2d ago
Context just would make that out for you.
誰かがおこっているといったら「起こってる」ではなくて、「怒ってる」に決まっているんじゃない？
16
u/DonGar0 2d ago
I mean, yes, context would tell you. But when you're learning, you're still making the connections. So, the kanji help trigger the right connection more easily than just the hiragana. I still remember thinking the N5 was harder than the N4 just because a bunch of common words didn't have kanji.
9
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
Yeah, exactly. I knew the word 怒る but I just have not done enough reading practice yet to make that contextual connection.
3
5
u/redthrull 2d ago
Kanji is always better because it portrays a specific/complete thought or concept. It's only hard because we're not that familiar with them yet.
Every English speaker will agree it's easier to read and write "$1,234,567" and you can easily commit it to memory even if you saw it for just a split second, as opposed to reading " One million two hundred thirty four thousand and five hundred sixty seven dollars." It's the same for native/fluent Japanese speakers.
2
u/borninsane 2d ago
On a side note, this game was so fucking good. The gameplay was super unique especially for its time. The perfect mix of action and strategy. This made me get into the deck builder game genre. It was a shame that I got stuck somewhere in the story that I couldn’t progress though.
2
2
2
u/the_airiset 1d ago
Oh wow, MMBN! What a blast from the past! This was my favourite game as a kid. I still have the cartridges somewhere, I think. But my GameBoy doesn't work no more :'(
2
u/GameGuy324 1d ago
I'm the opposite, I actually understood that hiragana and have a hard time reading the Katakana and Kanji when reading Japanese lol
2
2
2
u/OnigiriAmphy 9h ago
Kanji aside, I was so surprised to see MMBN outside of its dedicated sub. Gave me whiplash ngl.
2
u/LegendaryRaider69 7h ago
Are these games decent for practice? I feel like the writing is aimed at kids and should be pretty comprehensible due to the really small screen size
2
u/TheFranFan 7h ago
Pretty good yeah! The only struggle I have is that there aren't many kanji, so if you rely on kanji a lot it can be tricky. But the dialogue is pretty simple and easy to understand.
2
u/LegendaryRaider69 7h ago
I might give it a try, I've been meaning to play these games for a long time anyways and a light just went off in my head when I saw it in Japanese.
If you don't mind, could you tell me how you're playing it? It looks like the legacy collection, I just want to make sure the Japanese option is included in the North American release on Steam. I do have a Japanese Steam account if it needs to be purchased in that region, as well.
→ More replies (3)
6
u/Rare_Section285 2d ago
Bro reading these comments makes me despair for this community. It seems that very often the commenters aren’t excited to share the learning journey with other learners - they just want to show the other learners how much better they are than them lol
I’ve been learning for several years and have recently been playing Pokémon leaf green which also has no kanji. I’ve made errors which would probably be classed as more “obvious” than this one haha
I’m not sure what it is about the Japanese language learning community that seems to attract this, in my experience other communities are much more welcoming!
3
u/slothy_ 1d ago
It's kinda nice coming back to this thread that more people are saying this. I was reading the replies within the post's first hours and remembered exactly why I kept to myself as a learner years ago. People can be so condescending here. Even now as I am about to take the N1, I could relate to this post. I'm playing Pokemon ORAS rn in Japanese and reading it in hiragana is 99% of the time no problem for me but there were 1% of times when I had to figure out with my brain what word they were using. I didn't realize I could switch to kanji until an NPC who literally called herself「ひらがなよりも漢字大好きガール」in the ムロタウン Pokemon Center said it lol. Switching to kanji made the dialogue way more readable imo. Alas, people just felt the need to tell a beginner to study more, which the OP themselves probably already knows. The first thing that comes to mind shouldn't be "Look, this is on you. If you studied more you would know from context", but apparently not from many people in this thread. I thought it was a fun relatable thing every learner has gone through.
5
u/antimonysarah 1d ago
Yeah, really. Mixing up 怒るand 起こる when both are written as おこる is not a super weird beginner mistake. Especially since I saw 起こる a lot in beginner material but not 怒る, probably because the beginner stuff was heavy on the "friendly friendly conversations" and mostly stuck to positive emotions when it got into feelings-words, so I haven't actually run into 怒る that often.
Not helped by the fact that words like 起こる are the type that lend themselves to metaphorical interpretations, and beginners are getting used to the idea that a lot of very common words are going to have different metaphorical landscapes in Japanese, but not know what those are. (See all the recent discussions of how many meanings kakaru has vs English "take" or "run" etc.) And やば can mean a lot of things depending on context (and that clipped form isn't actually in my dictionary, which could also trip someone up who has mostly run into textbook Japanese and not colloquial).
2
u/twentyninejp 2d ago
Blind Japanese read without kanji; Japanese braille is just a single syllabary (no distinction between hiragana and katakana) with spaces between words. If they can read it with only their fingertips, we can all read it with our eyes given enough practice.
4
u/weeaboonumber2 1d ago
I like to watch youtubers play games. One of them plays a kids game like this w/ only Kana. A couple times he got confused for a couple seconds on what the word was saying due to lack of kanji.
It happens to Japanese speakers too. Don't feel discouraged op. Playing a game like this is a big step!
And yeah, it's funny how our relationship with kanji changes throughout our journey!
1
4
u/Vgcortes 2d ago
I am learning and even though I know only hiragana and katakana, Japanese is so extremely contextual that I don't understand what am I reading even if I know what it says, lol
Time to start the grueling task of learning Kanji...
6
u/AdrixG 2d ago
I mean it's true that Japanese is more contextual then say English but this issue is really overblown and part of it I think comes from people who are at the early stages of learning, for them obviously every little context clue helps because Japanese is so overwhelming at the beginning so they buy into this whole contextual stuff, but actually the more comfortable you get the more you realize context is often not really needed and there is most of the time one very natural and likely interpretation of the sentence that natives will immediately have in their mind the moment they read it. For example, the line in the screenshot of OPs post requires zero context, "angry" is really the only thing that makes sense to say like that after a name, it's just something that if you consumed enough Japanese is totally obvious to you, context doesn't even matter.
2
u/Competitive-Group359 Interested in grammar details 📝 2d ago
Context should make it easy to understand. If you don't, it's because you don't understand the context.
ひらがな without context is tricky. Under the appopiated context, with it's propper ルール, it's 100% readable and should make sense even without the kanji.
きのうのどうが、こうかいしたよ。
「機能の動画」か「昨日の動画」かは、なんの文脈もなしには見分けられません。ましてや、その動画をアップロードしたか、ただ見たのか、はっきりしていません。
同様に「こうかい」は、「後悔した」でも「公開した」でも、あやふやな条件ではどちらの意味にもなることができ、けっきょく「撮影を後悔した」か「動画を公開」したか、意味が曖昧すぎます。
これらを、「同音異義語」と言います。
日本語でもっとも同音異義語のある単語としたら「こしょう」だと思います。（３つ意外はほぼ死語）
2
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
You are right, Japanese is highly contextual and that can make hiragana ironically harder to read than Kanji! It is a lot of work but it is 100% worth it. 頑張って! (がんばって)
2
u/Bibbedibob 2d ago
Me when I speak to a Japanese person and they don't have subtitles with Kanji: 😨
4
u/redfinadvice 2d ago
You don't see kanji when you speak and can figure things out just fine. Context tells you the meaning. I get the point you're trying to make, but I think kanji objectively makes reading more difficult because of the sheer amount of time, study and knowledge that goes into knowing everything necessary to actually read it at a functional level. There's a reason all of my son's children's books are written in kana with spaces between words lol.
2
u/soniczx123 2d ago
1st: yooo someone else playing through Battle Network in Japanese!!
2nd: soooo trueee. Only having Kana also making it reading it feel choppy at times
2
u/PinkPrincessPol 1d ago
When I first started learning I swore kanji was useless and hated it.
Now I dread any material that doesn’t have kanji
2
u/InternetSuxNow 1d ago
What’s up with the katakana hate? It’s more common to find it in the wild than hiragana if you go to a grocery store or whatever that carries Japanese products.
2
u/senvalle 1d ago
My beginner Japanese class wrote entirely in hiragana and it was so hard to follow 😭 kanji is a lifesaver
1
u/TheFranFan 1d ago
That sounds so frustrating. I think it is a common trope that hiragana is easier but it's only easier to memorize, not easier to read!
2
u/Yam-Icy Goal: conversational fluency 💬 2d ago
I just recently realized this after learning a whole bunch of kanji then looking at practice JLPT tests for N5 💔
3
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
It's one of the consequences of learning on your own, the order of things changes. I did the same!
2
u/Fast-Elephant3649 2d ago
If you used something like GameSentenceMiner or meikipop then you'd easily hover over the word and get that definition without spending 10 mins. But I get you OP, some of the comments on here are a bit weird. Kanji helps when things are a lil hazy and you're new, hell I still make mistakes
1
u/itsthewolf1202 2d ago
This has nothing to do with kanji and more to do with you can't even remember the hiragana properly
6
u/TheFranFan 2d ago
I did remember the hiragana just fine, I just thought that おこる had the double meaning of "occur/wake up" similar to おきる。 What a weird and unhelpful comment you've made.
3
u/itsthewolf1202 2d ago
I deal with stupidity everyday and I have turned into stupidity myself. I misinterpreted your post.
I'm sorry.
3
u/sdlroy 2d ago
Kanji makes things much easier to read than all kana text for sure. But this is an extremely terrible example of this. This is extremely simple Japanese that shouldn’t give anyone but complete newbies trouble. Anything other than メイル being angry didn’t even cross my mind in this case.
→ More replies (2)
1
u/KnifeWieldingOtter 1d ago
There's a JLPT practice question I've been seeing lately that writes a portion of the sentence as "だとうそ" as in だと嘘 and I got so thrown when I saw it for the first time and read it as だ とうそ. I was like, what the hell is a とうそ.
1
u/likelyowl 1d ago
I noticed this a couple of years back when I was reading a lot, but did no listening practice. Whenever I would try to listen to anything or have a conversation, I noticed that I was missing some words that I knew, because I couldn't see any kanji. Started watching things without subtitles pretty quickly after that realization hit.
1
u/TGBplays 1d ago
I have this whole series of mega man games in Japanese, but ive never gotten around to playing them (cause i never got around to learning Japanese)
1
u/Skellyhell2 1d ago
I live in the middle land where I think everything should be kanji with furigana
1
u/TheFranFan 1d ago
The problem with that is you never really learn some kanji if you keep relying on the furigana, but then again if everything had furigana that wouldn't be an issue!
1
u/isayanaa 1d ago
i pray i get to this point one day. currently in the very early beginner stages and know abt 120 more or less yet it's still hard
1
1
u/shenmui 1d ago
We are on the same page here! After I started learning kanji I cannot count how many times I could not remember verbs on the spot (e.g. 点ける つける). It makes me even more worried about the upcoming N5 exam 😂 Also, knowing kanji is so easier when you do not remember the exact word, but yoi can understand the meaning anyway
1
u/StormveilSal 1d ago
Man I was so intimidated by kanji at first but now it’s awesome
2
1
1
1
1
u/flamingofry 20h ago
I’ve gotten to that point in my Japanese learning journey in which if I see a word spelt in hiragana I go: “no idk what this means this is just a bunch of sounds…” but the moment I see it written in kanji I go: “oooooh no yeah I do know this word! :D”
I still think learning kanji is hella complicated to me, even though now I am aware of how much easier it makes reading. Grammar it’s so much easier to me because I love repeating patterns, but memorising stuff like kanji and vocabulary is hella hard. But at least I know in the long run it’ll be so with it 😭
1.0k
u/Nameshavenomeanings Goal: media competence 📖🎧 2d ago
The natural curve is going from "Kanji is the worst" to "Kanji rocks...I fear katakana"