Language Journal: July 25th 2020

Today's post is about thoroughness.

As I've said before, I feel like it is harder in Japanese to reach an acceptable level of fluency for even basic interactions, but once there, it seems easier to go from there to a higher level of fluency than it would elsewhere.

In short, I don't think Japanese is either easier or tougher than any other language. At least, not as a generalization. It depends a lot on your specific goals I think.

I've been over this before however, and it isn't my point today. Instead, today's point is to grow on that. I feel like I'm past that basic level. But, the very thing which made attaining it harder, and then easier, is now, again playing to my monkey brain to make it harder again; Kanji.

I'm actually doing quite well in the past bit I think. It is still quite humbling just how massive and complex language actually is. And I don't think you can truly appreciate this if you don't try to learn a language as an adult. And preferably a language with little to no relation to the one(s) you already know.

But, the problem I'm grappling with is that I'm not really done my Anki deck. I am done the new cards. However, as I try to force it into submission and whittle it down to as few cards a day as possible I'm realizing that I'm getting lazy and allowing myself to get away with simply Kanji mistakes. Letting an incorrect reading slip by, or mistaking it for another similar Kanji.

Granted, this isn't new. I did the same thing while I still had new cards. Though, I only ever let myself slide if the mistake was on something which didn't totally ruin the sentence, and wasn't the target word.

Now I have no new cards though. I should be adding my own cards and drilling myself thoroughly on the one I have. The problem would be a lot more obvious I think in another language. If you get the word wrong, you get it wrong. In Japanese it isn't so simple. 明日 ("tomorrow") can be pronounced in at least 3 ways I can think of right now "ASU", "ASHITA" and (for the love of God why) "MYOUNICHI".

So, once can be forgiven if they pronounce a word TOTALLY wrong. As long as you pronounce it totally wrong within certain constraints of course. In fact, I've once pronounced a word wrong, checked it in the dictionary and discovered that, actually, the way I pronounced was in fact a valid reading. Just not the common one.

Similarly, I've often guessed the TOTALLY wrong word. Not just an alternate reading or an incorrect reading based on actual readings of Kanji. Because Kanji impart meaning, you can, in Japanese, say a completely different word and still get the right meaning. For instance 批評 and 批判 ("HIHYOU" and "HIHAN"). You can see that while both words have the same first Kanji and similar second Kanji, they are actually different words. But, the meaning of both can be 'criticism'.

In English, the odds of making this sort of mistake fundamentally don't exist. While pronunciation of English letters isn't always the most rational, the rules are much stricter than they are for Kanji. And, the letters themselves have no particular meaning. And so it is rare for synonyms to have spellings as similar looking as those for the two 'criticism' examples.

And, yeah, "tomorrow" is just cray-cray. Not only is that 3 different readings, but MYOUNICHI is actually 4 syllables in length in Japanese meaning all three differ in number of syllables too. AND the readings for 日 in the two shorter ones, while they are the more common readings for that word, are not even accepted readings for that Kanji.

That link has the readings in Hiragana and Katakana, so to break it down in a more readable form, the readings for 日 are for the Japanese (or "Kun") readings  "HI", "~BI", "~KA", and the Chinese readings are "NICHI" and "JITSU". Presumably, the "ASU" and "ASHITA" are simply vestiges from before the Chinese tried to introduce their language, and this probably only stuck because it is such a common word. 

So, the rut I'm stuck in now is I'm forced to force myself to stop slacking off. The little mistakes can't be tolerated any more. I need to take this to the next level.