JapaneseRuleOf7

For a lot of people, kanji is about on par with natto.   A huge sticky mess, difficult to consume, and not nearly as tasty as it is troublesome.  Plus it makes your breath smell like the wrong end of a dog, which is rarely a good thing.  I mean natto, that is.  Kanji does nothing for your breath.  Anyway, me personally, I never wanted to spend years studying kanji; I just wanted to speak well enough to communicate (read “drink beer”) with people.  Funny how things work out.

Hiragana?  Fine.  Katakana?  Piece of cake.  There’s not that many of them, so whatever.  But kanji?  Yeah, let me get back to you on that.  I mean, who wants to take the long route to learning Japanese?  I was determined to find a shortcut.

If you, like me, love shortcuts and have the approximate attention span of a gerbil, then let’s jump right to the conclusion:

1.  Kanji is the shortcut to learning Japanese, even if you only care about speaking.

2. If you know the kanji, you can make sense of every word in the Japanese language.

3.  Every word.  Think about it.

How can kanji be the shortcut when it’s so impossible?  First of all, you’re trying to learn an entire Read the rest of this entry »