Why You Must Learn Kanji
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 freaking language here, and that’s a huge task. People say learning Japanese is easy. Yeah, like swimming the English Channel is easy. It’s just swimming. How hard could it be?
Microwave and Light Bulb, Not Friendly?
But anyway, okay, think about a Japanese person learning English. They’re going to need everyday words like
microwave oven telephone light bulb
Sucks to be them, because those words bear no relationship to one another. “Light bulb” looks and sounds nothing like “microwave oven.” Learning English requires remembering a ton of unrelated stuff, using only letters and sounds. It’s like a pure memory exercise. You know how many words there are in a language? Okay, well I don’t either, but I’m sure somebody on Wikipedia does. For now, let’s just use the term “a shitload.”
If only there were an easier way. Welcome to Japanese. You learn a couple thousand kanji and Boom, you’re done. Okay, not done, but you’ve got great leverage. Check out the same three words in Japanese:
電子レンジ 電話 電球
Everybody’s friendly. It’s clear they all use 電, which means “electric.” That’s because, unless you’re using two tin cans and a string, they’re all electrical appliances. And there’s the shortcut. With a six-degrees-of-separation-like magic, knowing one word immediately helps you understand and learn other words. Learn five kanji and you can make sense of ten words. Learn ten kanji and you can make sense of thirty words. That’s leverage, and Japanese is cool like that. Since all the appliances in Japan use electricity/電, you’ve just learned a big chunk of Japanese vocabulary. You’re welcome.
We Need to Talk in the Den
Let me be honest with you. If you’re trying to learn Japanese without learning kanji, you are making a huge mistake.
I’m telling you this as a friend. That’s why we’re all gathered here in the family room, with your mom, the friends who care about you, and your Uncle Frank. If you won’t listen to me, maybe you’ll listen to him. Cause, you know, Uncle Frank had to go away for a couple of years.
Okay, right, I know. It doesn’t seem efficient to memorize a couple thousand complicated kanji when you just want to have a conversation with the attractive person on the barstool next to you. All you want to do is learn to speak.
Yeah, that’s not going to work. Here’s why:
Daily-conversation Japanese doesn’t cut it. You’ll be out of material in five minutes, at which point the other person will either excuse themselves to go the bathroom and climb out the window, or start speaking English. You need vocabulary. And to learn vocabulary, you’ve got to remember stuff, somehow.
Japanese Homos
But Japanese has a bunch of homonyms, which means that everything sounds like everything else. You know how English has three words for one sound: “to,” “too,” and “two”? That’s nothing. Japanese has like fifty words for the sounds “sho” and “shou.” You can’t understand the language based upon the sounds. You have to see it written.
Japanese people make the opposite mistake when learning English. They focus on reading and writing when they should invest time in listening. English is an impossible language to make sense of through the writing system, because it doesn’t have enough letters. Or maybe it has too many, whatever. I don’t know. “Guess” and “Scene”? Please. You’ll never figure out how to say them by reading. To make the sounds of the English language, the letters are forced into double-duty or mashed into peculiar combinations. Then you’ve got phonics, where someone has essentially reinvented the alphabet so that it might make more sense. And you’d still probably mispronounce “epitome.”
Japanese people learning English would be well advised to put down their books and focus on listening. For English speakers learning Japanese, it’s the opposite. Both groups are trying to use the method that works best in their own language, when the languages are constructed differently. That’s a problem.
Some Monk on a Mountaintop
Japanese is first and foremost a written language. The sounds are secondary. Some monk a million years ago sat down in a temple on top of Mt. Fuji (or such is my understanding) and worked out a thorough relationship between all of the visual characters, so that they all relate to one another in a reasonable fashion. All of the words are networked. Using that network is how you build vocabulary and learn Japanese.
English is the opposite. People just started speaking it, like in caves a thousand years ago. And then somewhere around the Middle Ages somebody said, Oh, maybe we ought to start writing this shit down, and then they came up with some letters in an attempt to represent the sounds they were making. But the letters don’t really even matter. That’s why you’ve got all those extra letters cluttering up so many words. It’s the sounds that matter, not the letters.
As an oral language, Japanese is hard to parse, partly due to all the homonyms. You said “sho”? Oh, I thought you meant “sho.” But it’s a breeze to understand once you see it written. And from the sounds, you’d never know that “kuruma” and “sharin” were related, but see them on paper and it’s immediately obvious: 車 and 車輪. “Car” and “wheel.” Well, there it is. Again, Japanese speakers learning English don’t get this advantage. They just simply have to remember stuff. Yeah, sorry about that.
Two Jews Walk into a Bar
One extra, challenging aspect of Japanese as an oral language is that it doesn’t lend itself very well to mnemonics, at least for English speakers. The sounds are so different that it’s difficult to come up with good mnemonics. Like how are you going to remember “nyuukokukanrikyoku”? Yeah, good luck. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that hiragana and katakana are going to help you either. It’s the same problem. にゅうこくかんりきょく isn’t any better. You need kanji to make any sense of the words.
Even sounds that can be easily represented in mnemonics are problematic. Because of all the Japanese homonyms, the same sounds have to be used over and over again. You’ll have Kens and Jews running around everywhere. Worse, you’ll end up making the wrong connections. If you use the image of a Jewish person for the sound “jyuu” (sorry, but really what other association are going to make?), you run the risk of mentally connecting “veterinarian” with “carpet,” since they both begin with the sound “jyuu.” But if you saw them written in kanji, you’d never make that mistake, because they’re clearly different characters.
There is no Try
Here’s the deal with learning kanji. It’s not easy. But it’s the only way to learn Japanese. Books can help a bit, like Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig, or Kanji ABC (which I prefer). You can also put sentences into Anki, and start writing things out. But anyway you approach it, it’s going to take you a long time. Which is why you should start today.
Don’t spend time learning how to speak and think you can learn kanji at a later stage. You’ll only hit a wall and realize, a year later, that if you’d started kanji a year ago, you’d be much further ahead. Even if you memorize a couple thousand words of vocabulary, it won’t be enough. You need more words. And words, in Japanese, are kanji. Enough said. Now go eat some natto, and get busy.
Great post! I wonder where Uncle frank went huh.. for a few years too.
Anyways! Kanji, Idk why but I seem to love Kanji, writing it and seeing it. Despite the fact I’ve been doing it for a year plus, some Kanji don’t stick in my head.
Most people who start to learn Japanese, start off with Hiragana and Katakana, fair enough and go piece of cake! But then after that, they come across “Kanji” They think it’s too hard and eventually, stop learning Japanese all together. There’s only 2000 joyo kanji you need to know. If they add 5 Kanji a day or even 1, they can get over 300+ kanji over a year. That’s even faster than elementary students learning Kanji in one year.
If I may ask, do you know most of the 2000+ joyo kanji? or are there some that still don’t want to be friends with you
tanoshimini
January 29, 2012 at 2:06 am
Well, I’ve learned all of the joyo kanji; whether I “know” them or not is a different matter. Sometimes I’ll know a kanji in one word, but not know it in another word.
For example, you might look at 物 and know that it means “thing.” And you might know that 理 means “reason.” But put them together (物理), and what do they mean? Maybe then you don’t know. So do you actually “know” those two kanji? It’s not a simple problem.
This is really what I was addressing when I wrote http://www.japaneseruleof7.com/the-3-phases-of-learning-kanji/. One can’t just memorize all of the kanji and then be finished, right? That’s only the start. I’ll give you an example of something that happened to me recently.
I write a lot of notes to myself in Japanese– schedules, places to go, to-do-lists, etc. I’ve written some of the same kanji scores of times, maybe even hundreds. Well, the other day I was walking around town and I saw a word in kanji (a combination of 2 kanji) and I was like, “Hmm. Looks familiar. What does that mean?” and I just blanked on it. So I looked it up in my dictionary, and it turned out to be a word I write every single day. That I could have forgotten it is amazing. To me, that underscores how important context is. I could remember a word perfectly in one context, yet be unable to recall it in another context.
It’s also a matter of memory load. While you might be able to recall a kanji perfectly when you see it all by itself as part of your studies, it’s a whole new ballgame when you suddenly see a poster full of words as you’re stepping off the train. You don’t want to come to an untimely end because you’re so fixated on trying to read some ad for green tea.
Ken Seeroi
January 29, 2012 at 1:46 pm
I was thinking of the sense in just the individual Kanji meaning and not so much adding it together to form a word.
I see, makes much more sense that you were addressing that particular post.
Yup, very true. Especially some Kanji like, 命 which has the keyword for “fate” in Heisig but then can also mean “life” which I always get mixed up with, いのち。And the meaning is not wrong for both.
緑茶= green tea. How amazing is Kanji.
Yeh, I agree with the context. Some words I see all the time, like 親 the other day. When I was doing my reps, I was like what’s that? and when I read it in a sentence, I know it’s 親 for parents.
Yup, I agree. I guess knowing the Kanji is just really just the beginning
tanoshimini
January 29, 2012 at 3:52 pm
I’ve actually had an experience similar to this.
Recently, I’ve been working on learning sentences in my SRS app (Surusu). To help me remember some of the more kanji-heavy words, I decided to pluck them out of their sentences, and make a deck just for them to work on. Oddly enough, those words sitting all alone are harder for me to remember, rather than when they’re cluttered in and amongst a sentence.
I’m not really sure why this is, but regardless, I’m glad that I’m not the only one experiencing it!
Chagami
January 31, 2012 at 2:32 am
I’ve heard the same thing from a number of people. Kanji in isolation are difficult to remember, and their usefulness is limited. By the same token, it would be difficult to remember isolated components of English words. Imagine trying to learn English by memorizing the meanings of “pre,” “post,” “un,” “in,” “er,” and “est.” That would be nuts. Yet people still try to do it with kanji.
It is important to get a basic familiarity with the most commonly used kanji, probably in an RTK-esque fashion. But beyond that, I believe you get more mileage out of words in the context of sentences.
Ken Seeroi
January 31, 2012 at 3:02 pm
I’m with you on the whole Kanji natto thing, and have found Heisig and Anki to be very helpful in this regard. I mean, for the Kanji. As for natto, you might try soda water and salt. And if that doesn’t work, maybe steel wool. Otherwise, just cut it out. It’ll grow back.
Donald Cherry
January 30, 2012 at 9:55 pm
Thanks for the advice. I’ve been experimenting with soda water and salt as per your suggestion. So far my results are as follows:
1. Kanji. No measurable improvement.
2. Natto. Slight improvement, although possibly just a placebo effect.
3. Tequila. Tremendous improvement! Even better with the addition of lime.
Ken
Ken Seeroi
January 31, 2012 at 2:37 pm
A great argument for inclusive study! And entertaining to boot. I just finished writing next monday’s post and sure enough those homophones can make big differences in meaning… Take my name for example… ben.
Benjamin Martin
February 7, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Yeah, between your name and mine we’ve got about 20% of the sounds of the Japanese language covered.
Thanks for the positive feedback!
Ken Seeroi
February 7, 2012 at 1:54 pm
Does that mean every Japanese person in all of Japanese history was literate without execption, seeing as how they can’t get along without knowing Kanji? I am only asking this because in lots of cultures, historically education had only been accessible to those living in urban areas who were from the middle class and rich families. Those living in the villages knew how to speak the language but not write it (although they usually did know how to read numbers). Japanese women in the past were denied education so how did they know which “sho” one was talking about?
Shubham Mishra
March 1, 2013 at 8:38 pm
Those are good questions—thanks for asking them. Let me give you my take.
Now, one can certainly survive without being literate. However, that means living cut off from reference sources, asynchronous communication, and a good chunk of media. Announcements, warnings, letters—they all go away, and the only way to get a message to others is to run over and speak with them. In the past, and even today, there were and are undoubtedly illiterate people, particularly among the poor and underprivileged. So can you survive without being able to read? Sure. But that wouldn’t be an existence you’d choose if you could avoid it.
But perhaps that’s getting a bit off from my original point, which was that just going by sounds alone is missing the essential element of the language. If you’ve ever seen a book written entirely in hiragana, you know what I’m talking about. Instead of being easier to read, it’s insanely harder. (At least once you know the kanji.)
As for “how did they know which ‘sho’ one was talking about?”, there’s actually a manga and anime series called Shiro Kuma Cafe that uses that ambiguity as it’s comic center. One character will say something that another character misunderstands, leading to a string of puns on the original word. It’s funny. Sort of the equivalent, in English, of mixing up “carrot” and “carat,” or “carrot” and “ferret.” So yes, this type of misunderstanding can occur. In such cases, you just need to add extra context and explanation to communicate your point. For example, when ordering at a sushi restaurant, the word “sake” in Japanese means both “booze” and “salmon.” So to avoid getting fish when you wanted a drink, you’re going to need to be a little more specific as to which “sake” you want.
Also bear in mind that people who grow up having Japanese as their native language don’t have to “learn” it. It’s just what they are exposed to as children, and it forms the basis of their thoughts. People learning Japanese as a foreign language don’t have that advantage. We have to make connections and be able to recall words, and kanji helps to do that. Without kanji, you might never know that the words “tofu” and “natto” were related, and you’d certainly never guess that “edamame” was. But when you see them written in kanji (豆腐、納豆、枝豆), it’s plain that there’s a connection.
Ken Seeroi
March 2, 2013 at 1:51 am
Fair enough…
I guess there are far more homophones in Japanese compared to English I suppose since it gets as far as deliberately adding context in order to make it clear which one is being talked about. Both the “sake”s have different kanji right?
But the “sake-sake” thing got me thinking…. Could this particular example (and others possibly) have happened because of the association of sake the drink with sake the fish over the years (where one of them was the original sake and the other one was named after it). I’m just guessing that they are usually taken together in restaurants or bars, I could be completely wrong though, in which case my apologies. Does Japanese allow such naming by association? If yes, I could understand why they would have so many things sounding the same.
Shubham Mishra
March 2, 2013 at 9:01 pm
Yes, both “sake”s have different kanji (鮭: salmon, and 酒: booze). The number of homophones in Japanese is truly enormous, probably due to the limited number of sounds in the language, and the way they can be arranged. There are certainly hundreds.
Word etymology is really interesting, and you do find naming by association in Japanese. “Tama” for both “ball” and “bullet” would be a likely candidate for a word with 2 different kanji but a possible sound association. On the other hand, associations are more commonly made using the kanji, rather than the sounds. Take “izakaya” and “booze,” respectively: 居酒屋 and 酒. The sounds are pretty different, but you can see the connection.
Also, if you look at the names of some common fish, you’ll see a similarity： 鰤、鮪、鯖、鮭. Buri, maguro, saba, and salmon all contain the kanji for fish: 魚. That’s why kanji are so important—because that’s where the connections between words happen. Sounds don’t play as big a part in word associations.
It’s possible that the two “sake”s are related because you find them together at a sushi restaurant, but it’s also possible that they just randomly share the same sound. Guess I’ll have to spend more time at my local sushi restaurant investigating.
Ken Seeroi
March 3, 2013 at 12:27 pm