Language Journal: December 23rd 2018 - Kanji
As I read more and more on Japanese, my news feeds become increasingly more Japanese centric. The other day I came across an article talking about Kanji and how it is easy. And while I agree, I think it fundamentally misses the point.
People THINK learning 2000+ Kanji is an insurmountable task. But, there are 2 things about this; it is provably false and it is more beneficial to learning the language than anything in a language without a similar concept.
I learned the general use Kanji, roughly 2200 of them, in about 3-4 months. Well, I learned their meanings. Some people have learned them faster, and a great deal have learned them in roughly the same amount of time. It was basically just learning 20 a day for 110-ish days. There are tricks to remembering them. Lots of guides and suggestions exist. It takes less than an hour a day. I would argue, it is easily less than half an hour a day at that number. Incredibly doable.
But, not only is it NOT that tough. The benefit is insane. 飛行機 is the Japanese word for Airplane. It consists of the kanji generally referred to "fly", "go" and "machine". I'm sure there are other possible, logical combinations which could have been used. But, realistically, they are quite limited. And, consequently, it also means that if you knew the Kanji, but didn't know the word you might actually be able to figure out what it is.
Now, take the English equivalent "Airplane". Now, this is actually one of the nicer English words, because it actually is a compound word. But realistically, if you didn't know the word... you'd be screwed. "Air" is pretty darn ambiguous and is also often shows up in words where it bears no similar meaning, like "pair". "Plane" in the context it comes from here isn't really a common English word. And the common English words associated with plane have nothing to do with flying.
In short, you might guess it has something to do with air, if you had learned that word. But, you'd also probably know already, that there is no such guarantee.
With Kanji though, the meanings are much more static. It is basically a given that it is some sort of machine which has to do with flying and going somewhere.
When you look at another language like English in that lens, you realize, you're basically memorizing tens of thousands of words and there is often no hint within the word itself as to the meaning. Memorizing 2200 Kanji is a joke compared to what is required for most languages. Sure, learning the Kanji won't automatically teach you every Japanese word. But, you start to get an idea about how learning Kanji makes learning vocab, which is arguably the biggest challenge in any language, a whole lot easier.
People THINK learning 2000+ Kanji is an insurmountable task. But, there are 2 things about this; it is provably false and it is more beneficial to learning the language than anything in a language without a similar concept.
I learned the general use Kanji, roughly 2200 of them, in about 3-4 months. Well, I learned their meanings. Some people have learned them faster, and a great deal have learned them in roughly the same amount of time. It was basically just learning 20 a day for 110-ish days. There are tricks to remembering them. Lots of guides and suggestions exist. It takes less than an hour a day. I would argue, it is easily less than half an hour a day at that number. Incredibly doable.
But, not only is it NOT that tough. The benefit is insane. 飛行機 is the Japanese word for Airplane. It consists of the kanji generally referred to "fly", "go" and "machine". I'm sure there are other possible, logical combinations which could have been used. But, realistically, they are quite limited. And, consequently, it also means that if you knew the Kanji, but didn't know the word you might actually be able to figure out what it is.
Now, take the English equivalent "Airplane". Now, this is actually one of the nicer English words, because it actually is a compound word. But realistically, if you didn't know the word... you'd be screwed. "Air" is pretty darn ambiguous and is also often shows up in words where it bears no similar meaning, like "pair". "Plane" in the context it comes from here isn't really a common English word. And the common English words associated with plane have nothing to do with flying.
In short, you might guess it has something to do with air, if you had learned that word. But, you'd also probably know already, that there is no such guarantee.
With Kanji though, the meanings are much more static. It is basically a given that it is some sort of machine which has to do with flying and going somewhere.
When you look at another language like English in that lens, you realize, you're basically memorizing tens of thousands of words and there is often no hint within the word itself as to the meaning. Memorizing 2200 Kanji is a joke compared to what is required for most languages. Sure, learning the Kanji won't automatically teach you every Japanese word. But, you start to get an idea about how learning Kanji makes learning vocab, which is arguably the biggest challenge in any language, a whole lot easier.
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