Does your Japanese still suck?

Hi!

Boin no josei?

 

I have also learned kana over one or two weeks, at least to be able to read it more or less. But to use it properly in speech, reading and writing it needs quit bit more than that.

 

My son actually read the kanji for Shinjuku today so I was pretty pumped. It's just memorization, but hey, it works. He has no clue that the first one means "new" or the second one means "whore house".

 

Typing is not the same as speaking it. It's bad enough you crap on my english every chance you get, Leave my Nihongo alone

 

As a Spanish speaker who has studied Japanese for YEARS and still sucks, I can relate to this. Kanji never, never, NEVER sticks to my memory, as I have no visual memory. I have found that somehow relating kanji to sound sort of helps. I still have a lot of trouble learning Kanji. Even more so now that I'm old. Also, I know nobody with whom to speak Japanese, nowadays.

I was supposed to take JLPT-N2 this year, but I didn't find out the date to send my papers until afterwards...

Fucking Kanji keep kicking my sorry arse. Still, I tend to get 60/60 in listening sections.

It's a visual memory thing in my case. Now, that being said... how about using the program "Anki"? It sure has helped me a lot.

 

Yeah, I'm an ass when it comes to languages. ;-)

@Xerdo
Visual memory always worked much better for me than actually memorizing how to write kanji. I've learned hundreds (I once tried to count them and it was 250-something) of Kanji by simple memorization, far from being able to write them but I know the meaning in different contexts/combinations. That being said, now that I started studying the stroke order again and learn Kanji for Kanji (45 so far, about 150 until December 1st) and it feels like the right way to do it for sure. I write them pretty often just to make sure I don't forget any of them, but even nasty stuff like 曜 sticks to my mind because it relates heavily to personal experience (class room context).
As an exercise, I use to write them at least once every two days and the new ones several times a day (in class or in shukudai). I'm also reading most of them at class four days a week. Practice is everything, and Kanji are hard to learn for beginners. Hell, there are even Kanji my Japanese tandem partner can't remember all the time o_o. She said she just knows them from context but sometimes couldn't put the furigana on top if she had to.

 

You know I'm going to have to get back at you for that right :evil:

Stay tuned....you'll soon find out how good my German is:nod:

But yeah in my where's the bathroom, I forgot ni

O-tearai wa doko NI Arimasu ka

Typing error. All other problems with my japanese should be taken up with the publisher of the book I used Kodansha

 

People struggling with kanji should really look into SRS, the only thing is it takes discipline to keep on doing it on a regular basis for a longer period of time. I know for me I need to write along when I study kanji so my hand memorizes it along with my mind, but it's different for everyone.

 

Aren't there people in Japan who don't even know all the Kanji?

 

Define "all the Kanji".

 

When you know about 1000 Kanji you are considered literate (schoolchildren). With knowledge of about 2000 Kanji you can read a newspaper without major problems. For technical literature you need more Kanji obviously, depending on the field about 3000, you are considered an excellent reader by this time.
There are over 50,000 Kanji according to the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten (famous Japanese Dictionary), a lot of them are archaic and seldomly used, like you don't know all the words in your mother tongue, japanese people don't know all the Kanji.

 

all 50,000

 

Do you know all approximately 230,000 words listed in the complete 20 volumes of the Oxford english dictionary?

 

Kanji is a bloody stupid system. The crap that it came from pictures doesn't stick with me. Even the most simple of Kanji would need you to be stoned to come up with them. Also, a kanji can have more than one sound but unlike English with worda such as Read or Live, the different sount is cometely unrelated to the other.

Sure, sometimes it is easier to read a japanese sentence with kanji (if you know them) because Japanese don't put spaces between words. So reading in hiragana is horrible because you not only have to read but also figure out the start and end of each word. Personally I think there are too many Kanji needed but thats the Japanese for you. Always trying to look smarter than they really are. Just take a look at their English tests for Eiken or what ever it's called. The test is full of pointless words that nobody uses in daily life or even in work. Some of the words I've never even heard before. Words you would need in life are quite often missing too.

Actully, the Koreans used to use Kanji but they saw sence and mosty got rid of it.

Yakumo

PS: I know this rant is full if typing errors but you can blaim the shitty iphone touch keyboard for that.

 

and a few that aren't even in it

 

This isn't exactly accurate. 1000 kanji is about junior high level (give or take), but you can get by in life fantastically if you can read these and grasp some of the most common words they make up. Technical literature is really deceiving. You don't need that much. If it's truly "technical" you need very little. Politics and business a few more, but you'd want to familiarize yourself w/ the specialized vocab rather than the kanji. 3000 kanji? For realz? You're reading classic literature and are a very accomplished scholar. The 2-kyu Kanken (Official Kanji Test) covers the 1945 Jouyou kanji.

Level 1 you're responsible for 6000, so you're talking about a massive difference. First reply here states he has Pre 1-kyu which was sick, but said 1-kyu is "about a digit harder, so I gave up." My guess is it's responsible for 3500 or so, which is about 1500 above the Jouyou list (which drops and adds some each year).

I knew someone that passed 2-kyu and she worked in a post office. That was still impressive. I know a gaijin w/ 3-kyu and he said "fuck this" after that b/c you never see anything above it in real life (and he's a professional translator).

The only thing that could be worse is reading Japanese phonetically.

Like any other Japanese test, they test the applicants ability to study for a test... not what they know.

 

I know about 900 kanji, give or take. To me, it's the opposite of what ave says - When I (try to) read Japanese, I sort of know "familiar" kanji and what they should mean or what they should sound like - as if I already knew them before and were just trying to "remember" them. I passed N3 because of context kanji (and a 60/60 in listening) - but when there was no N3, I flunked JLPT 2Kyuu because of both a lack of Kanji and a lack of caffeine.

It's like - I get the Kanji in some of my Japanese games or magazines or books. I understand many of them. Many of which I don't know how to read phonetically. In tests, I sort of get the phonetic reading of some of the Kanji, including Kanji that look like other Kanji... but sometimes I know how it sounds and not what it means.

I'm fucked either way.

What's SRS again, Giel? I'm bloody interested.

 

It stands for spaced repetition system, read more about it on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition_system

Basically, if you get a good program it assesses how well you know a word by your response time and your answer (the program I use, Anki, gives you 4 options ranging from very easy to very hard) and uses an algorithm to determine when the word/kanji should come up again for review). I've been using it for Japanese and have been using it for Chinese as well recently, it works well if you can discipline yourself enough to use it on a regular basis. If not, the list of reviews simply piles up and it loses it's function.

 

You got that right. I remember taking the crazy paper tests for my driving license. There were questions on the test that had fuck all to do with driving plus questions about how to ride a motorbike. Why the hell should I need to know that when I was taking a test for a car license? Things like this really piss me off about Japanese. No logic, just "we know more so we're better". My wife is always spouting some meaningless point thinking she is so cleaver yet there are many situations where any decent educated westerner would know a solution but she'd be clueless. Not only her but many of my Japanese friends, too.

Their idea of education and knowledge is completely different to ours.

 

That's why the 2019 real Tokyo is going to look like the 2019 Tokyo in Akira.